A Right Pair of Limbys!

[Halvarras]

As somebody whose main interests lie mainly in the mid-1960s to mid-1970s Cornish railway scene I had no intention of modelling the mid-late 1980s.......then a while back I stumbled across a mint Kernow/Bachmann 37207 'William Cookworthy' at an irresistible price, and it was downhill......I mean, onwards from there. I only planned to put it in a display case with six otherwise redundant Bachmann clay hoods, then it was joined by 37671 'Tre Pol and Pen' and four CDAs, one thing led to another (as they do in this hobby I find) and before long I had three class 37's, a '47', a '50', a '31' (all in different liveries), a '142 Skipper' unit, two industrials and a collection of wagons, mainly limited to china clay types, in an effort to keep a lid on things!

So that's all I needed then. I wish...... I became fixated on 50149 'Defiance' and a polished-up GWR150 green Class 47! But not at the prices being asked on the Bay of E for the Hornby and Bachmann versions of these which well exceeded my budget for this unexpected modelling direction. Was there an alternative?

Well, yes of course, if one is prepared to utter the word "Lima". But those HO bogies under the '50' are even less acceptable now than they were in 1980. Not so long ago the replacements would have been Lima Class 37 bogies, but these days we have the Hornby Railroad range. And Lendons of Cardiff selling Hornby spares at frankly eye-watering prices......but in a good way for once! So I searched out a near-mint Lima 50149 (beware, the earliest ones had no orange warning stripe, wayward printing and poor masking of the black around the cab - best avoided), and Lendons supplied Class 66 motor and trailing bogies, Class 37 motor and trailing bogie frames and a Class 92 chassis frame - this would provide the bogie pivots, at £1.99 it wasn't worth messing about with plasticard - around £22 all in. The '66' motor unit and trailing wheelsets and retainer were transferred to the '37' bogie frames - it's worth mentioning here that one of the reasons for the low prices is because the motor unit has pick-ups but no wiring (so is not RTR), and the trailing bogie doesn't even have pick-ups (despite being described as 'complete'), so some pick-up fabrication and soldering is required.

The connector block bolted to the chassis is to make it easier to take it apart - I only need to get a screwdriver out, not the soldering iron! Wheel clearance is the biggest issue, hence a lot of excavation at the trailing end - there are three holes here with two cross-beams left in place for the '92' floor section/pivot to sit on, which basically raises the height of the pivot by the required amount. At the other end the '92' motor housing required no filing to fit and slotted straight in! (A comment here - on some Hornby Railroad chassis, e.g. Classes 31 & 92, this is a separate part glued in - not always very well it seems, usefully so in this case - on others e.g. Classes 47, 66 & 73, it's moulded integrally with the chassis frame, so such use as this would require saw and files.) Note the small notches on the top edge of the chassis frame to correctly align the bogie pivots - these were taken from the Lima originals which are correct, it's just the bogie wheelbase which is too short. The white 40thou reinforcements were probably not necessary and caused problems in the corners at re-assembly where they interfered with the wire handrail ends and cab interiors, hence the shortening and thinning you can see.

A cruel close-up showing how the chassis sides were opened up to allow as much clearance as possible for the outer and inner wheelsets on curves. Maybe that reinforcement wasn't such a bad idea....... My end-to-end BLT layout is still currently packed away following a house move so I hope this will do because no way am I taking similar chunks out of the lower body sides! The blank area to the right of the middle axlebox is where the Class 37 cab step has been carved away - that was tough going, this plastic is quite hard. There's really not much else to be done about this, but it's not that noticeable at normal viewing distances. An attempt has been made to replicate the 'bent' look of the Class 50 cab steps using a pair of old Wrenn Class 08 shunter punched steel radiator ladders - I couldn't see how to glue these on so each has a split pin doing the honours. The notch and alignment mark on the pivot 'bridge' are visible. The bufferbeam steps are (rather old) Shawplan items, but why did I cut them short I can almost hear you ask? Because this chassis frame was swapped in from another Lima '50' I was planning to sell on and it still had the large couplings so I had to shorten the ladders. It also has cast whitemetal MJT buffers which were worth keeping too. Great care is needed to avoid cracking the Lima bodyshell at the corners either end of the bufferbeam recesses when getting the body off the chassis.

So what did I end up with......?

Good enough for me. The obvious failings are sandbox filler hatches still extant (I wanted to avoid repainting any large areas, filling small features entails sanding a larger patch and IMHO patch-painting never really works and draws attention to itself - is this any better than leaving it alone? - and there are eight of them). No roof box radio pods (fixable if such detailing parts exist - TBH I never looked!) I did however repaint the yellow cab fronts due to the handrail carving and drilling. Small '149' (sorry, blue '9s' not available!) off an HMRS sheet. Replica Railways roof box lenses, orange square MU symbols and (my last four!) later-style OHLE flashes. Replica numbers also overlaid on the weedy Lima printed numbers to beef 'em up a bit. Black data panels off a Howes sheet (I'm out of those as well now!) Engine room window-to-grille conversions done and all grilles painted black - also some straightening up around the cab doors/sides. The circular roof vent is a filed-down Airfix mineral wagon coupling pin with a small plasticard disc added on top (never throw ANYTHING away!) Confession time - I do have a pair of Shawplan etched '50' windscreen frames to hand but didn't fancy the extra work involved and hoped that the black 'mask' and white nose-top handrails would distract attention from this well-known flaw - I think it does too.....?

