Frankenpannier V

Entry posted by richbrummitt December 20, 2019

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Time working on this has been reduced since going away at half term and building some baseboards for a 5' radius test track type 'layout' to enjoy with my son who is, fortunately, train mad.

Honestly it is those wiggly bits of pipework immediately in front of the cab below the tanks that I am avoiding. N Brass Locos have an ejector/injector casting but it does not look like the wet type that existed on pannier tanks when compared to photographs.

I have been focusing my efforts on the chassis instead. First off I checked the fit of an 'engine' in the boiler/tank space.

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This is held in place by the brass tabs left on the boiler lower portion being adjusted until they grip the can of the motor sufficiently. The motor is a 7x17mm coreless type from eBay. The firebox has been cut down as much as I dare on one side to check the mesh of the worm, which is infinitely adjustable by packing the motor fore and aft to suit. An initial look at this suggests that it will require minimal packing to get the mesh on assembly just right. The motor will necessarily remain part of the body to allow the bottom of the boiler to be modelled. Also visible in this view are the filed to size and shape sandboxes, which were drilled out to accept the lids. The latter began life as flanged crankpins.

The front guard irons have been reinstated. On 645/655 class the guard irons are on the ends of the brake pull rods but this engine has been so Swindonised by this time in it's life that the picture shows separate front guard irons. I wish I never cut them off because they are so far from the wheels now.

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Moving onto brakes: This was another job that I had been putting off since I saw a photo of the particular engine I had selected because the Swindonisation had also extended to replacement of the original inside brake pull rods to those wiggly external ones that I had hoped to avoid by building a 645/655 class. Oh well!

The original brakes that I had built for the original conversion were problematic and of the incorrect type. A new set were filed out of a set of frames that I was not going to use. There are/were two options with the 57xx replacement chassis; one for middle axle drive and one for rear axle drive. The former requires compromise with the gears visible if you want to avoid a skirt to the boiler (as the Farish body is cast). The latter is/was available as a separate etch with frames that can be substituted to allow the drive to be completely within the firebox - though machining of the body casting is necessary to get a motor in the boiler/tanks. I was never going to use the other set of frames and they had a convenient set of holes for the brake hangers at the correct spacing - I just had to mark out and file around them.

A brake subassembly was built up around a second chassis as a jig. If I was building the whole kit from the beginning I would do it this way again. Surely I will build another pannier tank at some point and so this frame assembly will not be wasted. I do not like soldering anywhere near the wheels since the tyres are steel and I have suffered problems with rust. (On the independent recommendation of three people I now have a dehumidifier in the workshop, which will hopefully make a difference.)

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This method also allows the brakes to be a completely separate assembly that will allow better ease of maintenance in the future should it be required. The downside is that only way that I could think of to attach it is by the copperclad between the brake pull rods with two screws into an additional frame spacer in the bottom of the firebox/ash pan area. Where the pull rods are outside of the wheels this will mean that the copperclad is visible between the rear coupled wheels. I'm not sure how intrusive this will be once painted and therefore how I feel about it. Next steps include cutting the assembly free by severing the ties at the top of the brake hangers and assembling the whole. What is left of the cut wire can be unsoldered and cleaned up to use the frames again for the next brake assembly and a further pannier tank.

The photo below shows the corresponding location for the screws in the chassis. Nuts are soldered to the top of the additional frame spacer, which was necessarily soldered in place next to the wheels as I did not fancy removing/replacing them.

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A packing piece of insulating material 1mm in thickness is needed between the chassis and brake assembly. A further interruption to modelling is about to happen: Christmas...