Jump to content
 

Steve's Caledonian loco work bench


Recommended Posts

Now I put the blame for this on Andy (uax6) as we throw ideas, dreams and wish lists at each other from time to time both of us having an interest in older pre grouping Scottish locos. Richard (Ben Alder) cant get away scot-free either as he keeps turning out his wonderful small Ben class conversions that I simply drool over and turn green with envy every time a new one appears.  check out his latest Blog and you'll see what I mean  http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/blog/62/entry-15047-a-look-at-the-bens/

My goodness he has a greater production rate than the Lochgorm works.

   Any way after stitching my mates up lets get back to the maters in hand. As some of you know I work to a tight budget so I'm always looking at ways to keep costs down so tend to convert ready to run locos to get what I want.

     So while swapping wish lists with Andy one day he read mine and came back to me with the comments "Nice list but a bit short on passenger locos" Well I guess it was a bit tank and freight loco heavy but knowing that Richard must have brought every spare T9 between here and Inverness I knew I would have to look at another affordable source for a supply of suitable 4-4-0s to convert (I mean have you seen the price of the Hornby T9 on ebay lately?) I came up with an idea which I felt had merit and Richard kindly let me have a spare wide cab T9 body to have a look at and see if my idea could be made to work, All this has come along at the same time as the announcement of the up and coming GBL T9 model giving a source of affordable bodies to hack around (do you really want to pay £100 plus for a Hornby T9 and then take a razor saw to it? I know I don't)

     So I looked around for a RTR chassis that would fit the bill and came up with the Hornby B12 the later one with the new style smaller motor, OK its a 4-6-0 but in its favor it had a front bogie and the driving wheels size matched or was very close to the majority of Scottish 4-4-0, With the smaller motor driving the front main axle I felt one could remove the rear wheel set and cut the chassis back with out compromising the motor and hopefully with out the motor intruding into the cab too much So a B12 chassis was sourced from ebay for £12 plus p&p and was offered up to Richards T9 body to see if it would be a marriage from heaven or hell.

  

    To aid with the conversion I also got a set of Hornby T9 connecting rods to help reposition the center axle these were less than £4 from good old ebay (I saw a set last week for only £2.40p so there cheap and plentiful) In the first picture is the B12 chassis as it came.

post-17847-0-39998200-1415092424_thumb.jpg

Next is the stripped chassis under my little pillar drill with a pilot hole drilled for the repositioned center now rear axle this was found using the combination of the T9 rods and a protractor, in this view you can see a line near the old rear axle hole which will be the cut point for the chassis.

post-17847-0-61935200-1415092683_thumb.jpg

The final picture in this post shows the chassis now cut back.

post-17847-0-36676600-1415092752_thumb.jpg

Hope your finding this interesting and it might help some of you with thinking about ways of motorizing the GBL T9 as although I'm making this to fit a Hornby body the general idea should be relevant for the GBL model as well. more to follow.

                                                                Steve

Edited by Londontram
  • Like 6
Link to post
Share on other sites

Proper old school modelling, with a bit of engineering thrown in.

 

Cheers

 

Shane

Hi Shane,

Proper modelling indeed - and what a great idea.

As the OP says, it might not be for everybody but its simple engineering on a pretty rugged chassis that should be well within the facilities and abilities of most modellers who will contemplate motorising the GBL T9.

Like I suspect many more, i'll be following this very closely.

 

Regards

Link to post
Share on other sites

Having now cut the chassis down I opened the new axle hole up with the correct size drill and fitted and quarted the rear axle (Turns out I made the hole slightly to large as there's a little slop in the axle still no worse than some of Hornby's finest) Test fitting the chassis with the motor fitted showed that a bit of trimming would be needed to the motor mount the B12 motor mounted at a heigher angle than the Hornby T9 one so I set too with the junior hack saw and files to get this. The first picture shows the motor mount before cutting down and the second after.

post-17847-0-17848800-1415106160_thumb.jpg

post-17847-0-33646100-1415106188_thumb.jpg

Even so to get the right body height I ended up just slicing off the top of the motors nylon block, trust me it doesn't effect the motor in any way but its a tight fit height wise.The Hornby boiler I'm working with is metal and I'm guessing the GBL one will be plastic so there might be more scope to shave some plastic of the inside of the GBL boiler as well.

