What's on your workbench?

[Fazy]

the bachmann 20,24,25s are excellent runners and even though the models are getting on a bit they are a fine addition to a layout.

on my work bench a little project on the go at the moment much easier the the last one is the L&YR class 23. A class I have to say is a bit of a surprise it’s not already in some RTR range

[atom3624]

Having purchased a light kit for the new-to-me super detail Hornby EWS 08 shunter, I placed the original favourite, the 'super weathered, super detailed' Hornby BR blue 08 shunter earlier this week, to find ... it's stuffed - finally worn out the motor!

No surprise as this has lights fitted and looks great circulating .... slowly .... for hours and hours! This it had done many times over.

Received a new replacement motor - found one reasonably priced, many are trying to rip you off - checked the polarity (trial and error for me!), soldered up, and assembled to find ... very reluctant to turn - this after having tested the motor was perfect - it is!

On closer inspection, the Hornby motor cradle was catching the flywheel restricting rotation. Some 'gentle persuasion' seems to have permanently resolved this.

One fath with the Hornby 08's is having to remove / replace the front under buffer tanks to access the 2 screws at the front (2 more at the rear), but all seems very well now.

It seems to circulate a little better than the EWS one!!

Very happy 'old blue' is back.

Stickswipe's going to prepare a light kit for my Bachmann 08 - says it's MORE complicated than the one in the Hornby locomotive and wants me to look at the installation first before we go ahead - very, very professional attitude Jason.

Al.

[atom3624]

Here she is in action:

Also fitted a lighting kit to the recently purchased Class 56 083. Lights working well.

Al.

[atom3624]

Work has started on the EWS 08 super detail.

I had to remain 'patient and persistent' to remove the cab from the body - slides off quite easily when you know how, but if it's the 1st time since the model was made, .... it was a tad reluctant! No damage.

Now the drilling commences (for optical fibres to transmit the lighting from the Stickswipe pods.

Al.

[508006]

Currently I have a union pacific big boy locomotive project slowly in the making, it uses the locomotive body from the plastic kit available in model shops but for the drive mechanism I am using 2 x Hornby 8F locomotive drive chassis wired together although it runs with 1 chassis powered up at the moment, hopefully by tonight it should have both chassis providing motor driven traction.

There is a big of an oversized gap between the 2 chassis at the moment which does allow the loco to traverse the curved tracks of peco turnouts aswell as fixed radius and flexible track curves, however, the oversized gap does result in the leading end of the 1st chassis which is currently the undriven chassis to protrude further out from the smoke box as it should do but to be honest I can live with it and even if it is incorrect and looks completely wrong I have no problem with it as it gives me a union pacific locomotive for a lot less money than a brand new model or 1 off ebay which is a rare sight.

I ordered some spares from New Modellers Shop yesterday which arrived this morning, the spares consisted of 1 x X4026 motor, 1 x X8013 Class 92 Pantograph and 1 x X9178 Fowler 2-6-4 tank locomotive valve gear for 1 of my V2 projects..

The X4026 motor will be fitted to a loco which was originally a Railroad Gresley A1 but has been converted into a fictional 4-8-0 tender locomotive carrying the number 60703, the current motor fitted in this locomotive will be removed and be fitted to the big boy project until it can be replaced.

[atom3624]

That sounds quite a project!!

Once things start advancing it'll be nice to see some photos of that Big Boy.

Al.

[What About The Bee]

Hi 508006

I understand wanting to build this yourself. Perhaps you are unaware that Hornby carries a Big Boy?

https://www.hornbyhobbies.com/products/big-boy-4014-steam-heritage-edition-fuel-tender-hr2884

Its the old Rivvarosi Model, acquired by Hornby. US store.

Bee

[508006]

I appreciate your suggestion about the hornby big boy locomotive, however, the biggest hurdle is the price and unfortunately I cannot afford the money they ask for a model of a great locomotive or any of the other brand new locomotives hornby offer at the moment.

As it stands now, the latest update is that the big boy locomotive now has both chassis motored & wired up and has also been tested with bith chassis driving.

The tests yielded the results that both motors do power the loco and it has hauled 7 mk1 coaches ( completely wrong I know but I do not own any american stock for it to haul ) but the other result is that the body is currently sitting too low as the motor on the leading chassis catches the body and brings on a full derailment in a matter of seconds.

The next test I plan to do will be to see if the big boy will start a train of EWS 4 wheel wagons, some of which were glued together 2 years ago to make longer bogie fitted wagons, they are all loaded and some do have quite a fair weight to them as I added lead strips or pieces into the load area as they were very light when I purchased them and derailed very easily.

