Triang L1 mods.

[RobMG]

Well Hugh ,You are in luck, I have a drawing . It only shows the right hand side, and top view of the RH half, but it is certainly better than nothing. There are also dimensions on it.

I can copy it tonight or tomorrow when my good lady is here , and send it to you. 

If you can find a copy of Locomotives Illustrated number 23 on the Wainwright 4-4-0s  there are a few good photos of the L1 showing both sides. 

PM me your address.

Very pleased to help in any way I can.

Rob

PS

There you go Hugh, you are now inundated with info. I had forgotten I'd already found a drawing last year.  

Edited January 17, 2020 by RobMG
To add a little bit more...

[uax6]

Looking good. I've got a 2P hidden away somewhere and it will need re-wheeling with the correct sized wheels. I'll be replacing the X04 with a can motor and gearbox (the chassis will need the slot for the final drive opening out to about 8mm (Branchlines do a 2 stage 8mm wide gearbox that is great for this sort of thing)), but I wonder if you could just turn the chassis block round so that the drive is at the back?

 

Andy g

[longie]

Hi Hugh

I used the drawing in Ian Beattie's book.

Graham

[cabbie37]

Thanks Graham - that is clearly a book to look out for!

[hayfield]

Amazon

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Southern-Locomotives-Scale-Ian-Beattie/dp/0851533892/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Southern+Locomotives+to+scale&qid=1579596385&sr=8-1

 

eBay much the same

 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=m570.l1313&_nkw=southern+locomotives+to+scale&_sacat=0

[longie]

First coat of primer all done.

 

[RobMG]

On 13/01/2020 at 15:38, longie said:

Hi Rob

Thanks, I hope to start painting later this week. I have found some gloss black acrylic spray cans from an old car 

I used to have so I might try those. Strangely my next loco project is a green Lima 33 I have had for about 30 years!!! I am just going to renumber it an add a few details so it doesn’t look out of place against my Heljan ones.

Graham

The lima model is pretty good,  I have removed the moulded handrails etc  ,and fitted an etched fan grill, And some Heljan tanks/Battery boxes.  It will be repainted in early green livery, and look good I hope.  Also new wheels without traction tyres....

[Il Grifone]

There was a drawing in the model press (RM IIRC) shortly after the model was released, along with a short article on detailing it. It is reprinted in the Tri-ang Bible.

 

L1s were LH drive so the brake would have been on the left. AFAIK the modifications to produce a 2P mainly involved the cab. The tender was originally a Midland design (allegedly - it has several errors), but it lost the rivets for the Southern Railway liveried version of the L1. The tenders were flush riveted anyway, even for the Midland 4F (3Fs had a different design with flared top apart from one example (which wasn't 43775) IIRC)

 

This was Tri-ang's first really decent model. If only the running plate wasn't 2mm too high....

 

Edited February 2, 2020 by Il Grifone
lunch time - SWMBO called....

[The Johnster]

I always considered them underrated; a chum had one and it was a lovely little thing; ran well too.  There wasn't much better anywhere in 00 RTR when it was introduced.  Should have been a market beater, but it never was for some reason; perhaps the prototype was a bit obscure for the mass market. Didn't stop HD having success with the equally obscure R1, though, and the Metrovick was a bit esoteric as well.  Although that had been heavily promoted along with all the 'Condor' publicity I suppose.

 

There were certainly some odd (by the lights of modern thinking) choices in those days.  Triang sold coaches in WR livery and had a WR brake van, but no GW loco or even a WR one unless you counted the 3MT tank, which was a missed opportunity with those tiny driving wheels but not excessively bad otherwise.  At least Triang's other choices of those days made some market sense; the 31 was well known over a large area, as was the Britannia.  Winston Churchill was a shape known across the south of Britain, and the Jinty and 3F were pretty widespread as well.

 

 

By the late 60s, things had improved, and we had M7s, Hymeks, 8750s, Halls, 25s, and even announcements about 47s, Black 5s, and 9Fs.

[BernardTPM]

A bit later than that. The only R-T-R 47 announced in the '60s was the one by Trix that never happened. Hornby's was first shown in the 1974 catalogue, Black 5 in 1973, 9F in 1971.

Edited February 3, 2020 by BernardTPM

[Il Grifone]

I could never understand why Tri-ang went to all the trouble of making a new chassis block for the 3MT 2-6-2T and then compromising it with the wrong wheelbase, just to use the existing coupling rods (from the 3F tank) or they could have made the LMS version for which the wheelbase would have been correct (or at least only 2mm short like for the Jinty). Wheels of the right size (and number of spokes) would have helped too.

 

Perhaps it was expensive to make new stamps as Dublo were prone to the same thing.

 

The L1 was followed by the equally excellent B12, but then they spoilt things with the incorrectly shaped WC/BoB

[longie]

Just a quick update. All painted now, the Auto Black acrylic spray dosen't look too bad.

A few details and etched plates added. The plates are from Narrow Planet and are really good.

The last photo is a spare body I have used for parts and to test the paint on. I have glazed the front windows with Deluxe Glue 'n' Glaze, I think it has worked quite well.

Graham

Edited February 10, 2020 by longie

[Londontram]

That is really looking the business now and just goes to show what can be done with a bit of effort.

 I've got a couple of old Triang Hornby 3F in the bottom of the cupboard this makes me want to dig one out and do something along the same lines.

[Robin Verth]

I have a couple of Triang 3F's and looked at the possibility of updating them, I use code 75 track so finer wheels would be required and a replacement tender/tender top, as only one 3F was paired with a Fowler tender, I worked out the costs of the required parts, one of the first replacement parts I looked at was the tender I thought get a Bachmann 3F tender as a direct replacement,  the cheapest I could find was £39.99, I noticed that I could get a complete Bachmann 3F for £40, a number of Bachmann 3F's were acquired none costing more than £45, the upgrade has been postponed.

