Atlantic's works: Portable layout - Scenic details next

[Atlantic 3279]

Separate study of something I don't have to bother to correct since I'll be using my previously made tender with my A2/2, study prompted by some odd findings when I was trying to check/compare buffer heights, has now revealed that Hornby's (needlessly redesigned) underframe for the visibly rivetted tender that came with Chamossaire, sits lower at the rear than it does at the front. It's enough of a slope to be visible in the right viewing conditions...

[S.A.C. Martin]

It’s really interesting to see the criticisms of Hornby’s A2/2 and A2/3s.

I find it difficult to reconcile that we’ve had these models produced under advice and that so many issues have appeared.

Of course, for my own part, I am content with my one example of Hornby’s no.500 and I might get another A2/3 in due course in LNER livery. I think they’re rather good, despite some comments elsewhere about the green used.

I picked up a Hornby A2/2 body shell second hand, and have a spare Bachman A2 chassis waiting for an appropriate body, so I might try and make something of that with the sole intention of backdating it to a reasonable portrayal of wartime condition.

I look forward to seeing how yours has come out Graeme. I think Hornby should have come to you really for advice on this, but hey ho.

[Hatfield Shed]

... Hornby's (needlessly redesigned) underframe for the visibly rivetted tender...

As a general note - not specific to this model - this 'needless activity' has been observable on Hornby OO product since Sanda Kan was closed. I suspect it is a function of the dozen (or thereabouts?) production shops Hornby appear to be using in China: each will have its own preferences, and it is probable that they on occasion 'steer' the Margate designers away from the rational re-use of existing designs available in CAD, and proven good technique. Recent surprise example, I was asked to look at a Q6: who thought a 20:1 reduction was a good plan for a slow goods, when the O1 with the same motor and 40:1 is so much superior in running performance? Hey-ho, just be grateful when they do get it right...

...two bob motor in a £200 r.r.p plus Loco...

Whatever the price may be - and it will be exceedingly modest, this is the killer attribute of mass production after all - so long as it is a good motor design, and manufactured to a suitable quality standard, there really isn't a problem. I haven't sampled all of Hornby's product since the move to China, but what I and friends have bought has proved consistently good: not a single motor failure in what are now 200 items between us, over the last twenty-one years.

I imagine from the motor description that the A2/3 has the 1833 five pole skew wound 'black can' used in most of the larger models while Hornby were with Sanda Kan, and continuing in use since; most recently among my own purchases seen in the W1. Straight up, I should like to see this motor in any Hornby product in which it will fit, a very sweet running unit. But then back in 'build it yourself' mode I always used the largest Mashima possible, so my bias is long established. Were it not for the superior control that Lenz and Zimo decoders exert I would plan on remotoring 'small motor' RTR: but the electronics so effectively level the playing field, that as seen running on track the same mechanism layouts with different motors fitted (thanks Bachmann!) are indistinguishable.

[mick b]

Two bob motor that Hornby want about £40 for one for a Q6. That is when by some miracle you can actually find any spares for any recent Hornby at all.

Ali Express had a virtually identical motor for the Q6 for under £5.00 plus postage, it just need the shaft removed on one end and the flywheel swopped over off the dead Hornby effort.

[Hatfield Shed]

Two bob motor that Hornby want about £40 for one for a Q6. That is when by some miracle you can actually find any spares for any recent Hornby at all...

Without a doubt, both overpriced and typically unavailable; it's not going to change any time soon, since it's coming up 20 years since my usual retailer succeeded in getting a listed Hornby spare sent. And it is not Hornby alone so afflicted (though credit where due, I gather from other's reports that Bachmann have recently improved on the spares availability front).

This was tolerable when the product was relatively cheap, making it economic to buy a low cost example as a 'breaker' for spares; which I have done for all 22 classes which were in 'squadron' use at my location, from all of Bachmann, Heljan, Hornby, Oxford. (Happily, way the most recent was Oxford's N7, and is the only one that is currently 'sensibly' priced.) If any of the 20-some 'occasionally/briefly seen' and 'off region visitor' locos fall over and spares are not readily available, 'que sera sera'.

[Atlantic 3279]

Some pictures of the outcome, so far, still wearing green wheels and yet to have the mercifully minor chips ans scrapes to the body's paint finish re-touched. Not, I think, the black Can motor that featured in the original "good" Chinese made loco-driven Gresley Pacifics.

Firstly a general view of the eventual fairly snug fit with front and rear of running plate at acceptable heights compared to my Bachmann-based Steady Aim A2/3, and Lord Presidents original tender on a level version of Hornby's underframe.

