Blog- Up the Line - 1918 - Of pony trucks and dodgy track

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I have rather been enjoying myself with the new pony truck for the Baldwin, a nice little project, not too taxing and quickly producing a very neat and quite substantial little unit. But what's more, it seems to work! My track record (pun intended!), of keeping such things where they belong is not good so really pleased with myself. Have managed to fit the roller bearings and to compensate it. This was fairly straight forward, all I have done is to leave the frames slightly loose on the spacer which is itself free to move thus compensating for the fact that the screw to which it fixes is coming out at a bit of an angle. For the fixing, which also has to hold the boiler to the cylinder block, I cut the head off a long 8ba screw and soldered a nut half way down. This then screws into the cylinder block fixing the boiler and then the pony truck is attached to this with a nut. One thing I did have to do though was to mill out a section of the frame spacer to make a rebate for the nut to fit it as otherwise it would have been too low and fouled the track. A useful by product of this was that exposes the ends of the screws securing the sides thus making it a lot easier to thread lock them in place while maintaining the slight slop in the sides.

 

 

 

The only thing I have not managed is the split frame pick up so am just in the process of fitting some conventional pick ups.

 

In other developments, I have decided to relay the troublesome bit of track at the start of the first scenic section. Although locos were now running through the kink without derailing, one rail seemed to have dipped thus producing a very uneven section which was spoiling electrical pick up unless I blasted through at a scale 100mph. The track has come up and I have leveled the track bed with a lot of decorators caulk and a big straight edge. I have also taken the opportunity to iron out the bump into the traverser which although things seemed to run over it did not look pretty.

 

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