jessy1692

Many thanks Bernard, i think ill ill be giving branchlines a ring soon, need to improve the motor to bring it in line with the others, its ok but worthy of improvement/investment. Aha, Narrow Planet forgot bout them! i think one of the guys from there were doing a layout based on the Gas Works end of the line, think ill give them a shout because as i recall they were also looking to do kis of the hoppers. As for the Pecket, when i saw it at the south tynedale last year i couldnt get over the size of it! im sure i read somewhere the forward section was a dummy but full of concrete for adhesion/balancing because of the huge overhanging dropped frames for the cab? I may have just made that up though! Tell you what looking at that pic of the full size pecket it makes you wonder how any body fitted into the chopped down cabs for Harrogate locos.

Evening RT, just wondering if BArber may be making an appearence alongside your Pecket & Drewery this year? Just winding up bashing a langley WD Hunslet at the mo so would love to complete the set of Harrogate Gas Works locos, just thinking if these locos are popular would you consider marketing a conversion kit to make 'Spence'r out of a WD Hunslet? Nice brass cab, and new chimney/dome castings, chassis kit based on an 08 would be good too! Just a thought, maybe for to put in the maybe one day pile! Cheers James

Evening all, so following on from last time, I have cracked on a bit and got Spencer back into one piece. The cab roof i made time was consigned to the bin and another one made that was square, every concievable space hase been filled with liquid lead, expecially the tanks to try address the balance issue and i even managed to get a bit of paint on it! The chassis is a lot better than it was although it does make a lot of noise campared to the farish 08 powered pecket & drewery diesel, any one know any alternatives/plug in replacements for minitrix motors? Here he/she? is in photgraphic grey or primer if you like, parked up next to the Pecket camparing size, doesnt the Pecket look huge for a 2ft guage loco? This was just after the first round of filling and attaching of vairous bits of pipe such at the lubricators on the smokebox and the odd boiler mounted sandbox operation rod (the dome thing nearest the cab is a sand box aparantly) Now according to the plans i have in the Harrogate Gas Works book and the 2 pictures i have, the dome is a little under size and the taks are slightly too short and the front frames arnt as long as they should be so it gives the impression of being higher than it should be, the chimney and cab hight is just about spot on so maybe one day i may get round to changing the dome but i think its looking ok so far. The original Spencer had its safety valves moved to the front of the dome so i recreated this by making a very small bracket for the slightly shortened langly castings to be stuck to. Once painted, i 'borrowed' a whistle from a Hornby pannier tank and mounted it sideways behind the safety but horizontal, looks odd but distintive as per the prototype. (St Paddy & 50 006 shouldnt be in the coal drop sidings, there just parked up whilst i was cleaning the dcc circuit, so if you can imagine a couple of 21t hoppers instead!) After a couple of checks and to see if it still runs, thankfully it did but its only highlighted where the 009 track has become warped, especially the points so whilst contemplating how best to rip the tack up I brushed on a couple of coats of lovely Humbrol black Last night i had a bit of a detailing session and created some head lights akin to the ones that it out shopped with from Hunslet in 1921 after the cut down rebuild, other bits picked out in copper and a bit of red splashed on teh bufferbeams. Off to Doncaster at the weekend so hopefully may find some Spencer name plates from some one (247 might be best bet) and a nice spray fo satin varnish is a must whenever the weather decides to behave! Nice to see 3 of the Gas works locos altogether now, just waiting RT models to release a kit for Barber, hopefully itl be this year when the real Barber gets back up and running with teh Pecket, cant believe out of 4 locos for a relatively unkown little line 2 are still in existance and hopefully working this year! I still need to figure out what couplings to use, latter the Gas Works used Bucke eyes so i may investigate Kadees for the job, but yet to make up my mind. As you can maybe see the track is slightly askew and makes the Drewery look like its falling over so this will be coming up shortly and the baseboard squeared back up and the track re laid, i think when it was ballasted it warped whatever we pinned the track to, not sure what it is for the 009 but i dont think its up to the job, its been down for years but the little trains have no where to go, so now iv got 3 of the 4 gas works locos (hint hint rt models!) a proper run will be shortly created. Think thats it for now, cheers for looking in. Been an intersting little project over the last few weeks, just wish the minitrix chassis wasnt quite as crude as it is but hey ho, iv got a Spencer now! Cheers James