    The chassis was sat on a short test track and by tilting one way then the other the wheels ran freely with very little tilting of the test track so the motor was fitted and test run with direct wirering as I haven't by this stage done the pick ups and it worked the chassis running very freely which you can see in the next picture by the blurred wheels and the final picture shows the now 4-4-0 sat on a short test track after running up and down under its own power.

post-17847-0-69697800-1415106989_thumb.jpg

post-17847-0-26319200-1415107031.jpg

More later but as you can see its starting to look the part.

       It's very much a voyage of discovery and there are some thing I might change next time and will talk about them later but as you can see it has promise

                                                                                      Steve

Edited by Londontram
  • Like 5
Link to post
Share on other sites

Hi,

Just to bring the info up to date during this very interesting thread : the boiler of the GBL T9 is indeed plastic rather than the Hornby metal version.

This should make the fitting somewhat easier as it will be possible to shave away some of the plastic inside the boiler - i'm sure this will be necessary due to the thickness of the moulded boiler.

 

Regards

Link to post
Share on other sites

As this sort of job is very much trial and error (lots of error in my case) it tend to be a steep learning curve. one of the first problems to come to light is that due to the higher angle of the original B12 motor it starts to intrude into the cab. The mount for the motor is made up of two parts the main base and a small holding block that screws on from the underside of the base, this small block is the part that I've shaved the most of as you can see again in this picture.

post-17847-0-34701300-1415111276_thumb.jpg

Even with this work its still protruding into the lower part of the cab between the inner wheel arches a bit to far. A well placed crew could help but one idea would be to cut the small block back a few more mm but being careful as not to cut away were the screw fixes it to the motor mount base. The motor mount base is in turn fixed to the chassis with a self tapping screw that goes through a hole right at the back of the mount if this was re drilled nearer the shortened small securing block then the whole rear end of the chassis could be cut away even more freeing up more cab space. So might have a look at that tomorrow, its not that bad not like a wrenn 8F or any thing like that but it would be nice to get it as good as possible

                                                                                                                                      Steve

Edited by Londontram
  • Like 2
Link to post
Share on other sites

As this sort of job is very much trial and error (lots of error in my case) it tend to be a steep learning curve. one of the first problems to come to light is that due to the higher angle of the original B12 motor it starts to intrude into the cab. The mount for the motor is made up of two parts the main base and a small holding block that screws on from the underside of the base, this small block is the part that I've shaved the most of as you can see again in this picture.

attachicon.gifmotor mount.jpg

Even with this work its still protruding into the lower part of the cab between the inner wheel arches a bit to far. A well placed crew could help but one idea would be to cut the small block back a few more mm but being careful as not to cut away were the screw fixes it to the motor mount base. The motor mount base is in turn fixed to the chassis with a self tapping screw that goes through a hole right at the back of the mount if this was re drilled nearer the shortened small securing block then the whole rear end of the chassis could be cut away even more freeing up more cab space. So might have a look at that tomorrow, its not that bad not like a wrenn 8F or any thing like that but it would be nice to get it as good as possible

                                                                                                                                      Steve

Hi Steve,

This is only a thought, based on past experience with kit chassis building and might not be viable in this case.

In order to loose more of the motor mounting and keep it clear of the cab would it be possible to not use the rear section of the mounting unit and instead hold the motor in place using silicone sealant between the bottom mounting plate and lower edge of the motor, ie, 'sit' the motor into a 'blob' of silicone.

This can often pay dividends in the way of reducing motor noise also.

Might not be possible in this application but offered as a thought.

Regards

Edited by TheWeatheringMan
  • Like 2
Link to post
Share on other sites

Good idea I see exactly what you mean and I think its an idea well worth exploring if one could do this then the hole that originally fixed the small block in place could be used to fix the base plate to the chassis once a hole had been drilled into it.

