Model Railways and Railway Related Things.

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A waggon made from a modified Triang cast metal coach bogie with Romford 10.5mm wheels slid onto the Triang axles with cuts of drinks straw to act as spacers... And the body is rusty baked bean tin folded so it elimintes sharp edges. It has real rust!

A bit more work done... I am mking it up as I go along!

Re 'Railway Related Things' - do the Inter-City 125 trains still run between London Paddington and South Wales? I was a bit obsessed with these in the mid-late 1970s, and travelled on them as much as I could. In that era it was still possible to do so when British Rail walk-on fares were affordable for ordinary people. I hate the modern privatized rail system!! !!

About a month ago the London Paddington to Swansea service is no longer served by HST's. I had a horrible moment when I heard it as it hit me hard and sudden... It is a whole era that has come to an end.
I have a few model HST's but am looking to sell them as I am concentrating on 7mm narrow gauge instead.

Sad to hear about the demise of the HST service. First time I ever travelled on a 125 was in the summer of 1977 - it did the Paddington-Swindon run (77 miles, if I remember correctly) in 45 minutes. That's probably still an impressive performance even by today's standards, whatever they are.

What sort of trains are now serving the Paddington-Swansea route?

I don't know a lot about the new ones except they run on overhead electric or from batteries. The line has now been part electrified and they plan to reach Cardiff with overhead wires, but they have been having problems with getting the overhead through some of the tunnels, hence the delay. I habe heard the new trains have had teething problems, but in a way, any new trains will have the odd issue.

Now bear in mind that as I write this, the following locomotive is not finished, but I will explain the lengthy project so far...

A few years ago I purchased this along with the "Toby The Tram" donor locomotive.

Take a good look at the wheels and the height and position of the locomotive bonnet. You may find this useful as a guide to the work and alterations I have done to my model as I have been building the kit.

Well. You know me. I love to change things... I saw a Lima class 09 I had which had a chassis that I thought would suit the kit better, so what started out as a "That may fit" ended up being a major and delicate operation!

So the first plan was to take the Lima chassis and start to make the kit fit the chassis, along with making the chassis fit the kit!
I began to cut out a larger hole in the footplate.







Also, as my layout has sharp curves, I filed off the flanges from the centre wheels which involved carefully removing them and rotating them in the lathe where I then used a small handfile to remove the flanges. Note the difference between this chassis and the wheels and chassis i tended for the kit.

Now the intended chassis for this kit has a more centrally mounted slightly smaller motor which protrudes into the cab. I decided that I could use this chassis backwards so the motor is at the front, and I should have just enough room to add most of the weight which sits next to the motor which is not in the photos above. But my first job aas to line up the body parts and work out how they would fit. This is not easy, as it was a case where the motor needed to be slightly cut down, the body parts needed reaming out and even the front grill had to be worked on to allow it all to go together. The top of the bonnet was reversed so the higher part would make room for the top of the motor to fit after being reamed out... A delicate operation done by mounting a reaming bit in my mini pillar drill and using the drill stop as a way to ensure I did not cut too much depth.. I ended up with a very thin bonnet. Even then the whole bonnet, and later the whole cab had to have added height. This was done via glueing on some plasticard. The whole operation was a major undertaking. Even the heavy weight had to be cut in half so it would not be too high and will not protrude into the cab.

Here are the first part being worked. The front grill which started out as a solid thick piece of resin...







I did start to make the grill very thin and see through, but it was a bit too delicate and also the motors tight fit would mean it would push against it. So I opened up the grill entirely and glued in some cloth which gave a grill like effect.





The advantage of using the cloth is that it is flexible.

The white parts are the plasticard which adds height to the bonnet so the motor will fit.

Chassis shortened. Bufferbeams glued into place.



New tabs made from plasticard to support the new chassis. Front steps glued into position.





And rear steps... All steps were later reworked to fit my restricted loading gauge.

Bonnet assembly glued together and the bon et sides were thinned out to allow room for the motor....

I noticed that the motor had jammed up. I took it apart and found a small offcut of metal paperclip had lodged its way inside which prevented the armature from turning. While I had the motor apart, I gave the commutator a clean and put it all back together. This also involved soldering the wires back as they had come loose.

The motor just fits under the bonnet. It is quite a close fit to be honest. I was very carefully reaming out and shaving off the excess plastic from the top of the motor housing. I daren't take too much off incase there is nothing left to hold the motor or the parts in place. I was almost at the stage of thinking it would not work, but fortunately all the effort was rewarded with a tight fit.



The problem now though, is that as I've raised the height of the bonnet, the cab windows and the cab front sits too low, as can be seen by this test fitting to see if it all goes together.



Another issue which I had to deal with (As I didn't want the motor or the weight to protrude into the cab) was to cut the weight down a bit to get it to fit, and I also had to shift the bonnet back slightly from the front of the locomotive as it would not really fit in its intended forward position.



To remedy the height of the cab, and to close off the big gap in the floor where the origional motor from the intended chassis should have fit, I cut and shaped a new plasticard floor to fit over the old floor around the cab area.Therefore I was able to raise the cab windows to fit with the bonnet. (Notice how the weight is now a snug fit behind the motor).






I also discovered that the cab steps were too wide for my loading gauge, so work was done to reduce the width of the steps. (See earlier photos to compare). Part of the issue was that once the steps were thinned out, they were a little brittle, so to remedy this, I glued on wire from a paperclip to the back of the rear steps and had the wiee protruding upwards so it fit into drilled holes in the underside of the locomotive footplate. (The footplate is the flat structure which forms the cab floor and the loco floor(In other words, the top of the locomotive chassis)).





This way the rear steps (Which were the weak point as the front steps are more secure by design) were both glued on by the wire loop and the resin structure of the steps themselves.

A new cab under console piece was formed out of plasticard to hide the motor and the weight from view. On real locomotives, there would be a gap here to allow room for ones legs to fit under the dashboard, but I don't have room for this, so it will have to do!



Thoughts also went towards a method to attach the chassis to the body. Now the front of the chassis I had already made slots so the front of the chassis could slide in. The rear needed a way to hold things together. A hole was drilled through both the chassis and the footplate ready to take a simple nut and bolt. I also fitted the cab sides, and I started painting the internal parts of the cab while I was at it.

Bear in mind that due to the various alterations needed to make things work, much of the kit did not follow the proper kit instructions. For example, the cab sides needed to be altered to line up better with the rear ladders etc... Most of the kit so far has had to be adjusted in many ways!

Here is another view. It's coming along nicely now!

So with thw cab interior painted, thoughts came to the cab controls. As I have spent a few years working on diesel hydraulic railcars known as DMU's, I do have a rough idea of what is needed even if I may not be 100% accurate. I started with the kit instructions and with a few alterations, I came up with this... First before painting and trimming...



Next after trimming the pins to represent switches, and after painting some of the small details...