3MT Mogul - a Decision
OK, the decision seems to have been made. The Airfix kit and Bachmann tender appeared yesterday and last night I offered up various bits of kit to the chassis and boiler.
There is a difference in mould quality, I had hoped that by using an original airfix kit the plastic might be crisper than the Dapol kit, oh well.
A few issues to consider:
- The motor is wider than the outside dimensions of the firebox lower/ashpan
- The nice painted backhead does not fit the airfix footplate - and the airfix backhead includes part of the cab wall anyway
- I either need to cut the bottom of the smokebox off to set it into the footplate, or cut the footplate with a curved front to accept the smokebox as is. If I cut the smokebox the, frankly silly tubeplate detail behind the door will have to go.
I've also printed out the Beattie drawings for the 3MT and 4MT to compare, and Beattie not withstanding there are some obvious differences between the two apart from the boilers
- The footplate narrows above the cylinders much more on the class 3 than the 4 - filing needed, bye bye rivet detail ....
- The sloped section of footplating at the front is further back on the 3MT - this will have to be ignored.
- The blower tunnel is shorter and the control valve is more to the front on the 3MT with consequentially different pipe runs
- The frame cutaway for the ashpan is deeper on the 4MT - not a problem as I will have to fabricate dummy sides to cover the motor etc once the Airfix bits are hacked off to get the footplate over the motor
Next step is to get some photos of the RHS of a class 3, as I need to confirm pipe runs/injectors etc. The plan is to use the Airfix injector lump at the moment, shouldn't look too bad once painted black ....
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