Paul's workbench

[nzpaul]

Hi All
This is probably the least interesting thing to write about for many but.....a friend asked me to fit a DCC decoder into an old Hornby "Mallard" and against my better judgement I said yes .
The real problem with the old tender drives is a lack of pickups, only 2 contact points to each rail, so before any thought of fitting a decoder can be entertained I needed to improve the collection of the ergs.
As the photo shows I have fitted some vero board pads to the chassis top and made some very long/springy pickups that add only minimal resistance to the chassis, don't want to load up the drive any more than necessary.

Next I made up a contact wiper on the draw bar to transmit power to the tender which has a brass pad mounted next to the existing pin.

These extra pickups improved thing no end, loco now running quite reliably over dead frog points and less than shiny track.
The decoder then fitted to the tender and programmed to give a reasonable slow start speed and less than light speed top end

Moving on to my next project, I think this NBR thing is getting out of hand...I've been after a J36 for quite a while and managed to find one in Wellington of all places. It was already built, quite some time ago I think, it was fitted with the old style Romford wheel (the ones without the N/S tyre on one side) and a fairly Michael Rodent drive line. The builder had also decided to fit brass bearings to the white metal chassis (why ?????, white metal pretty good as a bearing) making proper alignment of the axles interesting.
A few hours of disassembly and then rework and it has nice new Markits 5' (not the right ones but all I had) wheels and a Comet GB5 50:1 gearbox and Mahsima 1024 motor, performance is promising so far.

Cheers
Paul

[nzpaul]

HI All
As rewarding as building locomotives can be, especially when they run well, I find them a little bit of a fiddle, and they usually take me a number of months to complete. So, I thought I'd go back to building some coaches for a while which I find both a lot more relaxing and just as rewarding.
As usual, I've started with some of the shorty Hornby Gresleys with the aim of building an articulated twin set. I have very limited reference material but found a good number of photos on Gostude's Ebay store of a set that could be approximated from the Hornby start point. Also, if you look carefully, there's a couple of sets roaming around on Mr Kings Youtube clips.
Photos show today's work. It doesn't look much, but to get to this point I've had to move the trussing outwards by 7mm and relocate the battery boxes as well as the obvious shortening.

I've also continued mucking about with teak effect on the off-cuts from these two with some interesting results, I'll share the best end result here when I've settled on the best outcome.

Cheers
Paul

[manna]

G'day Gents

Like the conversion, really looks the part. Hmmmm, I wonder.

manna

[nzpaul]

Thanks Manna

. Hmmmm, I wonder.

manna

Yeeeeessssss??????? that's a cliff hanger......what's brewing in the grey matter?

[manna]

G'day Gents

Wouldn't mind one ( two ) of them myself, something a little different.

manna

[Atso]

That looks like the start of a nice articulated pair Paul!

[earlswood nob]

Good day everyone

I like the look of the artic pair.

I don't think that the LNER articulated corridor coaches, but who looks that close?

I enjoy cutting-and-shutting coaches.

I am currently attempting a Hertford Quad from Kirk coaches. The easy bit is producing the two short central coaches and the end which is a basic 51'1 third. The brake end is more difficult, needing a shortened 51'1 passenger section from a 4 comp brake married to a section of a 51'1 pigeon van. The pigeon van will need seven cuts and rearrangement of the pieces.
I will post my attempt when I complete it.

Earlswood nob

[jwealleans]

The LNER produced steel artic gangwayed twins and teak gangwayed sleeper pairs. That looks much more like the GN twins Gresley built, if you overlook the vents instead of droplights over the doors. There were several diagrams, I've built this D 218CC for Grantham.

[earlswood nob]

Hello all

Thanks for the info JW.

AFAIK there were only three sleeper twins.

I hadn't realised there were gangwayed artic for normal service. I must consult my books more often, but it's difficult to find the time as I keep my stock of Yeadons and green books next to my favorite chair.

Earlswood nob

[Atlantic 3279]

The cut and shut Hornby artic appears to have worked out rather awkwardly on the corridor side. More pleasing on the compartment side perhaps?

28/09/17 this is the opposite of what I meant to say, please see second post below.....

[nzpaul]

The cut and shut Hornby artic appears to have worked out rather awkwardly on the corridor side. More pleasing on the compartment side perhaps?

I even moved a door and window to make that side look better . I was thinking the compartment side was the uglier, either way you've all been very kind not to point out that the whole thing is ar@#e about face. The only prototype photo I have of anything similar is in the LNER coaches book showing a 1913 built corridor composite with fox bogies and truss rod frames, very similar to JW's photo above with different bogies and the brake end on the left when viewing the corridor side.
I'm hoping my new teaking method will hide all evil and distract ones eyes from the wrongdoing, I can only hope.....

Cheers
Paul

[Atlantic 3279]

I shouldn't type when tired. Please reverse my references to compartment and corridor sides. Doh!

[jwealleans]

Just to lob a small charge into that discussion, the brake is a BTO (some had a pantry added) so there is no compartment side.

[earlswood nob]

Good morning all

I studied Michael Harris's book under the midnight oil and spotted Diag304 artic twin.

There was even a pic of the twin.

Earlswood nob

[Atlantic 3279]

If my now completely fried brain still has a memory, that sounds like a diagram number for one of the second series of flush steel panelled artic twins, those for the GC section, with painted-on "teak" panelling.