Closer

Fixings at cab end, at the third attempt, screws unfortunately projecting up the the cab floor now. Original fixing holes in my body, with hidden nuts cast into the raised sections of the cab floor are too far apart to accept screws passing through the chassis within Hornby's rather thick rear frames, Hornby's central rear fixing hole puts the screw protruding into the cab just at the bottom edge of the backhead, where no nut can be fitted, and after I drilled through to try to take advantage of the hole further to the rear (where the drawbar was screwed in) I found I needed a longer screw that I appeared to have available. Even my final two screws pierce the cab floor where no nuts can be fitted, but at least there are two of them to share the load on the threads in the resin floor.

Compelled to dismantle the chassis, I used the access to allow me to drill all-the way through the cylinders and insert some stiff 0.7mm brass wire projecting from the rear of the cylinders, level with the lower slidebars and immediately adjacent to the crossheads, denying those the chance to fall inwards out of their running slots. At the front the wires are cropped off neatly, flush with the cylinder faces. This arrangement is much neater than a vertical piece of wire I had initially used, fitted through a hole in the motion bracket and bearing on the inside face of the con-rod.

Chassis top and body underside as hacked around to allow mutual fitting. I've taken an originally solid section out entirely between the frames at the very front of the chassis, lowered the chassis top face a little just ahead of the cylinders, filed the top of the cylinder stretcher down (mercifully it didn't break or become hopelessly flexible), lower the chassis top immediately behind the cylinders to to accept the lap-joint that keeps my running plate in one-piece, and I've filed down the sides of the motor support (especially the un-necessary full-width front corners of it) Filing was done with the gear housing and axleways taped over to exclude swarf. The brass strap over the front boss of the motor is pinned into drilled holes in the sides of the chassis. I initially made it too tight a fit, then discovered that this was compressing the thin pad under the motor to such an extent that the gear mesh had nipped up and the motor would not turn under power!
(Added 28/3/23: To the rear of the body you can see that I've widened the slot in the running plate just ahead of the firebox, as well as taking material out of the base of the boiler and from its moulded straight/parallel inner faces to accommodate Hornby's fat motor. A 14mm wide Mashima Can would have done as good a job of powering the loco, far more discreetly. I've taken a broad trench out of the underside of the cab floor too, to accommodate the raised central portion of the Hornby chassis)

Under the front of the body I had to thin-down the lap joint in the running plate too, remove all of the central block that had fitted into the recess in the adapted Bachmann chassis in the area under the smokebox, almost break through the rear of the step in the running plate in the central area of the structure, and add a new block just behind the down-curve at the front. That block provides something for the front chassis fixing screw to grip, and fills in a space that would otherwise leave a view straight through the frames in this area.

Having made the running plate fit level and sufficiently low, it was then necessary to cut out a short groove in the underside above each expansion link to allow the top of the link to rock, and a bit more on one side to accept to top of the L-shaped reversing link.

There are a few more images of the nitty-gritty that may be worth adding later, but I am yet to re-size, crop and adjust their colours as necessary to suit display on here.

[Hatfield Shed]

Much useful information which I am grateful for, because who knows what lies ahead. I feel you have achieved a usable outcome; plenty of my projects have screws through cab floors, it's not seen when the loco is running on the layout. And if it is going to stand on view, hide it with crew, and an inspector and travelling fitter.

...Not, I think, the black Can motor that featured in the original "good" Chinese made loco-driven Gresley Pacifics...

Indeed, but it looks externally much as the motor found in the 8F, Britannia and L1, all of which have performed reliably.

(But then 'everything' in current RTR OO motors seems to work reliably long term for me, as a correspondent elsewhere observed a decade past... I have seen a motor failure in a friend's new purchase, magnet loose inside the motor casing as received, so an assembly fault, proved to be due to way insufficient adhesive applied. I swapped it for a good motor, then repaired it myself (24hr Araldite) and it still runs 19 years on.)

[Chas Levin]

Truly a silk purse (in reference to the Hornby contribution, of course)... Very good job!

[Atlantic 3279]

Should anybody wish to know more details of the Hornby Chassis, and the process of mating it to my "early" A2/2 body and curing its self-ejecting crossheads of their troubles, read on....

Two versions of the chassis compared, before the start of alterations, my adapted Bachmann item at the top, and Hornby's recent ready-made version at the bottom, albeit with its additional weight unscrewed and removed from the space ahead of the motor.

Now the undersides of three bodies, before alterations, My A2/3 Steady Aim (Bachmann A2 and resin parts) top, Hornby A2/3 Chamossaire centre, my A2/2 Lord President (hacked Margate A3 and resin parts, to fit adapted Bachmann chassis) bottom.

Lord President body and Hornby Chamossaire chassis initially marked up with Tippex to highlight areas most obviously in need of surgery in order to achieve a fit. You even get a view of a former Christmas tablecloth to cheer you up.

