Building Finecast Metro - any hints or tips?

[JackD48]

Hi all,

To while away the time in quarantine, I've just bought myself a SeFincast metro kit to build. It seems fairly straightforward, but there are a few decisions to make early on:  

First: rigid or compensated - I'm reckoning on building it rigid, unless there are any compelling reasons to compensate it (it's 00, not EM or P4). 

Secondly:  Motor and gearbox.  The instructions suggest a DS10 and Romford gears and there's a mount for this.  Personally I like the High Level gearboxes, and looking on RMWeb, there was a suggestion that a Mashima 1624 and a High Level Roadrunner+ would work, driving the front coupled axle.  Has anybody out there actually done this, and was it a fairly straightforward job?

Finally, are there any things to watch out for in the build?

 

Thanks

JackD

[brossard]

Deleted

Edited March 28, 2020 by brossard

[Miss Prism]

A 1624 is vastly overpowered for that loco, but has the advantage of lower revs. A roadrunner or micromiser 54:1 with a smaller motor is likely to be ok.

 

With a gearbox present, it would seem silly not to take advantage of some compensation or springing. A rigid front carrying wheel and twin beams on the drivers would be ideal and would ensure equal weighting on the two driving axles. (Yes, this is 4-point compensation, but is far better than 3-point for 2-4-0s and 0-4-2Ts.)

 

Bodywise, watch out the height mismatch of the front part of the boiler and the rear part, and be prepared to take off quite a lot of the underside of the smokebox to get the boiler bits matched.

 

Edited March 28, 2020 by Miss Prism

[JackD48]

Thanks MissP, 

when I get to the boiler and smokebox it'll be reassuring that it isn't me being stupid or hamfisted! 

As regards the motor, I do have a 1620 and a 1015 in the motors box as well as a DS10.  The 1015 looks too small for a whitemetal loco - but maybe it's  just that I started out in the era where the X04 was the standard motor, and all the modern can motors look small to me.  I need to have a good look at the instructions as to how the compensation bits fit together, but since they're there it's very tempting to use them.

One thing - putting a gearbox onto a floating axle, means that the motor will be moving around as well.  How is that controlled?  

Many thanks

JackD

[Miss Prism]

57 minutes ago, JackD48 said:

One thing - putting a gearbox onto a floating axle, means that the motor will be moving around as well.  How is that controlled?

 

Gearbox torque reaction control