The more maintenance I did, the more seemed to be required. I’ve already spent so much time on this and on layout improvement(?????!!!!!) that production of new stuff this year currently stands at next–to-nowt and at a recent visit to Dean Hall (MMRS HQ) I was asked what I was putting in the competition.

Because MMRS is not holding a show in 2014 the member’s competition will now be in a different, simpler format and at the club’s Christmas Bash on the second Saturday in December.

As the C13 chassis were put away as reasonable runners before I started all this maintenance lark, and, as this project is to put modern chassis under existing old bodies I decided to try to finish the project and enter the two chassis. Time will tell!

One is now running beautifully as an 0-6-0. The C13s were of course 4-4-2 but I have organised mine such that the trailing wheels are not on a pony but are in the main frames which, with a bogie up front will make them much closer to a 4-6-0 than a 4-4-2. The bogies on my chassis will be as heavy as I can make them; will hopefully carry no loco weight; and will really only trundle along for the ride, allowing the four coupled wheels to carry a very high percentage of the total loco weight.

As I write this, the adhesive holding the bogie side frames to the rubbing plate is curing. I tried a new method of frame assembly today. I needed four identical side frames but cut six. The extra two are part of a system of frames and a parallel pair of 2mm dia silver steel rods. The pictures should explain better than words.

The rubbing plates are, in 4mm scale terms, ‘massive’ chunks of ¼” mild steel bar, milled accurately to width as frame spacers and also milled to the maximum length to fit between the two axles. The idea is that this ‘heavy engineering’ will provide high weight at low centre of gravity.

Here a tool-maker’s clamp is holding the side-frames tight to the mild-steel rubbing plate while the adhesive cures. The 2mm axle holes in the frames have 2mm silver-steel rod threaded through them to help in getting parallel axles. Note the colour coding; orange indicates that this is destined for 7402; red indicates the inside face of the frame. The blue is marking ink, used to show up the pivot slot centre line, which lines up with the frame centre line.

This shows how the silver-steel rods are held parallel on correct wheel-base. There are six, 0.018” nickel-silver ‘frames’ all of which had their axle holes drilled and slowly opened to 2mm diameter while being stuck together as one work-piece.

The white background is a piece of ¼” thick opal glass, giving a reliably flat surface, - (a nice cheap surface-plate!). The blobs of blutak are applying gentle downward pressure to the rods keeping the top face of each side frame flush with the top face of the rubbing plate; and, to ensure that any stray adhesive does not stick the lot to the ‘surface-plate’, there is a length of silicon baking sheet under each bogie assembly.

Here are both would-be bogies; - on the left, orange and for 7402; on the right, yellow and for 7439.

My current thinking is that neither will be sprung or compensated; the short wheel-base and the comparatively heavy mass ‘should’(????) give good riding.

While you are reading this, you are wasting good modelling time, get your tools out. (All in the best of good taste of course!),

Dave