Michael Edge

Some work going on with Herculaneum Dock. This is inside Dingle tunnel, last time out we had all sorts of mysterious derailments on the plain track here so I lifted the track (after removing the LOR which also had some problems) and sanded the boards flat before relaying. The main problem here is the awful baseboard, originally this was just the quick and easy flat board fiddle yard with cassettes on it. However it became permanent when the dock was extended on to it at the front and when the layout went roundy the depth was made up with odd bits of spare plywood. It's a mess and very heavy but out of sight and OK as long as it works. The MD&HB's new Hudswell parked at the dockside, all ready for painting now. This loco is way out of period now but I want to have at least one of every type of loco they had, only Avonside No1 and the earlier Hudswells to go now. No chip in this yet but I've tried pushing it round the dock system, the buffer beams are in gauge but they will foul the LOR bumpers because 00 allows too much sideways slop as it runs. It will be OK down at Herculaneum though - and this is where the last of them worked shunting the tanks to and from Dingle oil jetty.

Last two photos of HE 3665 before it goes to be painted. Whistle string added and the return cranks shortened to match the crankthrow of the Slater's wheels, I'm a lot happier with that now. Now for something different, another C14 but from a different railway. This is the LSW C14 0-4-0T, converted from 2-2-0T railmotor locos. I have two of these to build for customers and so etched most of it, Nick Toix has already built the 7mm version of this etch. Frames and coupling rods in the Poppy jig, my usual compensation system, drive will be on the fixed trailing axle. Completed frame with Gibson wheels and footplate assembled, baseplates for smokebox, cab, tanks and bunker bolted on. I don't usually fit Gibson wheels at this stage, they will have to come off again, but I didn't have anything else small enough to set the loco up on. The first three basic components, middle of the cab floor will be fitted to the frames.

It looks as complicated to paint as it was to build.....

It was very starightforward, EM2s were officially mixed traffic as were the EM1s. NER locos were designated Electric Freight type1, Electric Banking type 1 and Electric Shunting type 1. Only No13 was Electric Express type 1.

No drive to the leading driving wheels then?

That looks very good, I wouldn't bother trying to alter anything now.

The Portescap gearbox was designed and made in the UK, I say "designed" but it is actually scaled down from a 7mm gearbox made by Leeds Model Co. back in the 1940s or early 1950s - the only difference was the substitution of plastic bevel gears for the original crown wheel and pinion. The coreless motors were Escap from Switzerland or in the case of the 1219 Faulhaber, there was an assumption (backed by an advertising campaign) the the coreless nature of the motors was the big advantage but the big change was the efficiency of the gearbox without any worm drive. The same can be seen today with the colossal power available from the tiny n20 motors on spur drive boxes - out of all proportion to the size of the motor. At the time they appeared there was nothing available with anything like to power and smoothness of a Portescap. I've used hundreds of them in scales from TT to O, I liked them because they were so easy to fit and the customers paid for them anyway. There must be over 150 of them running on the vast Carlisle layout and while some of them are a bit noisy they all perform well, the only motor/gearbox which can match them is the Comet GB1 with its Maxon motor. They all run on DCC with no problems, I have a few on my own layout which run with all sorts of DC control systems, including feedback types. None of them have ever suffered any damage, the only slight problem is that the best running ones don't quite stop when the controller is turned right back - you have to switch it off as well. I have seen a very small (single figures) number of faulty Escap motors and no faulty Faulhabers, the fault has always been worn out brush gear. Efficient gearbox design is the key to performance of models, not the motors, that's why the High Level ones are so good. The best 7mm ones all have a skew gear for the first stage gearing and are similarly efficient regardless of what motor is attached to them.

EM2s were black as intended - Electric Mixed Traffic type 2

An XO4 should run fairly cool, it's most likely weak a magnet.

The outward opening cab doors were unique to this loco as well. The space inside the cab is very small, the driver had to sit bolt upright and there was a large casing in the middle covering the shaft driving the main radiator fan which ran somewhere about his knee height. It has just occurred to me that the reason for its having two train heating boilers (one each end) must have been that there was no access through the inside of the loco. The fireman had the job of attending to the boiler so presumably the one nearest to him was used depending on direction of travel.

That's very interesting, in 1949 there was only one express passenger electric loco... So this livery might have been correct if the EE1 had ever been repainted - although it did get its BR number it remained in LNER green.

It still has a commutator and brushes, does sound like a wire off one segment. It is possible to take it apart but the brush gear is very delicate.

Not that quickly, it might be coming off your rolling stock wheels - especially if you have some plastic ones.

A better way would have been to put plastikard on both sides. In answer to an earlier question Evostik does have a limited life - but maybe about 20-30 years.

It might be the same side - or it might be the other side, to repeat, there is no way of knowing which side is which in black livery.

There wasn't much room where the engines were, another mystery is why they didn't make it a bit longer. It wasn't possible to lift the main engines out without dismantling the cab but a few inches extra length would have allowed this - it's not as if it had to fit any sort of length restriction. 10100 wasn't exactly a failure, it was at the time the most powerful single unit diesel in Britain and YE later used a similar power take up principle in Taurus but with only two engines. The latter worked perfectly well, they just couldn't sell it to BR.

I stick patterns for moulding down on the bench top with double sided tape and build a Lego box round them but yes, they do have to be fastened down.

That sounds like a turbocharged engine, the ones in the Fell were mechanically supercharged, superchargers driven by two 150hp railcar engines.

The extra grilles at the nose ends were added long before the middle coupling rods were taken off, that also involved moving the numbers. Our kit includes all the options I know about but one thing I'm not sure about is the window in the body side - was there ever one on each side? It's just about impossible to tell and it (they?) was replaced by a grille at some early date. The chances of getting any model of 10100 exactly right are remote - but who would know?

When I moved to Upton (West Riding) in the 1970s coal was quite legally bought and delivered in this way - it came as a bit of a surprise though when I got home from work to find the driveway blocked by a ton of coal. Back home in the Lancashire coalfield it always came delivered in 1cwt sacks.....

All the 2MTs had the same boiler at the same pitch, BR built locos in the LMS number sequence were identical and the BR standard version only differed in the gap at the front of the footplate. I've never seen a list of which ones were PP fitted though.

This loco is different in almost every photo, changes were just about continuous - and for good measure when it was in black livery it's impossible to know which side of it you are looking at, it had two left facing crests. Bizarrely when it was painted green it had the early heraldically incorrect left and right facing crests so it was possible to see which side was which.

The chain drive 4wh Sentinel is 34T, the rod drive variety was more popular for heavy use such as steelworks.

If you can wriggle it in and out of the boiler that arrangement will work well, you can fill the firebox with weight, the motor is in an area where you can't normally fit any. The motor is usually the lightest part of the drive mechanism so getting it up there is an advantage not a disadvantage.

2" is definitely too big, a quick look through some drawings showed up 1 1/2" handrails on a Midland loco but that's the biggest I can find, except where the "handrail" is actually a tube with a control rod inside.