Link to post
Share on other sites

I'll have a look at modifying the rear section at a later date but for now I'm going to look at mounting the body at the front end the first job being to deconstruct the Hornby body, at this stage we have no idea how the GBL body will come apart but I don't see why this basic way of mounting the body couldn't be adopted. picture one is of the deconstructed body.

post-17847-0-46199600-1415142566_thumb.jpg

Now working with the running plate and the chassis it became obvious that the original chassis extension at the  front was both to high and to long for the T9 body so taking the original front extension that was mounted by a single screw to the top of a "lug" at the front of the chassis. This extension was cut down to a point where a handy existing hole would allow it to be mounted below the lug as seen in the next two pictures the first showing the original extension and the second after cutting back and remounting under the lug. In the first picture you can see the handy existing hole about half way down the extension plate, its the smaller of the two holes.

post-17847-0-54597800-1415143207_thumb.jpg

post-17847-0-65568600-1415143238_thumb.jpg

This now brought the front stepped part of this extension right up under the smoke box area of the T9 body and a handy existing slot in the body for mounting the smoke bos was opened up to allow the body to sit over this stepped section (I hope this becomes clear in the pictures as it sounds so awkward to explain - sorry.

post-17847-0-47448100-1415143661_thumb.jpg

To tweak the body height a small fillet of plasticard was super glued to the extension as seen here.

post-17847-0-15842500-1415143908_thumb.jpg

The smoke box which originally fitted into the slot now used for the main mounting was cut and filed so it sat straddled over the new mounting.

 

 

  • Like 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

As this project was conceived before my awareness of the upcoming GBL T9 I had already sourced the correct pattern Caledonian white metal tender for the model I'm building off ebay so the tender you see wont be relevant for the anyone just motorizing the GBL T9 though because of the weight of this tender I might see if I can graft the T9 body onto this tender chassis but will need further tenders in the future so will look at the GBL one when it comes out but until I see one in the flesh I can only speculate on how suitable or easy it will be to convert. Here's the Caledonian white metal kit tender.

post-17847-0-23652600-1415194120_thumb.jpg

The next two pictures show the first fitting of the loosely reassembled body on the chassis, I haven't finalized how I'm going to secure the body at the rear until I've finished altering the chassis.

post-17847-0-35242500-1415194372_thumb.jpg

post-17847-0-10890100-1415194400_thumb.jpg

It looks a bit strange as the cab roof is still off but it dose show that the chassis and body will mate together and is a viable proposition, in the second of the two pictures you can see how the chassis block  protrudes into the cab so I'm going to strip it down and look at incorporating the Weathering mans idea to remove the small rear motor mounting block altogether thus allowing me to cut the chassis down more . well at least your seeing it warts and all but sometimes you learn just as much from getting it wrong as right.

 

   The next picture shows the smoke box cut back and the original chimney removed and the hole filled, the valve chest cover is a Caley coaches item and I will also use there chimney, dome and smoke box door as well in the process of converting this into a Caledonian Dunalastair III, here's their web site http://www.caley.com/index2.php (usual disclaimers) Again If your just motorizing a T9 you wont need to do this.

post-17847-0-65306300-1415195245_thumb.jpg

The Caley coaches valve chest cover.

post-17847-0-79516600-1415195276_thumb.jpg

Edited by Londontram
  • Like 4
Link to post
Share on other sites

  • RMweb Premium

Its looking really good. Apart from the small issue of the motor in the cab (Something that doesn't really worry me too much) it is as if it was made for the job.

 

Sadly I have got a widecab T9 in the bits box, looks like I might have to do something with it now!

 

Andy G

  • Like 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

Had a look at trimming down the chassis block to try and make it less obvious in the cab and after a bit of a think decided this time to just trim a little more of the chassis and engine mount rather than go to radical so the small top block was cut back and the main chassis had a step cut into it at the back. This now meant that when the body was mounted the chassis only protruded into the lower well between the inner wheel arches and after cutting the boiler back plate in half the top part could be re fitted to the cab, I gave it a quick coat of black paint as the freshly cut shiny metal made it stand out and look worse than it was. I think a well placed crew will pretty much hide the remaining bit of chassis have a look and see what you think.