Another planned test at some point will be 10 x Bachmann maroon mk1s, these are a little more heavier than 10 x Hornby mk1s and should be another adequate test for the loco but before these tests begin, the remedial work needs doing in order to negate the derailments.

[ellocoloco]

@508006

Likewise interested to see pictures of your Big Boy project.

Is your model articulated like the real locomotive or the existing models? As far as I understand, almost all the RTR models of the Big Boys and other Mallets are mechanically laid out like a diesel - a central motor driving to the two bogies. These are both articulated in model form to allow for train set curves. This is quite different to the real locomotive where the rear drive unit is fixed inline with the boiler and the leading drivers pivot in front of the rear cylinders and are supported by a slide bearing below the smokebox.

How are you articulating yours? I understand what you say about the motor catching the body as it swings. It might be better to have just one unit powered or lead the drive from one motor to the two sets of drivers.

It will be a fun project! sunglasses

[atom3624]

I always think of the loading gauge required for these things - the front overhang must have been pretty big!!

There's a project for the manufacturers. There's talk of the Coronation, then the P2 being the 'most powerful British steam locomotive'.

Surely it was the LNER U1? Hornby love 'doing things LNER' ....

Al.

[508006]

My loco is based on the latter where the rear driving chassis is fixed inline with the boiler and only the leading chassis pivots when taking curved track.

In reference to how they are connected I have used a hornby locomotive drawbar into which I bent a little U shape to bring them closer together and in turn reduce how much of the leading chassis protrudes out past the smoke box.

The wires connecting the motors look like a load of spaghetti but I managed to make my own pickups and utilise the original point of the chassis where the wires pass through from the pickups to the motors on both of them.

The wiring between the motors consists of 3 dark green wires for 1 side of the pickups and 1 dark green + 2 light green wires for the other side, fortunately having 2 light wires and 1 dark green wire for the other side helped me to workout which way round they had to be connected together and results in 6 - 8 wires being cramped into a small space in an attempt to hide them, fortunately it worked.

To try and cure the pivoting issue, I did try to melt some of the plastic within the boiler to give more room but this definitely did not work. On occasion I have managed to use my DIY file and have been able to create enough space for motors to fit.

I have to consider that using this idea might result in the boiler ending up too this and at high risk of damage, however, the body does need to be raised up a bit because when I have watched a couple of videos on the smt mainline youtube channel which feature Rivarossi big boy locomotives, I have noticed that both sets of driving wheels are fully visible, on my loco, the rear set are almost playing hide and seek which set me to thinking the body is too low.

As a final part of thid update, I mentioned before that a hotnby locomotive drawbar is used for pivoting of the leading driving chassis, I used a computer screw to secure the drawbar to the rear of the leading chassis at the original drawbar fixing point and used an ordinary self tapping screw through the fixing point above where the leading pony wheels would be on te 2-8-0 chassis, this screw passes through 3 layers of plasticard and is fixed in place utilising a small section of the plastic boiler.

I will attempt to provide photos at some point hoping that I don't have the same problems I have had before now

[508006]

Here is the 1st picture of my big boy project, hopefully I can add another below

This picture shows the chassis and pickup arrangement

[atom3624]

Looking interesting, but going to be fun to make it fit!

Good luck - great to see projects underway.

Al.

[508006]

It's going to be a long project I think m, a lit of remedial work to be done.

The tender is not going to be easy, I know it sits on pullman coach bogies at the moment which I fitted with 2 rail pickups to assist the 2 drive chassis but when the original kit chassis had its axlebox mouldings in place, I did try to fit metal hornby wheels to it but only succeeded in snapping the mouldings.

With my current curved track sections, I am not sure a 7 or 9 axle tender with several axles fixed will traverse the curved sections without derailments so this is going to require some thoughts, trials and tests of ideas and as I want to have tender fitted pickups aswell it is possible that fitting them onto a chassis with 7 or 9 axles could be very awkward if not impossible.

If anyone has any suggestions on how to achieve this I would be happy to read them.

[atom3624]

Need to consider the Bachmann floating axle in Cartazzi / pony truck arrangement - might help?

Might a non-powered Hornby class 40 bogie help?

Al.

[508006]

Funny enough I have bogies from a Bachmann class 40 available for use, they had to be removed from the chassis of the 40 as the mountings had disintegrated resulting in the bogies dropping out of the loco chassis whenever I handled it.

Can I ask please if I would Ineed to modify them for the big boy tender before attempting to fit them and what modifications will they need ?

[Rana Temporia]

You could copy some of the earlier manufacturers and go for some of the wheels being fully flangeless or cut/file the flange off the bottom of some wheels and fix them in place to prevent turning. OK it’s not a perfect solution but would people see them turning anyway even if you went for a fully functional wheelbase? If they are disc wheels it’s not easy to tell if they are turning or not.

