Old body on later DCC chassis.

[LesXRN]

Hi folks.

After much debating with myself regarding my DC steam loco's, mostly Hornby tender drive & Bachmann split chassis, I thought that I would have a go at fitting a modern DCC fitted chassis to my Duchess class City of St Albans special edition loco.

I managed to find a complete DCC fitted loco chassis, the decoder is fitted to said chassis so I'm not sure which version it would be. But for £85 I thought it was a bargain. The cylinders are black with LMS lining .

As for the tender, I have found a suitable chassis from a loco drive model, hopefully it has pickups.

The big test will be when I try to put the loco & tender bodies onto the chassis. I'm sure it's worth a go.

Has anyone else tried this at all and if so, how did it go?

Cheers and I'll keep you posted.

[Brew Man]

Good luck with that. The chances of a fit are small to non-existent. The two will have different tooling. Admittedly the split chassis models are a bit more challenging to convert to DCC but the other are fairly straight forward. You can either fit a socket or hard wire a decoder in. A socket is preferable as it allows more flexibility.

[LesXRN]

Thanks Brew Man.

I won't be doing that mod to the Bachmanns as I don't think it's worth it.

However, I would have thought that there wouldn't be too much difference between the older and newer Hornby Duchess bodies internally to be honest. I guess I will find out.

Cheers. Les.

[Bulleidboy]

Sometime ago I bought a DCC Rebuilt Merchant Navy chassis, a non-DCC body would not fit. It may have done with some serious butchery. I ended up buying a late DCC body, and it went straight on. Although I did not try it, I would assume a late body would fit onto an early non-DCC chassis. There is more room in the later DCC bodies. The cost of a DCC chassis, body and tender worked out about the same as buying a complete loco - at the time about £95.00.

[ColinB]

I have done this with virtually all my old tender drive models. Yes the Duchess fits perfectly. The old unbuilt West Country/ Battle of Britains don't. The rebuilt Merchant Navy ones will fit but generally you have to move the DCC decoder to the tender as the chassis weight holder comes back too far. You can remove a bit as Hornby did when they did the conversion but much easier to just put the decoder in the tender. Very early A4s you need to make up a plastic post on the front of the body as on the early ones the front clips onto the valve gear, I did it with plastercard and a captive m2 sleeve bought from China. On all the tender driven A4s you need to make a rear clip for the chassis to fit into, a thin piece of plastercard across the back works. The tender driven Flying Scotsman and A3s you need to machine away the back of the loco below the cab as the tab on the back of the chassis is smaller. The Duchess is the easy one it should fit perfectly, it did on all mine. I even found buying the tender driven ones was a cheap source of bodies. So yes they do fit. Same applies to the 0-6-0 locos from the 80's.

[LesXRN]

Thanks ColinB, that's very reassuring regarding the Duchess. I particularly wanted to convert the City of St Albans model as it's a limited edition.

I just need to get myself over to the UK to collect all of my new bits and bobs, I get them posted to my daughter so I don't get hammered with postal import duties.

Cheers. Les.

[LesXRN]

An update on this.

I have now fitted modern DCC ready chassis to both an old tender drive Duchess 'City of St Albans' & a Princess 'Princess Helena Victoria'.

The Princess body was a perfect fit, whereas the Duchess needed a very tiny piece shaved from under the side of the cab.

The later tenders have pickups too, so that's another bonus.

They are now both Zimo DCC sound fitted and what's more realistic for me is that the cube speakers fit at the front of the chassis under the chimneys. I drilled through the chimney holes as they were blanked off.

To be honest, I'm really pleased with the results.

[ColinB]

So what did you do with the City of Albans tender as I imagine you must have used the original tender top to match the colour. As you said the tenders have pickups I assume you used a later tender bottom.

[LesXRN]

Hi Colin.

Yes, I found 2 dcc type tender chassis on the bay, one for each loco.

They run a treat and I've sorted the chuff rate today for the added realism.

Cheers. Les.