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Hattons/DJM 14XX - a small repair


Captain Kernow

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Although I have complained about the Hattons/DJM mechanism and chassis at length, I have never had any major criticisms of the body on this model and this remains the case, apart from the fact that you have to dismantle the body, in order to get the Hattons/DJM motor out, without resorting to the use of a mains Dremel.

 

The level of detailing is very fine and some of the components are, by their very nature, somewhat delicate.

 

The pipe runs along the edge of the footplate are a case in point.

 

The pipes themselves are formed of steel rod, which is rather unyielding as is usually the case with steel. The end of the steam heating pipe, which runs along the left-hand edge of the footplate, actually fits into a corresponding hole in the rear of the plastic steam pipe moulding, which comes in a small bag for the owner to fit themselves.

 

The steel rods are held in place along the edge of the footplate by small plastic clips, which are the vulnerable component here.

 

The steam heating pipe on my model needed to be bent back slightly, in order not to place too much pressure on the plastic steam pipe (which you have to glue onto the buffer beam, fortunately Butanone seems to work OK for this).

 

When bending this steel rod back a little, it popped out of the leading plastic clip on the side of the footplate, which in any case had, I suspect, been compromised during previous work on the loco. As a result, the plastic clip was broken and wouldn't hold the pipe securely any longer.

 

My solution to this was what I have done before, when fitting similar pipework to kitbuilt locos.

 

Two 0.5mm holes were drilled into the side of the footplate valancing, one on top of the other and by necessity, very close together. 0.5mm is somewhat too large but with a smaller drill, there is an increased risk of the drill breaking off, which wouldn't have been very helpful. Both holes are hidden behind the pipework when all is done, in any case.

 

The first thing is then to epoxy a short length of 5 amp fuse wire into the top hole, having previously drawn the wire through some fine wet & dry paper to roughen the surface up to key to the glue:
blogentry-57-0-62187800-1546603326.jpg

 

The top 0.5mm hole just goes right into the plastic of the footplate moulding, to a depth of about 5mm, enough to let the epoxy hold the fuse wire nicely. This is left to harden overnight.

 

The next stage is to use a fine pair of tweezers to feed the other end of the fuse wire into the lower hole. This lower hole emerges on the underside of the footplate moulding. The fuse wire is then carefully pulled taught and some more epoxy applied to the underside of the footplate:
blogentry-57-0-19898700-1546603478.jpg

 

The result looks like this - the fuse wire forms a very small little loop, that holds the steel steam pipe run in place and will disappear when dabbed with a black permanent marker or a bit of black paint:
blogentry-57-0-50794300-1546603624.jpg

 

I would add, however, that the above process was rather fraught, as the threading of the fuse wire into the lower hole proved a lot more difficult than I had envisaged. I wouldn't do it in that order again, but would instead put the wire in the lower hole first, but not glue it, then thread the other end into the upper hole, glue it and leave it to harden. I would then draw the wire already in the lower hole tight and glue.

 

I think I was lucky not to have broken the fuse wire off with the initial fumbling with the tweezers!

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  • RMweb Gold

Nice work with the replacement chassis Captain.........

 

....but of course later in the year Dapol will have a 7mm 48/14XX with a proper RTR chassis and if she follows the same standard as their 57XX.......

 

Come on sell up and go 7mm.... and get a proper RTR loco...       :-)

 

John

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  • RMweb Gold

Strangely despite doing a similar job a fair few times on etched kits, I have never thought to replicate it with wire and glue.  Will file that away for the future...

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  • RMweb Gold

Come on sell up and go 7mm.... and get a proper RTR loco...       :-)

 

Funny you should say that!

 

Only thing is, I'm not getting rid of the 4mm stuff, far from it, but there is a small collection of 7mm items gradually taking shape, a Dapol 14XX is certain to feature in due course.

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  • RMweb Gold

Funny you should say that!

 

Only thing is, I'm not getting rid of the 4mm stuff, far from it, but there is a small collection of 7mm items gradually taking shape, a Dapol 14XX is certain to feature in due course.

 

Aha!  Once you really start it`ll be the end of your 4mm stuff.... I sold all of mine through Ebay on those `only sell for £1` offers for a surprisingly large amount of dosh !!! and never looked back.....

 

...and right now you can pick up a DCC ready Dapol 57XX for less than £200 with working inside motion from Rails of Sheffield !! and I can swear that it is a railway modellers model.....

 

Cheers

 

John

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Don't do it Captain, 7/4ths increase in length = three times the area a layout would take up!

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  • RMweb Gold

Don't do it Captain, 7/4ths increase in length = three times the area a layout would take up!

Unless one is building a rather small layout!

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Captain,

 

awesome, I've been away from your blog a while now and it was great to see such admirable work completed,

 

Regards,

 

Colin

 

 

Edited by BWsTrains
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