Model Railway Forum

Hi Everyone

Thought I finally begin my own workbench / project thread.

I have had a number of projets going on at various points since I joined this excellent forum which have included things like my O Gauge Hachette A3 which was supposed to be modelled as the Scotsman but as everybody model's Scotsman in 1 of it's many guises I selected 60077 as its number ( nameplates still to be sourced and fitted eventually. Other projects lately were my 2 × 4 coach class 508 units and my union pacific big boy locomotive which is still requiring a number of fittings to be completed, however, progress has recently been made since I posted a picture of it not long after I joined the forum.




This picture was taken this morning after some late night work fitting the valve gear onto the non pivoting rear drive unit which is currently suffering from a couple of minor issues.

The 1st issue is the gearing :

When I run it, the 3rd driving axle seems to be getting pushed downwards which in turn, lifts the other wheels off the track. I did notice that there could be some wear on the chassis where 1 of the intermediate gears could possibly be moving in a longitudinal direction, because where the axle goes through the chassis, it looks as though where the chassis block was drilled for the gears during production, the drilled area has become slightly elongated although I do have a possible idea to fix it and thus prevent any longitudinal movement.

The other issue is the pickups :

When I started building the loco, I made my own pickups for power collection and on the leading drive unit these work great but on the rear unit, all is not well.

I use albion alloys PB1 phosphor bronze pickup strip when making my home made pickups but at the time I was building them for the loco, I only had enough to do 4 pickups ( 1 for each pair of wheels with 2 pickup strips per side ). Once the individual sets of pickups are in place, additional strip is then soldered between the front and rear pickup pairs, however, at the time I did not have any strip left for this part and ended up using 1 mm brass wire which I must admit, it works well but it doesn't allow much in the way of adjustments to be made and now, of all things, the pickups have started to fall apart, detach from the rear chassis and get very badly snagged when it runs over turnouts so I will be looking at alternatives for arranging the pickups on this drive unit and hopefully prevent any further issues.

Other projects alongside those mentioned above have included 2 BR Blue class 25 locos fitted with cd motors, traction tyred wheels replaced by plain wheels with the gear moulding on the back and extra pickps + weightto improve performance although some work is still needed.

I have also purchased and repowered using hornby motor bogies, 4 × class 37 locomotives ( both hornby and lima versions including the ringfield motor version of 37130 in BR Blue ). 3 of these remain as class 37s while 4th was modified around the cabs where the windows were moved forwards to just behind the yellow area on the nose ends, some improvisation to fill in where the body was cut for the modifications to be made.

I filled the gaps in with plasticard but the result was far from perfect as the plasticard had to be shaped to fit the body, big problem here, the plastic used by lima does not like glue, hence where the top of the body goes up and over for the roof, the plasticard has sloped inwards a bit and some creative thinking is going to be necessary for the body to be finished properly.

It was built as my interpretation of what a class 38 locomotive could have looked like but would probably look more akin to the lms 10000 / 10001 locomotives, although for my version, it was given the number 38001 based on had they been built the way I have done mine.
I'm not sure if I have a picture of it as I am very hesitant to show it in case of any negative comments about it, I would feel better posting a picture of it once the filled in areas have been fully corrected as there is bodyside grill detail missing where the plasticard was used.

That's all for now and I hope to bring further updates soon.

If you enjoyed reading this opening post, please let me know and I will look at doing more in due course as projects and repairs / loco maintenance progress.

Always interested in posts like this.

Certainly interested in more posts and even more pictures. The number of negative comments will be few and therefore can be ignored.

More pictures would be great!

Hi Everyone

As requested, here are some more pictures.

1st is the class 508 units which currently have no seating fitted as these are I believe, not readily available and have to be self made.

The platform section closest to the camera was my 1st attempt at using balsa wood to build my own platforms and replace the existing hornby platforms as I could no longer justify paying around £5 per piece. Since this picture was taken, the balsa wood section has had black crafting foam trimmed from an A3 sized sheet glued to the visible surface and looks 100 times better than it did in this pic.

2nd is 1 of my Bachmann Peppercorn class A1 locomotives which was an ebay purchase. It came with a decoder fitted but that was removed and later sent to 1 of our members in france. The loco itself required a bit of a mechanism clean up and oil / grease but runs well.

3rd is a Bachmann class A4 ( the dreaded split chassis version ). It had 2 busted axles when it arrived, the gear axle was perfect and did not need replacing. After cleaning up the chassis and some oil and grease, the loco is a welcome addition to my fleet and runs very well.