Right then, so going from where i left it last time with the valve gear mounted the next step was to get the wheels & cogs back in and get the whole thing running smoothly. Easier said than done, it took best part of an evenings work to get the wheels lined up to get the coupleing rods on and the chassis running smoothly, the problem was getting the wheels at such an angle that when they were dropped into the axle slots that the they would revolve around the idler gears so the the crank pins would line up. Anyway after much to ing & fro ing i got it sorted and the motor reconected and wired it up for a test run, thankfully all was well and touch wood still is With the chassis put safely to one side it was now time to start on the body, i followed the instructions on for the main body components pretty much as they came except for leaving off and detailing bits as i knew id knock them off as there was a lot of mods to be done. The gas works line had a very limited loading guage so first job was to chop the cab sides down so out came the saw & files This was the easy and i was feeling pretty pleased with myself, all i needed to do now was re profile the spectacle plate and i was laughing.... That didnt last long as when i got some plans scaled down i realised it wasnt just re profiled but it was a whole new cab that had been put on when it was rebuilt by Hunslet, que a bit of head scratching a few cups of tea until i came up with an idea I didnt fancy drawing the curve myself so i chopped the the plans up and stuck the cab profile onto some plasticard and cut round it very carefully. It was all going a bit too well so i cut the cab spectacle holes out and was rather pleased. Next was making the roof so i pre rolled some thin plasticard to roughly the right profile and cracked out the liquid poly After trimming down i thought id give it a test fit, then i realised id messed up pretty badly, for some reason id measured the distance from the back of the bunker to the front of the cab so the damn thing was 6mm too long, and as id done it to scale with the plans, it was nearly 2mm too wide! Golden rule measure twice, cut once or measure as many times as you can but make sure you measure from the right points!!! So after a bit LOT of cursin, i managed to get on spectacle plate off and cut off the extra 6mm but then was left wondering how to slim it down, only was i could thing of was by cutting it down the middle and filing the 2 halves to get rid of the 1.5mm extra. It took time but i got there and last night glued it back together and let it harden over night. So tonights job was to cut the cab openings into the new roof, i checked it was all ok from last night and smootherd over the joins which will require a little filler but look ok at the mo. Now i didnt fancy drawing the outline of the cab opening on as drawing on a curved surface is a nightmare so i choped upn the plans again. I cut out the top of the cab on the plan and then cut out the opening to leave me with a paper template of the opening which i taped on and followed with a pencil, the results i thought were pretty good so after careful checking and straighting up out came the scalpel. I carfeully followed the lines scoring away till the openings literally fell out, after a bit of filing it was begining to look something like. Now for the spectacles themselves, i did try chopping off the rims off the original spectacle plate but this ended in disaster as i couldnt get them cut withought bending and endangering my fingers So i coilde up some thickish copper wire round a scredriver and made my own. After gluing them round the window holes i filed them down to flatten them out. It seems to have done the trick but its a apin to keep them on especially filing out the window holes when they are attached, they soon come off and disapear into the black hole on the floor.... Next job was to lop off the top of the chimney, Hunslet literally did the same when it converted, i drilled it out a little and glued it into the smikebox. So as of tonight heres what Spencer is looking like, its getting there but theres still a lot to go. Next job is to check it runs ok, so tomorrow there coudl be a bit of cursing as i think it might start shorting......but for another day.... Cheers for looking James

Cheers Corbs, its s good use of some scrap bodies, but it took a lot of filler!

