Mark's 1947 & 1957 Big-Four Workbench

[FoxUnpopuli]

For a future OO Garden Layout covering all the Big-Four carriers, I have been buying second-hand locomotives and stock for a couple of months now.  This is sort of a cart-before-horse scenario, as I've bought a Victorian house which internally needs pretty much rebuilding from scratch, in a plot of land where if Ellen Ripley were here, would probably agree it requires us to take off and nuke the site from orbit to get any semblance of order in place.

 

However, in the safe, warm, fireside Christmastime residence of my honourable parents' home, I have begun to amass this rag-tag collection, and I've been servicing it whenever I visit.

 

Yesterday's batch is pictured below:

 

The 4F and Scot are mine, purchased new many (many) moons ago.  I'm pleased to announce that the Scot just needed a defluff and light lube and runs like a champ.  The 4F I simply stripped to the cogs, cleaned, lubed and rebuilt as a matter of course - I've bought four others recently and they are all receiving the same treatment.  Again, I was pleased that mine is one of the better examples of the model, albeit very amateurishly weathered by my barely-teenage self.  This will be rectified in a batch with all the others sometime 'soon', but I experimented with some number removal and found that a light touch with a glass-fibre brush lubed with IPA seemed to be a good method, followed with a polish with cutting compound, wiping up with IPA again.  A nice glossy surface now awaits transfers.

 

The Colletts were recent 'irresistable' secondhand purchases, one privately and one from a well-known big model retailer.  Now it's a shame I mixed them up and don't know which from which, because one of them has a truly horrendous 'fix' in lieu of a brush retaining plate - I've started a thread on 'modelling bodgery' just to do that justice.  Amazingly, it runs fine - better than the other one.  The other I have stripped completely and rebuilt, but is slow and seems to be working hard.  Monitoring voltage suggests it has a high-resistance but I haven't quite figured out where the issue is yet.  Any helping hands on the compact Collett much appreciated.

 

The V2 is a lovely example provided to me by @ikks.  It really is a lovely model, albeit the years have thrown up the usual Bachmann maladies - split pony truck axle tubes for example.  It runs like a champ though, and the body and valve gear are immaculate.  Over the coming weeks, I'll be servicing some B1s, V1/3s and more V2s which are very much in the same boat, but in far poorer condition. Hopefully I'll be developing some fixes for the common Bachmann issues on these locos which aren't bodges and we can all see how I progress.

 

Today's fresh item is another Airfix 4F, however.  You may have seen all this before but I like the old 4Fs and this is the final one of the first batch to be stripped and rebuilt so I'm documenting it here in the next couple of hours.

 

Tidily repainted & detailed by previous owner.  Lettering a bit skewiff though. 

 

Ready for stripping.

 

- Mark.

Edited December 19, 2019 by FoxUnpopuli
Grammar/spellings.

[FoxUnpopuli]

Well, I have a Airfix 4F that's fully functional.  A few photos for fun.

 

This is how I remove the brush retainers - through the chassis, before removing the motor.  You can do this 'levering' method from the top too, but I find if I slip doing that, I bend the tags.  Either way works.  With the retainers attached, the wire loops through the tender frame, so it's just a bloody awkward thing you have to do to service them.  Of course, as you lever, best to keep a finger ready above the brass retainer - when they pop, the spring will do its level best to disappear into the carpetosphere, never to be seen again.  I remove both, then try to remove the brushes before dropping the motor assembly through the frame, else I find the loose brushes also ping out and disappear to neverwhere.

 

Evidence of over-oiling.  This loco ran, but was noisy and sticky, and the chassis was sticky also, jamming the wheels occasionally which you'll see later.  Dismantling the unit is quick and easy, four screws and two clips and it's apart.

 

I stripped the tender down to this level - I don't take the magnets out.  All of the parts except the brush springs are in the jar, which contains IPA.  Jar closed, jar shook thoroughly!  I fish each part out with tweezers and dry with kitchen towel.  A gentle rub of the traction tyres cleans and rejuvenates them, I have found.  I use a toothpick to scrub dirt out of the gearteeth roots.  I also cleaned out the housings with make-up spec cotton wool buds - they don't shred fluff as much as the baby ones.  Drying with kitchen towel, maybe also shredded into little pads and poked into corners with a jewellers 'driver.

 

Reassembly was mostly uneventful, I use a needle oiler almost exclusively on 4Fs.  On splitchassis locos, I use PECO Electrolube or similar.  If a loco has a worm drive, I use a dab of the white PTFE/Lithium assembly lube very sparingly, as is it quite thick.  One thing I did find...

 

 

I fabricated a spacer washer from some hard nylon tube I had, pushing the end over a cocktail stick and paring off a 0.75mm (ish) spacer with a craft blade.  Not ideal, but it would have needed quite a stack of the OEM washers to take out the play.  I swapped the original washer to the commutator side and fitted the spacer between the pinion and the second gear on the armature shaft.  Time will tell how well this works - and it may go into the bodge thread.

 

The result was good running - from the tender at least:

 

I like the Airfix ringfield mech - I know many don't.  However, I find it robust and good running, so I'm looking forward to see how they perform in the coming years in my new venture.

 

Anyhow, for 4298, the chassis was stripped...

Again, evidence of overoiling.  Also, a little overspray was evident, so it was all cleaned down, reassembled and lubed.  I didn't take the conrods off, and I wish I did, because they are definitely contributing to the stickyness, but a dab of oil on the pins resulted in the following:

 

 

All I have to do now is clean the oily fingerprints off of it!

 

Not much content here, I'm sure everyone's serviced a 4F before...  but I enjoyed the process, and if I do this much detail again (rather than a couple of photos) I'll try to make it worthwhile.  I'm thinking of fabricating some fixes for those Bachmann pony truck axles and reversing linkage mouldings - that might be worthy.

 

Next installment looks like a bevy of 1980s Hornby Ringfields.  Not sure if they'll be worth it as they're rough runners when they're good, but I'm going to try.  Two Black Fives, a Duchess and a 4P Compound - all my old fleet, as I don't think I'd be daft enough to buy them second-hand.  Purely sentimental value, these will be relegated to the back of the shed unless they suddenly become spectacular runners.  I have a CDROM replacement motor which we may try if any one of them turns out to be rubbish, but I'm going to gut them as completely as possible, clean out the insides of the axle tubes, oil and reassemble, and see what we get.  Any bets on bad pickups spoiling play?  We'll see.

 

But for now, keep 'em lubed,

 

- Mark.

 

 

 

Edited December 19, 2019 by FoxUnpopuli
Added 'next installment'...