naugytrax

(Sorry, redundant post. I didn't see corax67's reply above!)

Er, not quite all of them. R.552 "Oliver Cromwell" had the tender with 6 traction tires and a permanent 2-wire connection to wipers on the loco drivers. The available tractive effort is quite impressive compared to later versions! My sample has the anonymous chassis with the "SU" marking, like Jim's. I just got it out for a look, and I was reminded that originally the loco pickups only wiped the front and rear drivers. I added wipers for the center drivers, gaining an improvement in electrical connectivity. This might be significant in a DCC conversion. Oh, and I don't think it is "Triang-Hornby". The box that I bought it in (from W&H Models, 9 pounds ninety-five) is marked "Hornby Railways Silver Seal Locomotive" and "Made in Great Britain by Rovex Limited" By the time the Silver Seal locos appeared, I'm pretty sure they had dropped the "Triang" identification.

Thanks for the suggestions, folks. I'll be using the latest chassis (Chinese made) rather than the original chassis with the X.03 motor. This may provide a little more clearance if I decide to lower the body. However, if I did this I would very likely need to do one or more of the things that Stephen listed. In particular I'd have to refashion the chassis mounting points, which does not appeal. On a lowered body I'd have to refit or replace the buffer beams as Stephen says, otherwise they'd be too low, and that would mean somehow reshaping the swoopy bits of the footplate at the ends. I'm toying with the idea of cutting a horizontal slice from the bottom of the tanks, the bunker and the smokebox saddle. Unfortunately this would eliminate the daylight under the front of the boiler, which is an attractive feature of the new chassis. The jury is still out on how I will proceed. The price of a membership in the Brighton Circle is outside of my budget for this project, and the going price for Russell's book is even further out! Can books like this be consulted in reference libraries in the UK? I'll be visiting at the end of the month (going to the Bristol show). Rather oddly, the height of the Hornby model is less obtrusive in the lined-out LBSC version than the plain black body shell that I'm working on. Maybe once 32103 is painted and weathered it won't worry me as much!

I wonder if anyone can point me to dimensioned drawings or scale drawings of the LBSCR class E2 0-6-0T? I'm planning to add some details to a Hornby model, but before I start I'd like to know if serious hacking will be involved. No doubt the wheelbase is wrong, because it uses the generic 0-6-0T chassis, but I'm more worried about the height. The buffers are OK, 14 mm above the rails, but the cab seems very high and the side tanks and bunker seem to match it. My web searches have so far turned up a few photos, but no drawings. Thanks in advance for any help you can give.

There's a book, if you can find a copy to borrow: "LSWR Locomotives: the Urie Classes", D. L. Bradley, Wild Swan 1987. It has an "official drawing" (General Arrangement) of an H15 at the back. Good luck with the search!

As newbryford suggests, it's pretty fat. It measures 39 mm wide, whereas a 4 mm scale model probably shouldn't measure more than 36 mm. The extra width may be due to the style of motor used. It has a conventional open-frame motor fixed atop one bogie, so it needs lots of room to swing! The wheels have a crude profile, so they get dirty quickly. I've added extra wipers, but current collection is still an issue. 4 wheels have traction tires, which doesn't help with the dirt problem. I have improved some of my older diesels by fitting Ultrascale wheelsets, but they don't have anything suitable for this one. In any case, the excessive width means that upgrading the running has a low priority. I may eventually just junk the body and use the bogies for an SR diesel, if I can get the wheels sorted out.

To answer the OP's actual question, the Peco "Six-foot way gauge", SL-36, gives spacings of 50.0 mm on the Streamline side and 66.5 mm on the Setrack side. I use the Streamline spacing on straight track. My minimum radius is 24 inches, with easements, and my longest vehicles are Hawksworth coaches, 10.5 inches over buffers. As the track eases into the curves, I eased the spacing out to 60.0 mm at the tightest radius. It turned out that this provides about 13 mm clearance between GWR Centenary coaches, which are my widest stock, and about the same between BR Mk I coaches, which are longer but narrower. So it's possible that I didn't need to increase the spacing on curves at all, but I wanted to leave plenty of space for visitors with longer coaches, and to allow for possible inaccuracy in my track-laying. Probably about 55 mm spacing would give a better appearance on 24 inch curves. (If appearance can be said to be a priority on this ridiculous curvature!)

There's a picture like this in "The WR Diesel-Hydraulics", Hugh Dady, Ian Allan 1989. On page 9 we see "D6530 crossing Little Petherick creek" on 25 July 1964. The leading coach is a green Maunsell type, and the next one is dirty maroon. It could be a Collett type, but Dady says they're all Maunsells. Is this the picture referenced above?

5-pole armatures for converting 3-pole Ringfield motors are sometimes available on eBay. They have the same overall dimensions, including shaft diameter and pinion size, as the 3-pole version. Last September I bought one from eBay seller "earlsmeade" and put it in a Class 29 mechanism. It works beautifully. Unfortunately this seller is not offering them at the moment, but you might be able to message him.