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Alterations to the Hornby Radial chassis


Ben Alder

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The Radial chassis as produced by Hornby and Oxford  has potential to fit several Scottish 4-4-0's with a bit of work. Here is how I adapted some to suit my fleet of locos - I used the Hornby one as a basis  even though it took more work, as the Oxford version shows the motor fitting under the boiler and although this can be altered it meant extra effort so I stuck with what I was familiar with. The wheels of the Radial are 5'7" in diameter - undersize for the widespread 6' variety that several classes had fitted, although over the flanges it does come out at that so a pragmatic fellow could leave them as they were, if they could accept the protruding bosses that the Radial has on them, as seen here. Unfortunately there is insufficient clearance  behind the splashers of HR locos for these so I had to rewheel the chassis - the boss is part of the wheel and I didn't attempt to reduce it but this is something I might play around with using some spare  Radial drivers.

 

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The dismantled Hornby chassis.

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The small and large protrusions either side of the chassis have to be removed for an inside cylinder model - the smaller ones are left for an outside cylindered version.

 

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Done - this also removes part of the motor mount so I glued the motor in place with Evostick and left it to dry for a few days, and this has held well, with no problems during extensive test running. Here is a finished one on the bench. I kept the bogie pick ups and when running will have tender pick up as well, but being firmly in the DC camp I removed all the extraneous wiring and connected direct to the motor. At the moment I am still relying on the sprung pin contact in the chassis for electrical continuity from the drivers while I was fettling it all but will probably hard wire this at a later date now I am satisfied that everything is working well.

 

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The driving gear was swapped from the Radial to the Five axle - it is offset on the Radial and so doesn't fully fit over the knurls on the replacement axle but with some Loctite it holds well enough. Due to a lack of Hornby crankpins at the time I used BA screws, cut down, and Markits bogie wheels and as much of the rear of the chassis to suit the body being used was cut away. There is a good deal of trimming away needed from the brake blocks and ideally they should be shifted  a mm or two but the existing fit is a good solid one and I doubted whether any glued one would be as robust so left them alone in situ, in a reduced form.

 

All in all, a very useful chassis for bodgers, and open to further adjustment as seen here. None of the chassis seen on the bench are as of yet running finished - severe case of modellers inertia - but a Loch class with outside cylinders is , and has proved  a smooth runner. Here it is with its new chassis - it previously had a T9 one which was too large.

 

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