I've now got a running chassis based on the guts of a Bachmann warship. The loco made its exhibition debut under test at Showcase with a fast run round Tonbridge West Yard before I'd fitted the decoder. It did get some odd looks from the public, this strange grey thing with no bogie sides and no pan, buffers etc.
I'd been planning on using DC kits sideframes for the bogies so bought a pair from Charlie at Showcase. When I got round to intruducing the frames to their prospective owner I found that the DC kits frames are designed to fit a 40mm wheelbase, whereas the Warship has 42mm wheelbase bogies and the 85 should have 43 mm. Rather than attempting a cut and stretch operation I've decided to have a go at scratchbuilding some new sideframes that - while still 1mm under scale length - will at least fit the bogies I have. I decided against trying to modify Hornby 86 bogies because the plastic they are moulded from is so hard to glue.
The basic bogie side on the 81, 85 and 86 is really quite a simple shape, it consists of a 1ft deep beam with a dropped section at each end. Rather than carve huge lumps out of the plastic I decided to use a strip of 60thou plasticard cut at 4mm wide with the two dropped end sections welded below it to produce the basic shape. Reinforcing fillets were added behind the joins and then the excess corners trimmed off to give me four (eventually) identical side frames.
The Bachmann warship bogie frame is moulded in a solvent friendly plastic so I could trim off all the detail from that and glue the new side frames to the Bachmann clip on moulding. All the spring detail from the Warship was filed back to leave a flat surface to accept the new parts. Once it was all flat then a piece of 60thou was glued to the filed side to bring it back out to the depth I needed before I could start rebuilding.
Each bogie side on the 85 has two pieces behind the main frame that can best be described as looking like an upside down bottle kiln. These were cut from more 60thou and glued to the previous layer. The gaps between the tops of these pieces were then filled with more offcuts to give a solid layer to take the main side frame member.
The lower spring plank of the bogie frame attaches (in my model) to the lower part of the 'bottle kilns' with the springs between the plank and the upper section.
I've added the first spring and axle box unit and things are looking reasonable so far
As I work on the next one I'll take some photos and add to this which should make the text a lot clearer.
Andi
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