Model Railway Forum

Lovely Hornby 3 axle milk wagon. Now there are three, thus becoming a Trifecta.

So, lit her up and she traveled a few yards, then stopped abruptly, motor whining, wheels not turning. Opening the shell showed these gears, and
reduction gears, had fallen off their respective axles. There appears there might have been a clip to hold them in place, long absent. So, spying an aluminum Coke can, the tab seems to be about the right size and the right width. After lubing the gears, I gingerly superglued the tab over the gears to hold them in place. Hopefully this will do the trick. An additional weight going to be added, this thing is very, very light.

Swing and a miss on the Coke can tab. It failed to enclose one of the idler gears to the proper alignment, so only was getting one gear engaged, whilst the other spun uselessly. By great luck, I stumbled upon the brass clip that was missing, it had fallen out by the wayside, and it neatly inserted into place creating precisely the required alignment. Next problem is that she is still too light to pull much more than three wagons, so an ounce of lead was procured and seems to give just enough weight to pull five and a guard van without heating up the Ringfield motor. Lovely to have this unique vintage piece prowling Henley.

Courtesy of the guy with the red suit and the big white beard, a Hornby Std Class 2 2-6-0.
She will be a useful addition to the class 2 motive power used for local passenger work through Lostock Junction and also for working the branch freights (despite the fact that on the box it says minimum radius is setrack 2nd radius, she seems happy enough on the first radius curves of the branch line - albeit without the additional pipes that come in the detailing back).

What beauty! Can almost smell the smoke!

Delivery today was a Brand new Hornby R 3421 Early Black BR livery Drummond 700 4F.

That looks good sandy.

Bought one of the Heljan Class 45's in BR Green from TMC in their sale. Also opted for their 'value weathering' so it doesn't look 'Ex Works'






Although classes 44 to 46 weren't common on our local Mid-Cheshire line or at Crewe, I did see plenty of them on my various trainspotting trips to places such as Derby and Toton. One I did see at Northwich, on the evening parcels service, was Class 44 D7 Ingleborough. I've written in my Ian Allan Combined Volume that I have cabbed and ridden in her, so the driver must have let us stay in the cab while he shunted a parcels coach into the bay.

D11 was one of the ones underlined in my 'Combine' but by then she would have been in BR Blue and without the D prefix.

I picked up a Peter's Spares X04 motor replacement ( designed by peter ) aswell as a tender drive hornby black 5 loco chassis.

My original intent was to fit the peters spares motor into the chassis once a gear had been fitted onto the rear driving axle, however, all this could only be done once the chassis had been dismantled to kit of parts and cleaned up. Though I might get comments of "you shouldn't use that", I cleaned the chassis up with enamel thinners on a cotton bud and after refitting the wheels of the 1st & 3rd axles with them the same way as on most tender driven models from the 80s & 90s ( 0non insulated on drivers side and insulated wheels on the fireman's side ) making sure also that the wheels were correctly quartered ( done by fitting the non insulated wheels into the chassis and holding the coupling rod in place on all 3 axles ) the insulated wheels could then be lined up with the wheel on the 2nd axle.

Once everything else was cleaned up, the chassis was reassembled then came the fun ( not ). Because the 3rd axle was not the exact type as what should be used when fitting a gear cog to it, I had to take a dangerous risk and take a chance gluing the gear to the axle as it would have worked loose and spun on the axle instead of hauling a train, fortunately I left the chassis on its side where the glue would not flow towards the opposite side and result in a glued chassis.

Fitting the X04 from an ivatt class 2 2-6-0 purchased from the port sunlight model fair back on 28/01/2024 for £20 ( fully working too and superbly quiet ) into the black 5, pictures are included below.





From the 2nd image with loco on its side you can just about see the windings of the motor, these chassis do have a huge weight in them which is also responsible for holding the cylinders in place aswell, cutting the weight above where the screw is located will ensure that the chassis stays in 1 piece and also enable the fitting of the motor. 1 important point here is that it may be necessary to drill the chassis for a screw to hold the motor in place, the chassis on this loco did not have this facility so I had to drill it using 1 2 & 1.6 mm drill bits to sufficient depth for a screw to hold the motor in place which I am pleased to say was successful.

I also need to paint the tender chassis black to match the rest of the loco as it was from 1 of the more up to date loco drive princess class locomotives where pickups are fitted in the tenders aswell as the locos. Luckily it has wires in place and now that I have some of the correct solder I can connect it to the loco and begin testing later.

After fitting the motor into the loco chassis, I connected wires from 1 of my tracks to the motor using crocodile clips on both ends and applied power to the motor and it runs very well, although that was while holding it in my hand to carryout the test. I ran it up to full speed in both directions with no binding or quartering issues and I look forward to wiring up the tender and possibly fireman's side pickups onto the loco which will be my self made pickups. Testing the motor did reveal a minor issue with the motor running the wheels backwards when powered up but moving the brush insulation sleeve to the opposite side of the motor quickly sorted that out.

Overall the conversion took about an hour including the cleaning up, cutting the weight and drilling the screw fixing point for the motor aswell as reassembly and motor fitting.

For anybody who enjoys doing this kind of modification to a loco chassis, now I understand why you enjoy it and I would certainly do more of them, hopefully including a hornby 8F chassis if I can find 1 suitable setup for a gear to be fitted as I think seeing a tender drive 8F chassis conerted to loco drive would be an interesting model to try and conquer, primarily because the chassis block would need to be drilled through and appropriately modified to allow fitting of gear for loco driven conversion, I did manage it once back in 2004 when I coverted a GWR 2-8-0 tender drive loco into a loco drive, it was not easy but it worked once I finished it after about 7 - 10 days whilst I worked on other projects and figured out potential ways to get the motor to power the wheels, not an easy thing to do by any means.

As for the peters spares motor, that was fitted into the Ivatt 2-6-0, the performance of the motor is impressive and as 00bill discovered in his review and fitting of the motors, they do run quite fast, I had barely applied power and the loco was spinning its wheels with 6 Mainline mk1 coaches on the drawbar but nevertheless very impressed with the motor and I hope to but more of them for my other locos including a triang A3, hornby tender driven Gresley A1 converted to loco drive and potentially 2 other black 5s and 2 B12s and hopefully a tender drive princess class locomotive, could be plenty of projects upcoming once I have purhased what I need, only time will tell.

Morning all,

Just like to share a pic of my ' latest acquisition '
Arrived this morning, brand new in unopened internal packaging and bought for a decent price considering these crazy day prices just tested on the rolling road and it ran perfectly straight out of the box so I'm one happy chappie.
As I'm going to be modelling a ww2 themed layout it was a must have really, well that's my excuse for justification anyway and I'm sticking to it

Cheers,Lee.