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Standard 4MT 4-6-0

Focalplane

Entry posted by Focalplane

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Cold showery weather - what am I doing in England?! Well, Sunday is a good day to take a loco out of its box and do some detailing and I had forgotten about my Bachmann 75027 in "out of the box" weathered state. It is a very nice looking model and really does justice to the real thing.

 

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I am about half way through the list of work on this model and much remains to be done once I take it back to France where I will apply some really heavy weathering, etc.

 

The most difficult part was fitting scale screw couplings, particularly to the front of the loco as it is solid metal behind the buffer beam. Fortunately my Dremel made the job relatively easy, particularly now that I have a Dremel Work Station. I used a Smiths set of couplers which are not as heavy as the ones made by Romford but do look good. I will eventually remove the Bachmann coupler pocket from the front bogie and then the front end will look as it should look. All the supplied add ons were applied to the front of the loco.

 

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Real coal will be added when I get back to France. The coal was collected from a disused open cast mine north of Béziers a couple of years ago. There is nothing that compares to the real thing! The tender will also be close coupled to suit 3 ft radii and a crew added to the cab.

 

The lamps are from Springside Models and I am not entirely happy with them. The jewels fell out of both front and rear lamps as I was drilling out the base of the lamps. One I found, one is gone for ever.

 

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alanbuttler

Looking good, what else are you planning to detail?

 

Those coupling pockets look like a bit of a pain to remove, I was just looking at the one of the Dukedog and figuring who to tackle it.

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Horsetan

Strictly speaking, 75027 should carry WR lamp irons.

 

Jewels dropping out of the lamp castings are a pain, but you can substitute by putting a blob of UHU there and allowing it to set - makes a more realistic lens than a jewel.

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Focalplane
Looking good, what else are you planning to detail?

 

Those coupling pockets look like a bit of a pain to remove, I was just looking at the one of the Dukedog and figuring who to tackle it.

 

Comet has a detailing fret but Bachmann has done such a good job the fret isn't needed.

 

The rectangular pocket on the front of the bogie will be easy to remove, the difficult part was grinding out the space for the screw link coupler. This really does cause major modification to the model, rendering its value questionable. However, toy train couplers never existed in real life. . . . .

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Focalplane

Strictly speaking, 75027 should carry WR lamp irons.

 

Jewels dropping out of the lamp castings are a pain, but you can substitute by putting a blob of UHU there and allowing it to set - makes a more realistic lens than a jewel.

Thanks for the tip, I'll try it out.

 

I feel sure that in my time frame (late 1950s) the loco may have been transferred to the LMR, but I am still thinking about a different number. 75022 had been photographed in ?Saltley so I might use that number. Trouble is, the individual locos can be quite different in detail.

 

Edit. the Bluebell Railway website gives the information that 75027 started out on the WR then the S&D, then in 1962 moved to the Cambrian before finally joining in the LMR in 1965. I may change numbers!

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Focalplane

More thoughts on the loco lamps.  The first thing to do would be to dirty the white lamp casing - the only time they were ever white was probably on the Royal Train!  The second thing would be to remove the over scale handle from the Springside Models lamp and possibly fix some very fine wire as a better scale handle (though this may not be necessary as it would have to be very fine indeed and therefore may not even be visible!)

 

I have looked at DCC Concepts lamps and wish they would make one without the light!  These lamps were prototypically being moved from bracket to bracket to store and the wiring would preclude that option.

 

Does anyone have suggestions?

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