       To be honest if this is the trade off for using a £12 B12 chassis over a £100 T9 one I think I can live with it. One of the next planed locos will be a Manson 240 class and I'll need to loose about 4mm on the overall length so will have to think again for that one but that's for the future and I'll have slept by then.

   Here's a look at the re-cut chassis sorry its a bit blurred but its my camera phone and the light wasn't good.

post-17847-0-69435700-1415209982_thumb.jpg

Ive also started to clean the boiler down including a molded line running the full length of the boiler, the dome will need to come off and be replaced slightly further forward with a more Caley looking one. Now the smoke box has been cut down its started to look a bit more Scottish - and I know what your thinking Richard "Not to late to turn it into another Highland small Ben"

post-17847-0-92262500-1415210472_thumb.jpg

I've just started to mark out and cut the smoke box wing plates but the wife's just called me for tea so I will leave that till tomorrow now. Thanks again for looking. Steve

  • Like 7
Link to post
Share on other sites

Have you noticed in the early days when your building some thing you seem to forge ahead and then you pass an invisible point when from that point onwards progress seems to slow down and even the smallest job can seem to take half a day and I seem to have reached that point. No matter lets look at the progress for today.

    Last night I started to cut out the smoke box wing plate - so much a visual feature of Caledonian locomotives, that was done and by using my gasket punch set (some of you might remember that from my coach thread) I cut out two plasticard circles which when cut in half were fixed to the splashers to represent the small connecting rod big end splashers. Next I built a false chassis and bogie mount under the front running plate to fill the air gap that so many older Hornby models had. I also added some small fillets of plasticard To the underside of the cab roof to help re-profile the cab cut outs but they will need 24 hours to dry before there set enough to file. Unfortunately at this point I nipped up stairs to get a book and as I'm still getting used to my new prosthetic foot managed to fall down on the way back and am now nursing a grazed dead left arm and a very painful a-se.

   Anyway here are a couple of pictures to show today's progress the first showing the oh so Sottish wing plates notice also that by cutting off the surround and sanding off the lugs I've managed to reuse the T9 smoke box door, the second showing the chassis extension around the bogie.

post-17847-0-59619000-1415291716_thumb.jpg

post-17847-0-02701600-1415291729_thumb.jpg

Finally some of the reference used, all old but my goodness there good and all brought cheap from ebay.

post-17847-0-16376900-1415292035_thumb.jpg

Once again thanks for looking.

                                           Steve

Edited by Londontram
  • Like 7
Link to post
Share on other sites

  • RMweb Premium

Steve, I hope that your fall wasn't too bad. Take it easy man!

 

I know that I've suggested this before, but could you humour me and put a ruler on the chassis block for me please? If you turned the block through 180* so that the motor was facing forward, how much would show in the cab, and would the motor fit inside the boiler?

 

This might be the easier way to loose it. Although I agree that your solution above works very well too.

 

Andy G

Link to post
Share on other sites

No prob Andy, if you don't mind I'll do it tomorrow as I'm feeling a little tender tonight and I don't mean the coal and water type LOL.

Hi Steve,

Extremely sorry to hear of your fall and very glad that it wasnt worse.

Take care my friend and make a speedy and full recovery.

 

This is fabulous work indeed and a pleasure to follow.

However will you please cease forthwith the use of the T9 or you are likely to increase the sales of the GBL model next week and make obtaining same even more difficult for many modellers.

You might even be responsible for punch ups between the two Drummond factions - Caledonian followers will be ambushing LSWR fans outside newsagents.

I've heard a rumour that the Eastleigh Popular Front are planning to march on St. Rollocks................!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.

 

Hope that gave you a little smile.

 

All the best Mate.