[508006]

The latest on my big boy project is that I have completely stripped the Bachmann class 40 bogies and removed the gearing between the driving axles as they would not be needed on the tender.

The thing I found is that the spacing between the wheels would mean that the tender could only have 5 axles, this is because the length of both drive mouldings is longer than the tender and chassis. I am wondering whether I still have the drive mouldings from a Bachmann class 37 which are shorter than those on the 40 and would allow 6 axles to just about fit under the tender.

The other option failing the finding of the Bachmann class 37 bogies that I have is to use the unpowered 3 axle metal bogie parts from hornby locomotives assuming I can find them, the only part to figure out then will be the best way to secure the axles in place so that they don't drop out every time the loco is serviced.

The leading drive chassis on the loco now has both chassis driving and also had 2 pieces of 40 thou plasticard added at the pivot point of the loco and under the cab, this has very nicely raised the loco body up so that it almost matches the height of the top of the tender, however, the leading chassis catches the body.

It looks like I will have to find longer screws than those I am currently using to secure the chassis to the body and raise the body again in the hope that the pivoting issue will finally be resolved.

That's the news up to now for my big boy project and I still invite any comments and suggestions on the best ways to progress through the build and complete it.

An idea that I would also like to get feedback on is that I could buy another big boy kit which would yield the parts I need, the idea here being to build around the motor ( once new hornby valve gear and cylinders have been acquired and fitted to both chassis ) and hopefully the parts once fitted to the chassis will line up with the body giving me a union pacific big boy locomotive for a lot less than brand new price.

[atom3624]

Unlike another manufacturer, Bachmann have plenty of new spare parts available:

https://bachmann-spares.co.uk/category/1-branchline-diesel-parts/class37/chassis?page=7

Bogies, if required.

Al.

[Rana Temporia]

Waiting for the rain to stop I got a few ‘projects’ out to make a dint in them, including sorting a loco body that Royal Mail squashed, fixing some old Tri-ang shortie coaches and filling a couple of boilers with some lead I managed to acquire from someone at work. In the process I managed to burst a tube of superglue and have basically no feeling in my fingertips as they are al covered in it. luckily I didn’t get any on the models but have ruined the bit of hardboard I was using as a working space ☹️

[Rana Temporia]

I was going through a box of items to throw away/fix or sell on and came across two Tri-ang shortie coaches that had warped slightly as usual but which could possibly be recovered.

The main problem seemed to be with the sides bowing in so I cut some square plastic rod to fit within the ends of the coaches and used them to force the sides out so that they were approximately parallel, first problem was that the glazing wouldn't fit so i cut the central part out, cleaned it and just put the sides in. I then used the square rod to hold the tops of the glazing in place as well as spagging the sides out, the bottom of the glazing was held by the original pegs in the bottom of the coach. I thin superglued everything in place, so far i haven't had the 'white mist'.

I then filled the bottom of the rooves with superglue and G clamped everything. So far I now have two useable coaches which will look nice behind one of my Tri-ang 0-6-0 clockwork saddle tanks. I might change the wheels using pin point bearings but they are only 10mm diameter.

If they break in future they will end up in the bin but for the moment it seems to have worked. I am not sure if hot water works with cellulose acetate plastic.

[atom3624]

I've a few locomotives in various states of disrepair.

One is one of my Bachmann 25's - been like that for a few months, so with no record system, didn't really know what it was.

Generally, it'll be there's a good clean, lube, reassemble required, but possibly it was the motor.

Checked, and seemed to run just fine, including when I gave some 'resistance' - my finger gently against one of the flywheels.

There were a couple of wires disconnected, needing to be soldered. All resoldered, brief test, and comparison with other 25's - all seems fine. Good news - that's one less!

Al.

[threelink]

Hi RT. Nice work. In my experience hot water does not work on the old Triang cellulose acetate plastic.

[Rana Temporia]

Another one I did some work on over the weekend. It’s a ‘Nellie’ conversion to a neverwazza to go with my Garstang and Knott-End Railway ‘Blackpool’ so has had the exhauster pipe added that all their locos had, new safety valves etc. Putting proper handrails on has really made a difference to the look at the front end!

Only after priming did I realise that the funnel is different to the ‘Nellie’ next to it. The conversion is from a later green ‘27’ that got damaged in the post.

The G&KER locos were maroon with white/black/white lining so this will be finished off as and when I get time.

[Tony57]

Hi

On my work bench a couple of the new chassis I brought that have now had their couplings attached in total 4 short chassis will have HD couplings attached and 2 will be tension lock and 4 long ones will be tension lock and 2 will have HD type couplings also a Wrenn N2 with a HD type coupling