[longie]

It has most probably been over 30 years since I have done something like this but it is a whole lot easier with all the tools you can get these days.

I need to get the chassis done now as I want to see it run. This will entail a lot of practice with the soldering iron first!!!

Graham

[Londontram]

3 hours ago, Robin Verth said:

I have a couple of Triang 3F's and looked at the possibility of updating them, I use code 75 track so finer wheels would be required and a replacement tender/tender top, as only one 3F was paired with a Fowler tender, I worked out the costs of the required parts, one of the first replacement parts I looked at was the tender I thought get a Bachmann 3F tender as a direct replacement,  the cheapest I could find was £39.99, I noticed that I could get a complete Bachmann 3F for £40, a number of Bachmann 3F's were acquired none costing more than £45, the upgrade has been postponed.

Why must it cost so much , I have a spare K's tender top but what I might do is just trim the top "lip" down and add a roll top done many times by verious methods slicing a section of tube length ways and adding this to the tank top being one popular method I've seen used many times.

 

Once the rivet detail has been removed new panels of 5 thou plasticard can be added to the tender sides to turn the tender back to the correct style.

  I would draw and cut this on my Silhouette but it could just as easally done by hand.

 New wheels would be a good idea but I'm lucky I have some correct Romford tender wheels in stock but they turn up quite often on the auction site.

  Needle point bearings could be fitted into the open Triang bearing boxes and the holes plugged with filler or small patches.

 

 So that's the tender sorted for next to nothing not £30 or £40

 

 It's called modelling for a reason!

Edited February 11, 2020 by Londontram

[Robin Verth]

Since I shelved the 3F project, a firm has started making  Johnson/Deeley resin tender tops to modify the old Triang tenders, these are a fraction of the cost of the replacement tender but still more than the method with plastic tube that you describe I will give it a try when I find the locos, I have some spare Romford Jackson tender wheels, the tenders could be modified for a couple of pounds each, I was also thinking of replacing the chassis with a more modern Hornby one as the can be picked up quite cheaply. Both my Triang 3F's came from the same Boot Sale but from different sellers, one was painted emerald green and cost £3 the other in BR lined black was £5, both were good runners, I striped off the green paint, that was as far as I got, both ran for many hours on the old layout.

The idea of using a Bachmann tender came from modifying my L1 I used a tender from the Bachmann N class the tenders were quite cheap as the Bachmann N class No. 31813 suffers very badly from Mazak Rot, when I took the body of mine to fit a DCC decoder as I undid the screws holding the body shell on you could see it distort before your eyes, Bachmann replaced the running plate free, though I found that the Mazak had expanded and sliced of almost all of the locating pips. I would buy the affected models cheap from places like Hattons, Rails and eBay, I would then look for non-runners that had damaged valve gear a quick body swap damaged chassis to spares box and a spare tender for the next L1 project, though the supply of Mazak rot N's seems to have dried up. 

[RobMG]

Your L1 looks really good.  I'm impressed,

[Il Grifone]

I was undecided whether to repaint my L1 in black livery. It's now on the 'to do' list!

GBL N class models can be used as a source of tenders. A bit of work is required of course.

 

Apart from the running plate height, the Tri-ang 3F has two major faults - undersized driving  wheels and the wrong tender. The first can be mitigated by choosing one with 4' 11" drivers and the second by selecting the solitary example with this design of tender.

Incidently, 43775 was scrapped before the Tri-ang model was released.

Edited February 12, 2020 by Il Grifone

[LNWR18901910]

On 10/02/2020 at 14:02, longie said:

Just a quick update. All painted now, the Auto Black acrylic spray dosen't look too bad.

A few details and etched plates added. The plates are from Narrow Planet and are really good.

The last photo is a spare body I have used for parts and to test the paint on. I have glazed the front windows with Deluxe Glue 'n' Glaze, I think it has worked quite well.

Graham

So far, so good. It's like Hornby would've re-introduced this model in the late 1990s and 2000s.

[longie]

Soldering started really well, the two wires to the pickups on the front bogie are all done and tested OK.

 

Then it all went wrong. The pickup plate and attached wire must be so old and brittle it all just fell apart!!!!!

I have searched the internet for a new one but to no avail. So, I think I will have to make a new one myself.

 

 

 

[Il Grifone]

Failure of the plate is quite common. I suspect it's the result of decades of attack by the lubricating oil  on the axles. They do turn up from time to time, but a new one from printed circuit board is probably the answer.

[Corbs]

You've done a cracking job so far with this model, sorry about the brittle plastic, some old Airfix chassis are prone to the same issue.

 

While not an L1, I had a crack at updating the old 3F using an Airfix 4F tender drive mechanism (and a few bits and bobs like pipework etc.) and renumbered it to 43435 as that was the only example to run with this tender.

 

Hope it's alright to share a pic of it here. Wouldn't mind having a go at the L1 now you've shown what's possible!

[Guest Jack Benson]

 Graham,

 

Very good job, my L1 is not as sophisticated. May I ask, what did you use for both the air pump and the large pipes that emerge from the bottom of the smokebox?

 

Thank you

Edited March 23, 2021 by Jack Benson
Typo

[longie]

Jack

The large pipe on the left hand side of the smoke box is aluminium rod bent to shape with a pipe flange cut from a sheet of paper. The other two brass valves are from left over parts from a M7 kit with brass wire going under the boiler. Similar parts can also be found in the Dapol Schools kit.

Hope this helps.

Graham