Silver Fox LMS 10000/10001 kit.

I managed to win this kit on Ebay (again!) over the weekend, and it arrived today. As with the "Golden Arrow" kits, it's basically a resin body conversion to be fitted onto a proprietary chassis, either Bachmann/ViTrains Class 37 or Hornby Class 47. It's already in primer and a really nice crisp moulding with almost no 'flash', so not much work to prepare, when I get around to it. I already have a ViTrains Class 37 chassis in readiness for the "Silver Fox" 18000 Gas Turbine kit when they get the next batch of bodies in, so I could use that if I'm ready to start before the 18000 kit is back in stock. As can be seen, it includes the decal set, pre-moulded glazing, replacement bogie sideframes etc, and looking on the "Silver Fox" website, I don't see this model listed, so maybe it's now discontinued. Jeff (SR Man) got me thinking about the LMS diesel when he recently posted pics of his, and when I saw this kit on Ebay, it was a 'no-brainer' for me. I'll likely do a 'How-to' when I make a start, so watch this space!
Keith.

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I've presently got about four projects 'on-the-go' which I can switch around to if I'm waiting for parts or (as currently) I get to a point in construction of a model where I seem to be 'banging my head against a wall' as I am with the "Leader" project. Since I had already acquired a Bachmann 'Class 37' DCC ready chassis for this "10001" model, I decided the time was right to get stuck in. The 'LMS Twins' also spent around a couple of years working on the Southern region apparently, so after some research photo's from the internet, I painted the body "BR Green" with small yellow panels each end and 'late' logo each side. I won't go into the procedure for this, as most kitbuilders are capable of painting a model, suffice to say, I use acrylic paints as I find it easier.
Anyway, I decided I would make the lower pair of lamps on each nose of the loco functioning, but as these are only around 1mm diameter, even 1.8mm LED's were too big, so as with my 'Lima' Class 33's I did some while ago, I went for 1mm optic fibre cable and dual white/red 'Lighthouse' LED's. Although the chassis was DCC ready, the pcb didn't lend itself to fitting the LED's, so that went, and was replaced by a suitably sized rectangle of stripboard with resistors for lighting functions soldered in place and pickup/motor connections made to the decoder, my 'standard fit' 4 function "Laisdcc decoder (under a 'tenner').

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This gives a bit better idea of the setup using the fibre optic cables. It's quite a simple setup, I used a 10mm length of 2mm bore brass tube pushed over the 'tower' part of the 'lighthouse' type led, then pushed into the other tube end, two pieces of 1mm fibre optic cable of sufficient length to reach the light housings in each loco nose. the assembly is easily held together with 'heat shrink' sleeving, carefully shrunk onto the parts to hold them together. A word of warning at this stage, if you use this method, DO NOT use any form of glue, as it tends to chemically melt the optic fibre, the only other method of securing that I've found is to use 'Blu-tack'. (more about this later).

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Now with the chassis prepared, I used the drivers cab assemblies which fortunately came with the donor chassis (An Ebay buy, without a fitted body) modified somewhat to fit each body end, but before gluing these in place, I internally painted each 'cab area' and added a small SMD LED as a cab light, which use the green and purple LED connections (F1/F2) on the decoder.

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This pic shows the cab assemblies just loosely dropped into place, before cab lighting LED's and wiring were glued in position.

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The first pic in the sequence shows the body with cab lighting wiring soldered to the pcb, all ready for the body to be fitted to the chassis. Some thin strips of 'Plasticard' were glued each side of the bodyshell to take up the slack between body and chassis, and after decoder setup and function testing, with the fibre optic cables fixed around each side of the chassis and secured in position with'Blu-tack', the chassis was dropped into the body and the relevant optic fibres fed through each 'lamp hole' and cut flush with the body. It's not really possible to physically fasten body to chassis, but as a 'bonus', the "blu-tack' at each corner ensures that there's no danger of the chassis dropping out of the body if you pick up the complete loco, it takes a reasonable effort to part the two, as the "blu-tack' "sticks like **** to a blanket!"
Here's the completed loco, just possible to see the front white lights illuminated.

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......and with cab light on. Another one in the queue for a weathering session, I really must get around to it!

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