 

The original intention with 47484 'Isambard Kingdom Brunel' was to utilize the spare drivetrain from a Heljan Class 47 Mazak rot victim in an older Hornby Class 47 chassis frame (beefier than the Lima equivalent) and I obtained one from Lendons alongside 50149's Railroad parts, but the success of 50149 made me think again, and a repeat performance would be far less work to boot. This time Lendons supplied the same Class 66 motor/trailing bogies but with Class 47 bogie frames and a Railroad Class 47 chassis frame  - yay, simples! Er, not so fast - 47484 retained its original underframe to the end (and still has it). And of course I now had the very thing going spare on the redundant older Hornby frame........I have done three such grafts before but not since 1996; so I knew it could be done, I just had to remember how! Basically, the Lima battery boxes have to be sawn off, but just the boxes each side - the centre part remains to support the ballast weight and retain some structural integrity. From there it's trial and error until the Hornby box fits, but a small 'flange' left at each end gives a gluing area - I found it necessary to pack it with strips of 30thou plasticard. It's also necessary to file/sand down the underside of the Hornby box to increase clearance. Also on two of those three 1990s jobs I replaced the nonsensical curved bufferbeams with straight ones fashioned from two layers of 40thou plasticard, fitted with turned brass buffers. But since then Heljan spares have become plentiful (OK, they were plentiful) and I had a pair of their cowled bufferbeams and buffers to hand, so.......I did contemplate cutting away the entire Lima bufferbeams and cowls and replacing with the Heljan parts but was concerned that there was insufficient gluing area so reverted to Plan A and cut out the curved 'beams, left the cowls in place and filed down the Heljan parts to fit within, with a 40 thou backing to strengthen the assembly - Plastic Weld would hold it in place until I breathed on it too hard so I resorted to good ol' superglue......

This modification requires the chassis frame to be cut back to clear, so the very end is sawn off and a 30thou insert glued in against the 'step' at the bottom; when set it's filed back flush - the same way I did it back in '96.........gosh, I feel old now:

This time the connection block is bolted onto a piece of 40thou screwed onto the DCC socket mountings - the nearest bolt is merely a support leg. Those white pipes look much better to the naked eye, honestly! I like white wheel rims but they are such a pain to do......

And the finished result looks like:

I'm not sure what was more 'fun', carving off 50149's Class 37 footsteps or the secondman's corners' superfluous pipework on this one! Again I applied some straightening-up to the green/yellow interface on the cab sides. The fibre-glass roof hatches were painted in an appropriate-ish colour and the bufferbeam cowls repainted too (the apparent green mismatch is barely noticeable in normal light). ETH connectors and roof aerials are more Heljan parts (the latter appear to have been fitted when the loco received another repaint in 1987/8 which moved the data panels & shed codes from below the numberplates onto the bodysides, and gave the yellow more rounded corners on the cabsides - but perhaps oddly it didn't receive orange warning stripes at that time - good job too!) The cab front vertical grabrails should be yellow but I prefer them unpainted.

Final touch was two coats of Johnson's Klear for that very bulled-up look! I haven't used this before but know of its usefulness thanks to this forum. I also know that there's been question marks about its current formulation in the UK. By chance I was recently hunting for 'Gulf' (oil) logos without the need to purchase a big sheet for just two of them and found Black Square Decals (www.blacksquaredecals.co.uk) who had just the job (and other oil company logos too), and also sell 30ml bottles of Klear to aid application of their waterslide transfers - they state that their supply is imported from the US and offered in this modeller-friendly-sized bottle. I certainly found it easy to apply and a little on a flat brush goes a very long way, especially on a Class 47, although being so thin it hasn't hidden that weird rough surface texture on the sides that some Lima 47s suffer from, including this one - I kept wanting to sand it down but that would have been somewhat counter-productive!!

 

So here are the right pair of Limbys nose-to-nose, motor ends inwards (since I had fitted a Hornby battery box to the '47' I took the opportunity to turn it around and have the motor in its rightful place at No 1 end!) A final point of minor interest - I have noticed that when running, the middle wheels of the motor unit in both locos don't turn!

Edited November 22, 2022 by Halvarras
Rethink on GWR150 47s with original battery boxes...

[CEINEWYDD]

I now understand "Limbys"!!!  Nice work, and I have checked out black square too.  So will be looking at them for scratch built hopper wagons for the Aberthaw & Bristol channel cement works. 

[Clive martin]

Those 2 limbys are superb ,although the old lima pan cake motors are crude and somtimes poor runners limas body mouldings are very good and with a bit of work can look very good ,i love what Hornby have done with the old lima models with improved drive units ,i look forward to seeing your china clay layout with these locos in service!