You couldn't get further apart than these two locos! They've both been on and off the workbench in recent months,

though, so I thought a brief write-up was in order.

 

Let's start with Queen Maud, a Princess Royal. This one started life as a 1980s-1990s era Hornby Princess with tender

drive, in LMS Black - I think possibly Princess Marie Louise. She was repainted into BR green about 20 years ago but

hasn't seen much service since I went over to DCC. She did run pretty nicely (certainly one of the better tender drive

locos that I've owned) but once I became aware of some "issues" with the representation of the wheels and valve

gear, I found it hard to unsee them. The wheelbase was wrong, the gear was too chunky, and the brakes were

the wrong way around on the wheels - presumably because of Hornby re-using one of their earlier chassis, I guess.

 

 

Earlier this year I seized the bull by the horns and substituted a new Comet chassis, using a DJH motor and gearbox.

Since I built the chassis with the correct wheel spacing (it allows for both correct and incorrect options), I had to do

some mild reworking of the Hornby body to get the splashers in the right place. I thought it was worth the hassle

to get that characteristic Princess look.

 

So far so good, and I thought that was about it, but I hadn't reckoned the problem of choosing a name that worked

for both the body and the chassis! It turns out that these locos are complicated, who knew? The problem is that the

1980s Hornby moulding has the shorter firebox type as originally fitted to the first two locos. Those were built with

GWR-style motion supports, though, so the Comet chassis, with the later LMS-style, doesn't quite work. The only

solution was look through photos and boiler records (all in the Irwell book of this class of locos) and find a loco from

the later batch that happened to be running with one of the short firebox boilers at some point in its life. Unless I've

completely boo-boo'd, Queen Maud is one such, but the catch was that the boiler would still need modification to

put the dome and top-feed in the right place. The loco then went back into its box until around the RMweb show

in Taunton, where I think I was able to pick up the relevant parts from 247 Developments. I still had to go through

the fairly tedious job of removing the old, putting on the new, and then tidying up and repainting, which in turn

took me well into the later part of summer.

 

 

 

The rest of it was relatively straightforward - sort out some extra weight, put in a decoder (after a lot of test-running)

and finally take care of missing lining, lamp irons etc. The tender, incidentally, is the original Hornby body fitted to

a spare Bachmann Stanier tender chassis that I had lying around. It was originally under a Patriot so may not be

entirely correct for a Princess but looks ok for now.

 

While I was at it, I made a short Youtube clip of some test-running with the Pines Express. This is quite a stiff

test as these Bachmann MK1s are quite draggy, so any loco that can take these is going to be fine with my

other trains.

 

 

 

 

So anyway, that's where we are with Maud. Now onto the J72!

 

This build was a lot simpler as I didn't have to do the chassis from scratch. The original model was a BR black Bachmann J72 which I got from Holt Model Railways in the mid 90s, around the time that I returned to the hobby. I was amazed by what a smooth, silent runner it was, and it remained a firm favorite for layout testing for many years. However, at some point it picked up the dreaded split axle problem, rather scuppering the smooth running. I did try substituting some new axle muffs, but I could never get it back to ts original running quality, much the pity.

 

I was half thinking of adding a new Comet chassis when I found one for sale already assembled! It didn't have a motor, but it did have wheels and a complete body. I took a punt on it as it wasn't too expensive (especially given the cost of Markits wheels now). The free-rolling chassis did need some attention, as it er... didn't. Free-roll, that is. Not a good sign. Taking it apart, I found that the frames appeared to have been assembled square, but the middle bearings were just loose on the axles, free to slop around in oversize holes in the frame! I can't quite see what that was meant to achieve - perhaps it was a half-way step to some sort of springing? In any case, whoever had the chassis had clearly given up with it, as there were some rudimentary pickups and signs that a motor had been wired in at some point.

 

 

Once again taking the bull by the horns, I cleaned up the brass around the loose bearings and soldered them in as accurately as I could. Can't remember if I used a jig, or just eye-balled where it looked like they should end up using the existing rods. The latter then needed broaching out as they were still too tight on the crank pins, leading to the stiffness and tight-spots already evident. However, taking it a side at a time, it all came good and I ended up with what seemed to be a decently free-running chassis.

 

There matters rested, as I was convinced I didn't have a suitable motor/gearbox to drop into it, but having had a proper rummage, I turned up a Branchlines motor and gearbox set that was just right for the job. This was assembled, test-run under no load while lightly lubricating, then gradually allowed to run under increasing load while keeping an eye on the temperature. Once I was satisfied that the gearbox was good, I put it in the loco and fashioned some replacement pickups. I put it on the track and ... dead as a dodo.

 

 

However, it just turned out to be a tiny case of one motor contact shorting against the frame, phew! Once I restrained the motor with a simple wire bracket, it ran like a treat, and after some weighting, proved more than up to the task of a 20 wagon goods. As intended, I've retained my BR bodied J72 and kept the LNER body for spares. 

 

 

That it's for now. Hope this is of interest to anyone like me who enjoys keeping older models going.