So here we go new year and another new project. I have been wanting to crack on with my 009 version of Bilton coal drops for a while after building the RT Models Harrogate Gas Works Pecket & Drewerey so whilst im patiently waiting for RT's release of the Barber kit i got tempted at Wakefield show to visit LAngley and purchase one of their war office hunslet kits to bash around, thanks in no small part after chatting to the owner of the excellent Purbeck layout and chatting to him about his version of spencer and how he built his. Anyway, a little back ground, the Harrogate Gas Works line was a 2ft guage line running from the Leeds Northern main line (Harrogate -Ripon) where there were coal drops at Bilton junction, the line then ran through open countryside round the north side of Harrogate to the corporations gas works at New Park. The line was known locally as the Barber LIne, so named after the 1st loco Barber, named after the managing director of the gas works. It opened in 1908 and was quite successful, so much so that another loco was needed by 1920. After the ww1 there was a surplus of narrow guage engines that never made it to the front. WD 1340 was purchased from store and was rebuilt by its makers Hunslet in leeds to 2ft guage and also had its cab and boiler fitting cut down to fit in the very restricted loading guage to fit through the tunnel into the gas works, on arrival it was named spencer after one of the gas works directors. From the outset Spencer wasnt very successful, it wasnt as powerful as Barber resulting in a deviation of the line to lessen a gradient just so it could haul a train without slipping. Spencer eventually became a little more successful after it was found it would steam best on briquette coal, as came about when normal supplies of steam coal were scarce due to the general strike. Spencer settled down to a faily steady life as Barber's stand by and worked on the line until 1943 when the peckett arrived and was finally cut up in 1946 so ive read, heres a link to the only known phot of spencer in steam: http://www.warofficehunslet.org.uk/ukphots/WD1340Harrogate.jpg As you can seen the cab is heavily cut down from standard and also the chimney is smaller than standard as well. There is a good picture in a book about the line of an advert from Hunslet in the Railway Magazine in 1920, showing Spencer fresh from conversion looking very handsome to go to Harrogate. Obvioulsy they were trying to drum up some business to get rid of a few more suplus locos! So thats the history lesson over, now heres where the knives & saws appear........ First of all i needed a minitrix 2-6-2 chassis said the instruction, now i wasnt paying what they were going for on that well known auction site just to chop it up so i took a gamble and went against the instruction and got a 2-6-0 for just under 30 quid which i thought wasnt too bad, so before i started the kit i stripped the chassis down gave it a good clean and made sure it was ok before i started messing with it. The main difference with the chassis is that the valve gear needs to be moved from driving the centre wheel sets to the front wheels, no mean feat for me who has very little in the way experience bashing steam engines about...... So it began with it stripped down and the useful bits stored, it was time to start hacking the chassis block. I was quiet surprised as to just how much metal needed to be removed according to the instructions. Most of the front of the chassis needed removing to as to get the front frame extensions to fit, now the instructions on the langley kit are ok as a guidline but i found myself getting a bit lost as to how the motion plate & fornt extention peices fited on. It took a bit of head scratching and a couple of nights work to get my head round it all and the castings tidied up a little but tonight i managed to get some bits glued together. The first bit to secure was the new motion bracket as you have to split the original motion into two separate sides. After that the front extention was glued and squared up, although im not convinced just yet...... Now here is the fiddly bit and the bit i have been dreading, rebuilding the valve gear. I followed the instructions and the very useful diagram of walschearts valve and managed to get it through through in my head. First job was to slip down the new cast cylinder mounts on the chassis extension, i took off quiet a lot of material, perhaps more than i should of but managed to get one side lined up, next stage was to secure it to the new motion bracket. This was very fiddley and one of them jobs you could do with having 3 hands! Next was getting the crankpin in the hole and making sure the gear ran smoothly easier said than done..... after a lot of trail and error i got one side of valve gera on and running very smoothly so chucked a bit more super glue about to lock the monting point up and then it was onto the other side, same process as before but i couldnt get smooth at all. 3 hours it took tonight of stripping down and rebuilding but i have finally got the gear on on running smooth. I found that bending the con rod out slightly heped as the cylinders are further out than they were for an N guage 2-6-0. Also what i found through a lot of trial and error is to make sure the fly crank & fly crank rod are set as close to the centre of the wheels as possible, alos i found that there is quiet a lot of play n the minitrix rods that making sure there is enough room around the motion bracket for the bits to move around, if not it gets tight very quickly and will undo any glued joints youv just done! After much cursing, cigs & tea i have finally got a rolling chassis of sorts together tonight. Heres a couple of pics shoing the vavle gear in place and the front extension glued in as well. The front bogie was added to check clearances and all seems to be well. Only problem now is ill have to take out the crankpins again when i put the idler gears, wheels and coupling rods in/on...........so ill be pretty much back to square 1 getting it all running freely again, but i suppose ill know what im doing this time, famous last words! I think thats it for tonight, apologies for any spelling mistakes and if its a bit of a ramble but its late and this valve gear has driven me round the bend. Hopefully by the weekend ill have a fully working chassis again and then i can crack on hacking the body about to get that distinctive cust down cab. Any comments critisims always welcomed, and if any one else has built one of these langley kits please let me in on any tips! Thanks for looking James

Exactly, who would have put money on that? And with the 37 to 23 cut and shut and 10,000 project anything is possible. 7076 with the western engine did sound bl**dy awsome as i recall!

Hmm interesting stuff, would be good to hear it running in 832 one day maybe then........ Iv heard 832 is off up nymr later this month, will be nice to see and hear it again, last time i saw it it was on east lancs many moons ago. Cheers for the reply 25901, one to watch out for in the possibly, if, but, maybe, potentially one day category! James

Any more info 25901? Looks interesting but cant find any more info??? James

Lovely stuff, keep em coming! This ia what rmweb is all about, great inspiration. Cheers James

Thank you for posting all these, this to me is what rmweb is all about. Such a shame its at an end. Thanks to you posting all these and thanks to your father for taking these pics, it really opens your eyes to the day today running of the railways as was. Truly one of the greatest collections iv seen. All the best James