My first attempt to keep the errant right crosshead in the slidebars was this stiff vertical wire descending from the motion bracket and peeping out just below the con-rod, bearing against its inside face. It worked for running the chassis, but as you can see in the photograph simply handling the chassis had made the crosshead pop out again and drop down.

[Atlantic 3279]

The screw-on stretchers carrying the cylinders and motion separate into three main units. As originally assembled, the radius rods (seen here dangling from the rear of the cylinders assembly) were glued onto pips on the sides of the inner component of the motion bracket. This view of the outer bracket also shows where I had added my dropper-wire to try to keep the con-rod pushed outwards and hence that crosshead in its slot in the slidebars.

Chassis parts stripped out in readiness for some serious filing. Wheels dropped by removing the keeper plate, motor de-mountable without cutting or unsoldering any wires - the rear retainer cap for the motor unscrews, as does the thin plastic cover that retains the wiring to the drawbar plug in its channel beneath the cab. Connection to the pick-ups on the keeper plate is via two plungers on a little circuit board that also simply un-screws. Watch out once this is removed, as there are two loose insulating sleeves for the plungers, in the bores in the chassis block. These can fall out...

I said earlier that I'd taped over vulnerable chassis parts to protect them from swarf when filing:

This shows that filed and scraped a fair amount of material from the inner faces of the boiler moulding simply to accommodate the motor.

If you unscrew the bogie be ready for the spring and the lower nut to try to escape. There's also a separate keeper plate on the base of the bogie.

Rear of a cylinder with slidebar withdrawn.

This faint hint of a shoulder on the outside edge of the crosshead's upper face is all that I could find as the manufacturer's means of keeping the crosshead between the slidebars. Ineffective...

Here's my (untrimmed) stiff 0.7mm wire pushed through holes drilled in front and rear faces of the cylinder, just inboard of the hole that accepts the slidebars.

And here's the wire trimmed with the slidebars and crosshead back in place.

[Atlantic 3279]

Mid way through the fitting process, trial re-assembly suggested that I need to just trim the raised lip from the front of the cylinder stretcher in order to allow the body to sit level.

In fact I found that I had to file down the whole of the top of the stretcher quite significantly.

The rest of the work was illustrated in my earlier summary, but here's a final look at the comparison between the underside of Lord President's body after adaptation, and the un-marked underside of Steady Aim. I suspect that sawing, drilling and/or filing out the extra width for the motor, and the broad trench under the cab, would have been significantly harder work had I chose to try to fit Steady Aim's cast metal central and rear running plate areas to the Hornby chassis.

[S.A.C. Martin]

Interesting. Do you think the use of the Hornby A2/2 body on the Bachmann chassis would be easier, Graeme?

[Atlantic 3279]

Fewer things in the way by the look of it Simon, only the block behind the front down-curve in the running plate (which contains a threaded brass insert) and the rear screw-boss under the cab appear, at a glance, to possibly need to be trimmed, removed, or accommodated by a further alteration of the chassis. I presume we are both thinking about a Bachmann chassis that has already been converted by my method to suit the Thompson Pacifics.

[S.A.C. Martin]

Fewer things in the way by the look of it Simon, only the block behind the front down-curve in the running plate (which contains a threaded brass insert) and the rear screw-boss under the cab appear, at a glance, to possibly need to be trimmed, removed, or accommodated by a further alteration of the chassis. I presume we are both thinking about a Bachmann chassis that has already been converted by my method to suit the Thompson Pacifics.

Pretty much - I have a final chassis that was going to have a Bachmann A2/2 conversion on it. With the Hornby A2/2 body bought for a meagre £22 off eBay last year, I am thinking of modifying the Hornby body shell and the chassis accordingly to suit, as much as possible, Thane of Fife as built. That will give me 2 x A2/2, 2 x A2/3, 2 x A2/1 in variations of livery and form, all GR King hybrids. That’s without the two Great Northern Conversions!

[Atlantic 3279]

Having now tried Chamossaire's body over my converted Bachmann chassis, then assuming that Hornby have made the underbody of the A2/2 in exactly the same way as that of their A2/3, I think the full requirements for making it fit will be:

1. Remove some material just from the sides of the block behind the front curve in the running plate of the body. It looks as if it will then sit between the Bachmann frame representations.

2. From the narrow part of the slot in the base of the boiler, for about 10mm in front of the wider slot for the motor, trim the sides neatly, a minimal amount at a time, until the body will go down over the front of the Bachmann motor/gear assebly, which sits further forward than Hornby's.

3. Trim a shaving or two off the front edge of the moulded screw boss under the cab, so that it will miss the top of the slide arrangement for Bachmann's rear carrying axle.

You may have to very slightly trim the front and/or rear extremities of the chassis to get a comfortable fit.

You'll have to decide where to drill new fixing holes in either the easily drilled plastic body or the more resistant cast chassis...