Pictures 4 & 5 are of my Hachette A3 which I mentioned in yesterday's posting, unfortunately due to space limiat home, the most I can do to give it a run is set up some old wardrobe boards with O Gauge track attached and run it back and forth just keep everything working. The loco requires some srive mech modifications as when I fitted the motor, the only way I could get it to drive was by fixing it to the chassis, however, this makes it a very noisy runner due to the plastic boiler amplifying the sound of the motor.

Pic 6 is my interpretation of an LNER P1 albeit with the cyliders connecting to the 3rd driving axle instead of the 2nd as it should be. If I'm right and can anybody please help me with this, I think the chassis it requires is for an LNER O2/3 locomotive but as it is, it has the look of a powerful locomotive.

Finally for anybody who hasn't seen or used these yet, I have included a picture of the X04 replacement motor available from peters spares. These are the best thing I have purchased motor wise as I have revived a triang hornby ivatt 2-6-2 tank locomotive and 2 oldet class 08 diesel shunters which I have made into sn unusual version of what could have been a 4th class 13 with 2 cabs but both facing outwards.

Other locomotives I have used these motors include a 22XX GWR 0-6-0 with a whitemetal body, at least 3 black 5 locomotives, roughly 6 ( possibly 7 ) Gresley A1 / A3 locomotives and a 1990s hornby A4. Except for the GWR 22XX, all the others were tender driven locomotives that have been converted to locomotive drive, all the motor internals from the tender motors were removed, the traction tyred wheels were replaced by wheels with the moulded gear on the back and metal tyres to allow extra pickups to be fitted. I will look through my gallery on my phone to see if I have pictures of these conversions and if not, I can open 1 of each up to show what I did if requested.

I forgot to mention yesterday that 1 of my Lima diesel purchases which was repowered with a hornby motor bogie is my br blue class 40 number 40001. The original motor was excessively noisy and no matter what I tried, I could not quieten it down.

I still have the original lima class 40 motor bogie with noisy motor but haven't decided what to do with it yet.

Also, if anybody wants to see my interpretation of a class 38 diesel, I will again look through my gallery as I am fairly sure I have a picture of it somewhere but it may take a few hours ( hopefully less ) to find it and I'll post it.

If anybody has any questions, please do ask and I will answer them if I can.

Also may I thank everyone who has commented up to now for the encouragement to continue, it is highly appreciated and most welcome.

Not much to do then.

If there's 1 thing I have learnt since I got my 1st train set when I was 6 id that there's always something still to be done.

An idea I have bedn thinking about is whether to make the station are as part terminus with neighbouring tracks running through other platforms or whether to model it as a full terminus with no through tracks

Another possible idea at the moment is to build an elevated structure above the main tracks for my class 508s along with a smallish fleet of dmu's to run seperate from my steamers.

My dmu fleet includes

Several class 110 sets ( some requiring parts ), 2 of the sets are in blue and grey and powered by Bachmann class 108 drive chassis ( the blue and grey units run as a 7 coach formation, 1 × 3 coach & 1 × 4 coach )
5 Lima class 117s
Dapol class 150
Dapol class 155 repowered using a hornby class 153 motor bogie
Bachmann class 158 ( head and tail lights removed as it runs in between the 150 and 155 units.

Not a bad sized fleet for commuter services but still a fair amount of thought, planning and hopefully, eventual construction of the elevated structure.

Still a lot to be done by s long shot with a lot more planning also to do

You certainly have plenty to do.

Most definitely

Hi Everyone

I managed to find this pic of my interpretation of what a class 38 locomotive could have looked like in order to distinguish them from class 37 locomotives.

The blank areas where there is no bodyside detail are just behind the cab doors at both ends.



As you can see from this side view, the repositioning of the cab front windows makes it look more like 1 of the LMS twin diesels 10000 / 10001.

The issues I described in my opening post regarding where the plasticard fill is sloping inwards can be easily seen. Where the plasticard was used, I had hoped to use some of the body from a hornby class 37 body to fill in the missing detail, however, a number of years ago I found a set of brass bodyside grill that could be fitted onto a class 37 or class 40 body but as I didn't own any class 40s at the time, a green 37 which I had numbered as D6701 after a repaint was chosen for this detailing work which necessitated the removal of the original plastic moulded grill detail thus leaving some unsightly gaps in the sides of the 37 body right at the point where the missing detail from my class 38 in the picture is needed in order for it to look as it should.