009 Knightwing shunter conversion using a Graham Farish Class 14 chassis

[Retiarius]

An 009/H0e 0-6-0 diesel shunter using the Graham Farish Class 14 chassis

 

I wanted to make a shunter for my 009/H0e model railway that looked ‘chunkier’ than the one described in Railway Modeller using the Kato 105 chassis. This conversion, to me, looked wrong because the Knightwing body had to be shortened by 2 grill bays. By using this chassis only the small door at the radiator end of the bonnet was cut away, the Knightwing chassis being shortened by 8mm at the font and the balcony at the rear. This lets the shunter have a 4 door bonnet.

I looked at using the Graham Farish Class 08 n-gauge outside-framed shunter chassis so as to have working conrods but, instead, I decided that it may be possible to use the Graham Farish Class 14 n-gauge inside-framed shunter chassis instead as this was, at 61mm, longer and also had the benefit of having working conrods.



I wanted to run this loco using DCC and so I had to fit a Digitrax DZ125 decoder to the chassis.

This presented a few minor problems to be solved. The Farish chassis is live and connected to one set of wheel pickups.

To fit DCC you must isolate the motor completely from the chassis. Farish connect to the chassis using a copper strip screwed to the chassis which is then trapped against the PCB at the rear of the motor by a ‘pin’ cast as part of the chassis block.



This ‘pin’ has to be removed. For this task I used a burr in my Dremel drill, carefully grinding the pin.and overlying copper strip, away whilst leaving enough copper to enable me to solder the black wire from the DZ125 to it.

At this time I used my solder rework station’s hot air gun to remove the surface mount resistors that were on the circuit board. This completely isolates the motor inputs from each other.



After de-soldering the existing yellow motor wire you can then solder the DCC decoder to the chassis contact (decoder black wire), the already installed yellow former motor wire (decoder red wire), and the PCB motor contacts (decoder grey and yellow wires).



That completes the chassis modifications. An hour on the rolling road ran the chassis in nicely.

Now it was time to tackle the body modifications required to fit the 00-gauge Knightwing diesel locomotive body to the Graham Farish Class 14 n-gauge diesel chassis.
 
The first job was to plate over the existing hole in the chassis plate using plasticard stuck to the bottom of the plate. This would give me a  flat surface to mount the GF chassis to.
 


 
This was done before any parts were cut so that it was easier then to cut the Knightwing chassis to length and width – ‘cut-and-shutting’ out 8mm in the middle to shorten it to the right length before cutting out the new chassis mounting hole. I also shortened the back and sides of the chassis plate to minimise overhang.
 

 
The bonnet sides and bonnet hood were then shortened to fit. The cut for the bonnet sides being just outside the small plain access door at the loco front.
 

 
Once the chassis mounting hole had been cut, and tested the front of the cab modified to fit around the motor then the cab and bonnet was assembled. I have left, for now, the bonnet hood as a press fit until final assembly after painting.
 
The insides of the bonnet sides were lined with lead plates for added weight.
 

 
The loco was then readied for a test run
 

 

 

 

Just a quick update - after 17 months! It has taken me that long, and the building of a dedicated modelling workshop, to get around to finishing this model.

 

 

The Knightwing shunter has now received windows, handrails and nameplates by Narrow Planet. I named and numbered the loco in memory of my father who was born in '23 and received the D.F.M. from King George VI on the morning of V.E. Day' May 8th 1946. He died 20 years ago and I still miss him every day.

 

The loco was then 'dirtied' using my first use of Games Workshop Citadel paints. The dirt is a wash using "Nuln Oil" and the rusty exhaust used a base-coat of "Typhus Corrosion" then a dry-brushing of "Ryza Rust" followed by a top coat of of "Typhus Corrosion". Where do they get those names from!

Overall I am pleased with the Games Workshop paints and will explore using more of them in the future.

Now I just need to sort out the Led lights and glue the cab roof on when it is all wired up.

 

 

[Retiarius]

Just a quick update to show how well the Graham Farish Class 14 n-gauge chassis works under my Knightwing shunter conversion. A scale lower speed of <1.4 mph and a scale top speed of 24 mph (set on the Digitrax DZ125 DCC decoder) are easily achieved, either light engine or when pulling a train.