Edited by TheWeatheringMan
Link to post
Share on other sites

Thanks mate it did make me laugh, I think in some respect the project has already reached the point where the Hornby and GBL bodies split and take different paths as some of the jobs like the false chassis around the front bogie mount my not be relevant on the GBL model but these jobs are purely cosmetic now and as I said in an earlier post I hope it gets people thinking about alternatives when motorizing GBL locos. I am looking forward to seeing what can be done with the GBL T9 tender not only to kill the weight of this brick of a kit tender I have by using the T9 tank on the kit chassis but for future projects where the whole tender would be used in the conversion and I'm wondering if a couple of Hornby standard bogies could be used with plasticard side frames, the older cast metal Hornby bogies shorten quite easily if needed and new axle holes are easy to drill in the soft mazak type metal, I'm thinking aloud here as until it comes out were in the dark about how its put together.

                                                                     Steve

Edited by Londontram
Link to post
Share on other sites

 

 

I know that I've suggested this before, but could you humour me and put a ruler on the chassis block for me please? If you turned the block through 180* so that the motor was facing forward, how much would show in the cab, and would the motor fit inside the boiler?

 

This might be the easier way to loose it. Although I agree that your solution above works very well too.

 

Andy G

Right then Andy I've had a good look and although the work done so far stops the turned chassis from fitting inside the body just standing the two along side shows that it's not going to work very well. The first thing is the worm and gear will sit in the well between the inner wheel arches and will need boxing is so will end up taking up almost as much room as the chassis dose now, but the other problem is the angle of the motor means the top of the motor mounting and the motor its self would "lean" into the cab and would stop you from even using the top half of the back plate so would look more visible then it dose now. Here are two pictures the first showing the chassis with the body sat behind but in the same sort of position as if it was on the chassis, there's no problem with the motor in the boiler as its no taller this way or the other but you can see how the motor leans into the cab area just where the back plate would be.

post-17847-0-09730200-1415368289_thumb.jpg

and in this one you can see where the worm and gear would sit in the well between the inner wheel arches.

post-17847-0-62736100-1415368383_thumb.jpg

Sorry Andy I tried but I cant see any advantage in turning the chassis

                                                                                                       Steve

  • Like 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

Got to take the Mem Sahib out this afternoon so have only done a bit of modeling today mainly around the cab. The two fillets of plasticard fitted inside the cab roof yesterday had dried so the needle files and wet and dry was used to get the more rounded profile to the cut outs, its a shame as if I was building a Dunalastair I or II the original T9 cut out would have been almost right. The back of the Caledonians cab was straight across as apposed to the slight bow of the T9 so this was filed flat and also Caley locos featured a heaver cross beam across the cab roof at the back (and painted bright red in Caley days) so a small strip of plasticard was shaped and fitted and sanded to the final shape along with the cut outs you can see this in the first picture.

post-17847-0-43603400-1415369132_thumb.jpg

Next picture shows the boiler now dome less ready for the new reposition Caley one (Must get that ordered) this took some cutting off the boiler being metal but I wanted to retain the original boiler to help with weight over the driving wheels, the cut area was filled and has now been sanded flat. This is another problem that will need to be addressed with the plastic GBL T9 body where to put the weight?

post-17847-0-10952200-1415369310_thumb.jpg

The last picture shows the smoke box wing plate in a better shot than yesterday this was done by tracing the profile from a plan on a piece of paper cutting it out and transferring it onto plasticard.

post-17847-0-72674400-1415369591_thumb.jpg

Next job will be to remake the steps which are a little flimsy on the Hornby model

                                                                                                                      Steve

Edited by Londontram
  • Like 3
Link to post
Share on other sites

Next victim. just won this on ebay, another B12 chassis this one was sold for spares or repairs and advertized as trying to run but with issues which tuned out to be a partially seized rear axle. It took a drip of oil and working back and forth for 30 sec to cure but no matter as the back axle will come off at some stage to convert it into another 4-4-0. This one because of the issues cost £10.40p not bad eh. I've stock piled a few now so am out of the frame but be patient I've got three chassis now and the most I've paid for one is £13 though I fear this might soon change. Steve

post-17847-0-12081000-1415439898_thumb.jpg

 

  • Like 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
 Share

×
×
  • Create New...