Model Railway Forum

I had a break from railway modelling for some 20+ years after a move of house, but have been back in the hobby now for coming up tp two years. About 18 months ago I started work on a new layout which I originally intended to be DC, but having seen how far DCC had progressed in the intervening years since I was last active, this is the route I eventually settled on to go.

My original thoughts with regard to going DC was heavily influenced by the fact that I had close to 30 locomotives from the old days, the majority of which would be difficult to convert to DCC (thank you Bachmann split chassis).

One locomotive I was able to convert was a Bachmann Class 42 diesel-hydraulic. This particular model was always a superb and smooth runner, no doubt thanks to its all wheel pickups, all wheel drive and hefty flywheel on the motor. However, compared to modern locomotives it's not particularly well detailed, but for me its running characteristics made up for this.

One area that I did want to change though was the addition of lights. With DC forward and reverse is track relative. With DCC it becomes loco relative and, at a distance, I was struggling to tell the difference between the front and back of the Warship.

Installation of lights wasn't as straightforward as I originally hoped for due to the lack of space between the inside fascia of the body shell and parts of the metal chassis. I resolved this by filing part of the metal chassis away, which just left enough room to install a pair of 3mm LEDs at each end.

As 3mm would be way over scale for lights on this engine, the LEDs do not extend to the exterior of the fascia. Having removed the original painted 'lights' I enlarged the holes to 1.5mm which allowed me to use a very short length of fibre optic cable between the LED and the exterior of the body shell.

If the original plastic painted 'lights' were truly to scale, then even 1.5mm is slightly over scale, but not so oversized that they are really obvious. Ultimately I think the final effect was well and truly worth the effort, and forward and reverse are now easily distinguishable.







*mod note* I don't think your host liked you linking the images like that, as they wouldn't display. I've reuploaded them to postimg and linked them to your post. SD.

They look good to me. I always liked the Warships.

Thank you.

I need to straighten that buffer, and I still have the buffer beam detail to add, but I think it will be fine when all done.

Looks good to me.

Just as a side note, I used individual LEDs and had to provide appropriate resistors, which were different values for the red and white. If anyone is contemplating a similar project, I'd be happy to provide a diagram showing how it was all wired.

I carried out a similar modification and took it a step further by fitting an ESU 21 pin adaptor board and sound. Also fitted EE fans and roof grill.


Mike

That's interesting to note Mike. Mine is sound fitted, but I didn't go the extra step with the fans and grill.

I have one of those locos in B.R. blue with small yellow panel round the headcode boxes. They run so smothly and quietly, that even though the loco was not in the timeframe of what I was modelling at the time, I kept it! (I was modelling early 1980's when this loco dates from a decade earlier).
For a little while my youngest brother had it as I gave it to him, but he hardly ran his locos, and swapped them with me for Scalextric if I remeber, as he decided he didn't want his trains.
(He used to run trains on my layout when very young. Surprizing at the age of two and a half, he could control the entire layout which involved many DC track sections and 46 solenoid points and he would sit in one control panel area and I in the other... I had indicator lights to show who was controlling which track section and mimic diagrams of the layout so it was easy to work out. He took to it so natrually that the two of us were running trains with no accidents or conflicting movements. I was impressed as the layout was rather complex and involved the constant holding trains to let others clear junctions...
I honestly don't think he would have been able to control trains in the same way when I later went to DCC. (I had taken down the layout by the time I went into DCC as I changed bedrooms, but yes.Those class 42's are lovely. Shame Bachmann didn't make the class 43 larger Warships as well! Think someone did make them eventually or propose to make them?)