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OFFTHE RAILS

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  1. OFFTHE RAILS
    I bought a slightly damaged Triang L1 body and tender about 30 years ago (!) with the plan to put a decent chassis under it but apart from fitting wire handrails and RHS steam pipe and carving away the boiler skirt that was it until now.
    The Triang tender (which the L1 was forced to share with the Triang Midland 3F 0-6-0 and wasn't even accurate for the latter) was ditched long ago.
    The project was brought back to life when I spotted a Hornby T9 loco chassis on eBay at a very reasonable Buy It Now price. The L1 and the T9 have the same scale 10' driving wheelbase. A wanted ad on RMWEB got me a Bachmann N tender which is the same type as on the prototype L1s.
    So I now had all the bits, body, chassis and tender and all I had to do was put them all together.
    I found that :
    1. There's plenty of room for the T9 motor and it needn't protrude into the cab
    2. An extension plate (similar to the one on the Triang L1 chassis) is needed to support the front end of the body. As a temporary measure I made this out of 60 thou plasticard bolted to the T9 chassis to get the front of the body to sit OK I propose to make this out of something a bit sturdier later.
    3. My L1 body had some damage to the floor of the cab and dragbox area so I had to rebuild that area with 60 thou plasticard with a slot to locate with the protrusion at the rear of the T9 chassis
    4. It was necessary to remove the small pcb on the rear of the T9 chassis and the wiring to the tender to allow the L1 body to sit correctly. I intend to try to run the loco using the existing pickups on the bogie wheels and rear drivers and put a DCC decoder in the loco smokebox. If this doesn't work well then I'll have to put pickups in the tender.
    5. The T9 bogie out of line by about 3mm with the L1 bogie wheel frame cut-outs. The bogie pivot slot in the T9 chassis was therefore opened out so the bogie sits further forward.
     
    Here's a photo of the loco in grey primer with the N tender.
     
    As it's taken 30 years to get this far I don't expect to finish it in a few days but once a bit more progress has been made I'll post it.
     
    EDITED 31/10/2013
  2. OFFTHE RAILS
    The GWR 43xx 2-6-0s had the same wheelbase, cylinders and motion as the large Prairie Tanks (41xx, 51xx, 61xx, 81xx) so having picked up a Mainline 53xx body and tender and a redundant old Airfix GMR 61xx Prairie Tank, I investigated if the Mogul body would fit on the 61xx chassis.
     
    I measured the width of the Airfix motor and found it should just fit into the body.
    The chassis was disassembled so that the chassis block could be modified. The Airfix chassis block incorporates large weight blocks which fit inside the 61xx tanks. These were removed in a few minutes with my old angle grinder/cutter. The bunker end of the chassis was shortened so it would fit under the cab / dragbox (a plastic body locating protusion has to be removed from under the 43xx cab) and the lip on top of the chassis ahead of the cylinder locating slot was removed. The photos show the original and cut down chassis block.
    The chassis was reassembled with the cylinder block fixed in position using an 8BA bolt, washers and nut using the original chassis fixing hole already in the chassis block.
    The loco is rather light in weight at the moment and I intend to add some lead in the boiler once I've settled on a place for a decoder.
     
    Note: 1 The first Airfix Prairies had unflanged centre driving wheels but the later Airfix GMR and Mainline versions were flanged.Mine was an Airfix GMR type.
    Note: 2 The Hornby 61xx Prairie has a different chassis block and the motor lies sideways so probably wouldn't fit inside the Mainline body
     
     
     
     
    The Airfix chassis block

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