RosiesBoss Posted May 8, 2014 Share Posted May 8, 2014 Introduction Around 1987, I privately imported a Hornby Thomas loco for my then 5-year old son to use on his simple circular layout. I repainted two Hornby 4-wheeled coaches as Annie and Clarabell. A year or so later, I motorised an Ertl Toby diecast push-along toy, using a Tenshodo spud. I found an unbranded 4-wheeled end-platform coach on a “bring and buy” stall and repainted that as Henrietta. An Ertl Bertie was also used on my son’s layout. These all saw a lot of use with him until he got a little older and they then slept in a glass case. They have since been used on my club’s “U-Drive” layout at a few of our shows. Other “Thomas” Characters My Carmarthen Junction layout http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/70550-carmarthen-junction-miscellena/ has a substantial collection of 00-scale models, many of which have supplemented the above characters (despite lacking faces): 1 Emily Motorised Kitmaster kit 1466 Oliver Airfix/Dapol 2509 Spencer Hornby live steam 2516 Douglas Repainted Mainline Dean goods 3440 City of Truro Motorised Airfix kit 4472 Flying Scotsman Hornby live steam 6435 Duck Modified Hornby 8750 15105 Diesel Tri-ang/Lima Recent Stimulus A couple of years ago, my stepdaughter gave birth to a daughter. Young Audrey is now fascinated by cars, trucks and trains. (Her Dad works for Audi.) Early this year during a visit to my home, she saw “Carmarthen Junction” for the first time and recognised Thomas and Toby (who came out of storage just for her). She had a go at driving the trains – not just the Thomas characters – and was remarkably good at doing so. During recent visits to her home, I took an oval of Setrack, a couple of locos and a selection of rolling stock. This 2.5-year-old was still keen! I have just completed an easily transported fold-up baseboard with a 1st-radius oval of track which we can make operational a lot faster than assembling Setrack. She likes to sit in it (on the floor) while we both operate the trains. This set me thinking what other characters I could assemble for her to drive. (I have no illusions that she will be interested in model trains for very long and so am reluctant to invest a lot of money for toys that will be discarded after just a little use.) I realised that I had some components to make the body for a Gordon loco, to which I would need to add a running chassis and tender. Components Used for Gordon Tri-ang-Hornby Flying Scotsman body (lacking smokebox door) Thomas face from a long-discarded novelty watch Chassis and driving wheels from a Tri-ang Princess Elizabeth, with plated wheels and Magdadhesion Cylinders and valve gear from a Hornby Britannia Power pickup, front bogie and trailing truck from a 2nd-hand Tri-ang-Hornby Britannia Tri-ang X04 motor and gears from the same source 10mm dia inside bearing wheels for front bogie Tri-ang Princess Elizabeth tender 12mm dia Romford wheels (with plain bearings) for the tender Construction Very little needed to be changed on the FS body – mainly repairs to the cab roof and the cab floor. Dummy valve gear mouldings were removed from beneath the footplate to facilitate fitting to the chassis. After removal of its old hinge and catch, the face fitted the smokebox nicely and so was affixed with 5-minute Araldite, which also filled a couple of slots provided for the original smokebox door. The Princess chassis had to be shortened and ground back at the front to fit under the FS body. A brass extension was fabricated to locate into a slot under the smokebox and another to extend the frame under the cab and provide a convenient way to screw the chassis to the body. The Britannia cylinders sit much higher on the chassis than the FS ones, so a new stretcher was cast between them, using 5-minute Araldite. One this had cured, the assembly was milled back until the cylinders sat correctly in the frames. Some fouling of the connecting rods was noted during test assembly of the valve gear, so the slidebars were slightly shortened. A new rear stretcher for the valve gear was fabricated from 1mm thick printed circuit board. The tender just needed its wheels replaced and a new front coupling. Results After some “fettling”, this mix of components worked on Carmarthen Junction. However, the inside surfaces of the cylinders had to be ground back to allow the model to run on 1st radius curves without the bogie wheels jamming against them. Once testing was complete, I brush painted, lined and lettered the model (toy?). It now looks the part, especially hauling a pair of old Tri-ang red and cream “shortie” coaches. Costs I did need to buy a very battered Britannia loco and Tri-ang Princess tender – for $40 from Train Trader in Pymble. (No A1/A3 chassis were available.) Everything else came out of my spares box. The project took less than 10 days to complete. The current (May 2014) list price for a Hornby Gordon is $229.00. I believe I have achieved a very good return for my investment of $40.00. It’s also been lots of fun! I don’t think Audrey will care whether this example is a new one from Hornby (or Bachmann) or one constructed in Poppy’s workshop. She’ll just have a bit of fun watching or driving it until she moves on to her next interest. 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Iain Popplewell Posted May 8, 2014 Share Posted May 8, 2014 Hi RosiesBoss. Just spent a pleasant few minutes reading this thread,I really enjoyed it.Nice to see some proper modelling.You've really caught the essence of Gordon.Great stuff. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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