More lockdown, here we go again!

Back in June I dug out 2 old Mainline Royal Scot locos that I'd acquired years ago as part of a barter of various bits and pieces with a friend. He had a lot of equipment from his wife's late uncle who had a shed layout, and had the remains of my n gauge bits in exchange.  Both locos were in bad condition, one had valve gear damage one side, the other didn't run at all.  In my attempt at getting at least one to run again, last June I stripped down the complete chassis, cleaned it all up, popped it back together and - yes!  The chassis ran, then unfortunately the rear driving wheel axle sheared and a wheel fell right off. Think it's possible to get replacement axles but this had broken on a way that would make it impossible to use the wheel again and the plating was coming off anyway. So back in the bits box it all went. That's in previous blog entry.

As far as it got the last time!

Recently, inspired by Silver Sidelines's locos in his blog, I thought I'd have another go. This time, I took the left hand valve gear off the complete but broken axle loco chassis and fitted it to the running but broken gear one.  The old Mainline chassis was more sophisticated than I thought it would be, the bolt that holds the return crank on the central driving wheel was quite a slender turning.  

Film crew recording loco.

Anyway, it went back together ok, I now had a complete chassis. Tiny drop of electrolube on axles etc.  and whoopee, it actually ran ok!  Cleaned up the better of the 2 bodies, and the tender that had wheels, put it back together and had it running round the layout.  Ran ok without faltering, pulled a 4 coach train of mk1s round for well over an hour without stopping.

So from 2 wrecks, one working vintage loco!

I took a video of the engine running and sent it to my friend who showed his wife. She was impressed that an old loco of her uncles was running once again!