Graham Farish’s NYC J3a Hudson
by Keith Wills U
nlike the Germans, American tinplate makers rarely made export models for a specific Eu-
ropean market. In the late 1930’s, Marx shipped streamliner dies it no longer used to England where they continued to be manufactured by British Marx alongside specific steam locomotives and cars created there. An- other that comes to mind, American Flyer, circa 1925, produced at least two export sets as “British Flyer,” a clock- work, cast-iron British outline 0-4-0T tank locomotive with a small four-wheel tin tender and two four-wheel litho- graphed carriages, and an 0-4-0 tender locomotive with two eight-wheel pas- senger cars of standard American Flyer manufacture. It wasn’t successful, for cast-iron wasn’t particularly popular; rather, printed or lacquered tin models such as those Bing and Hornby made were more popular. So, what are we to think when a post-war British OO scale manufacturer decided to export an icon- ic HO New York Central Hudson? In 1949, Graham Farish Ltd. started producing 4mm OO scale models for two-rail HO track. I won’t go into the old OO/HO dichotomy dating from the 1930’s other than to say Americans chose to correct the gauge for the larger models. British OO was nominally over- size for domestic HO. A December, 1951, RAILROAD MODEL CRAFTSMAN Farish ad revealed British prototypes,
proudly
stating, “First Time in America! The New GRAHAM FARISH HO Gauge Scale Models,” and, “Britain’s greatest name in scale models.” The locomotives were 12-volt, two-rail d.c., with spur wheel gearing. However, in 1950, Farish made an actual HO scale model locomotive ex- pressly for the U.S. market, a 1937 J3a New York Central Hudson, prototype No. 5405, the first of 50 in that series. It came in a substantial wooden box with “Made in England by Graham Farish Ltd., Bromley, Kent” stenciled on it. Carmen Webster showed it in her 1953 Model Railroad Equipment Co. HO catalog along with a Great Western King class Ten-wheeler, Great Western 2-6-2T and a Southern Railway Mer- chant Navy class Pacific. While capable of running on U.S. layouts, their small- er British loading gauge might not
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have made them seem over-large com- pared to our HO. Farish’s two-rail mod- els also flew in the face of Hornby’s three-rail OO line, a pre-war hangover which lasted until 1959. The Hudson underwent changes in manufacture, from a two-pole motor in the tender with a flexible drive shaft to the loco, to an engine-mounted one. The tender motor was not reliable, hence the
on the latter, some of which the British version lacked. In Model Trains, the Collector’s Guide, by Chris Ellis, 1994, two three-quarter close-up photos a few pages apart reveal their differ- ences. The Farish, page 52, is more coarse regarding cast and applied de- tails compared to Lionel’s refined Ital- ian die work on page 48. The working Baker valve gear was described as a
1950 GRAHAM FARISH HUDSON
1950 AMERICAN FLYER HUDSON
need for the change. Our sample is the early tender-powered model, evidenced by a bulky motor protrusion in front of it. Thanks to reader Frank A. Bell, Jr., who sent photos of it alongside Lionel’s J3e OO, and American Flyer’s J1e HO versions. With these, we can compare different modeling approaches to an iconic prototype. Later changes includ- ed a working headlight, different bells, paint striping and drawbars, to name a few. The loco was die-cast with a molded plastic tender. Comparing Farish’s HO J3a with Li-
onel’s slightly larger OO version re- veals an abundance of applied detail
joy in a British modeling magazine, though it appears a tad large on the model. The Commonwealth trailing truck was not deeply embossed, and the tender lacked its rear ladder, top railings and those on the four corners. In all, the boiler is plainer than Li- onel’s, particularly its simpler smoke box front and barren pilot. Remember, this was a few years before we came to know hand-crafted HO Japanese brass with far better detail than we could ever hope to manufacture. Mr. Bell also photographed it with American Flyer’s post-war version, which had cast detail improved a bit
JUNE 2013
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