Wrightlines Fairlie / EDM bogies is it possible?

[Simon Moore]

Having secured a Wrightlines double fairlie i was wondering if it would be possible to rid myself of the white metal bogies & pants motors for a sprung etched chassis from EDM as they look such a excellent designed item & miles infront of the lump of white metal that is supplied with the Wrightlines kit.

 

Has anyone else done this conversion, is it possible & how hard is it to actually do??

 

Cheers,

 

Simon.

[ngtrains.com]

I am not aware of anyone having done that conversion as yet but its certainly something we had in mind when developing the bogie.

 

I see no reason why it shouldn't fit although as you are deviating from the original kit it will need you to do some improvising. On the Wrightlnes kit they have a rubbish pivot arrangement where the top plate of the bogie (not something the real thing has) has three sort of oval holes, one each side and one at the front through which screws from the body protrude and the hole lot sort of shuffles round on the screws as a sort of pseudo pivot.

 

Our Taliesin kit was designed by Keith Millard with a view to using the Wrightlines bogie and it was originally to have been marketed by Wrightlines before the change of state with that business precluded that.

 

The EDM bogie has a pivot bar designed to pick up on the two side screws as in the Taliesin body kit. As this was designed to use the Wrightlines bogie initially then it ought to stand to reason that they are in the same place on the Wrightlines double Fairlie so, in theory, our bogie as it fits Taliesin should also fit the double Fairlie. You may be limited to having to use the "pre 1980's" rear end fabrication in the bogie as the longer more modern rear end may hit the fireboxes.

 

 

As an aside........

 

Many years ago I started building a pair of Wrightlines double Fairlie's and didn't like the bogies to the point where I was fretting out all the parts to make my own. For those I had got some final drive gearboxes and was planing on a single big motor, some whopping great flywheels and drive shafts to each end. As you probably know I drive the real thing and I wanted to recreate the "they're sluggish to start and a they don't stop" features of the real thing which result from their mass, large driving wheels, and only being braked on two axles.

 

That project never got finished but now its slated to get revisited with our bogies but still with the single motor drive