And Now For Something Highland....

Discussion in 'Kits, Kit bashes & Scratch builds' started by Wolseley, Mar 27, 2020.

  1. Wolseley

    Wolseley Full Member

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    Well, I've yet again started something new before I've even got past the initial stages of the last thing I started. This time it's a conversion of a Hornby (current company) "Black Motor" 700 Class to a reasonably close approximation (there will obviously need to be some compromises) of a Highland Railway "Barney" 0-6-0.

    The first job to do was to convert it to three rail, otherwise I would not be able to run it. I used a Marklin 7164 skate for the third rail pickup and rerouted all the existing wiring from the locomotive and tender wheels to the one contact on the motor. I'll have to put some tape or whatever around the place I joined all the wires together, but that shouldn't present any problems. It runs beautifully, even around Dublo 15" curves, which I was hoping for but didn't know whether it would or not.

    Barney 1.JPG

    Barney 2.JPG

    The one thing I haven't decided on is whether I should alter the outer frames on the tender chassis to make them look more Highland. My concern here is that would be very fiddly and easy to make a mess of. I'm thinking that I might leave that as is, at least for now.
     
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  2. Wolseley

    Wolseley Full Member

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    I've just now finished separating the body into its various components. The main job will be to remove the funnel and the extension to the smokebox. The replacement funnel will be from a scrap Tri-ang Caley Single which may also provide the smoke box door, unless the brass casting of the latter I have from Caley Coaches but can't find at the moment fits. After that I'll judge whether I need to shorten the front of the footplate a bit or not. A bit of studying of Volume 2 of the RCTS work on Highland Railway Locomotives is called for.

    Anyway, that's enough for now- it's almost 11pm and that's not a good time to start hacking a perfectly good locomotive body about.

    As an aside, when I had the chassis and tender running around the track, I noticed that it was drawing less than 0.1amp, a big change from the 0.5 to 0.6amp on average that my Dublo and Tri-ang locos (and around 0.7amp for my Trix Flying Scotsman) draw......
     
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  3. paul_l

    paul_l Staff Member Administrator

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    Of course you could always try and model one of the Dubs batch with an 8 wheel tender as shown in Peter Tatlows book. :whatever:

    Ok, I'll cut down on the coffee.

    Paul
     
  4. Wolseley

    Wolseley Full Member

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    I actually did think of doing that but decided against it, as my Highland and Caledonian models are to be representing the period immediately prior to the grouping by which time, I believe, all the Barneys had acquired six wheel tenders. I might do a Small Ben or Big Ben with a bogie tender and my Castle will have one.
     
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  5. Keith M

    Keith M Staff Member Moderator

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    This just goes to show how far motor development has advanced in the last 40-50 years. The modern version can motors are far less 'current hungry' than the old fashioned open frame ones, but wether they will outlast the older versions is yet to be seen. Some of the small Hornby loco's in recent production use the "Scalextric" type motors which apparently have a life of around 150 hours, no repairs here, just a 'swap-out' replacement. 150 running hours on a layout might well spread over a fair period of time, but I can't help thinking we are heading down the American thought path of when it wears out, just junk it, no repair possible! Hardly "Planet-friendly!"
    Keith.
     
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  6. Wolseley

    Wolseley Full Member

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    Getting there:

    Barney.jpg
     
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  7. paul_l

    paul_l Staff Member Administrator

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    now that's a nose job

    Paul
     
  8. Keith M

    Keith M Staff Member Moderator

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    Yes, serious surgery indeed!:thumbup:
    Keith.
     
  9. Wolseley

    Wolseley Full Member

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    It's beginning to look more like a Drummond engine now. I'll have to do a bit more work around the smokebox/sandbox area than I initially thought. I was hoping to get away with just lengthening the sandboxes slightly, but I'll have to do a bit of reshaping and filling of the base, as the boiler sits a bit higher than the one on the Caley Single donor (I know it sits a bit too high for a Barney as well, but I did say that there would be a few compromises). The smokebox is a bit longer than it should be for a Barney but, to get it right I would have to cut a bit out of the front of the footplate and, as the mounting screw goes at the very front of the body, this could compromise the structural integrity of the body (the alternative would be to cut a bit out of both the chassis and the body, and I'm not about to do that).

    Barney c.jpg
     
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  10. Toto

    Toto I'm best ignored Staff Member Founder Administrator

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    Lovely work.
     
  11. Wolseley

    Wolseley Full Member

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    You have probably noticed that I tend to start on one project and move on to another before I get the first one anywhere near finished, and the Barney was no exception. Well, I have returned to it to do more work. I did say at the start that it was not going to be a perfect scale model, but rather a reasonably close approximation (with some compromises) of a Highland Railway "Barney" 0-6-0.

    The compromises? The tender is a bit too long and has incorrect sideframes, as I did not want to perform major surgery on it, particularly as I was retaining the existing pickups on the tender. The other compromise I planned to put up with is that the boiler is a trifle higher than it should be, but the difference is not that great that I think it really matters. There is, however, one compromise I didn't plan on that resulted from my not shortening the smokebox as much as I should have. By the time I realised this, I had got to the stage where I didn't really want to saw it apart and restart, as there was a distinct possibility that the structure would not survive being hacked about further. I had to make some alterations to the front with styrene sheet to compensate for this error. The result is that I will have a Barney that has a longer tender than it should (which I had accepted ) and a longer smokebox, and front sandboxes, than it should (which was unplanned). All in all, it will look like a Barney (except maybe to Highland Railway experts, who would be a bit thin on the ground in Australia) and be fairly convincing as long as you don't run a scale rule over it. Here's where it's up to:

    P1010696.JPG

    And there's another Highland conversion on the way now too. I'm in the process of converting this Oxford Radial Tank to 3 rail, using a Marklin skate. It will end up being something a bit different from an Adams Radial Tank by the time I'm finished with it, but more on that later. I feel tempted to get another one, this time in LSWR livery, as they are attractive engines and the Highland did at one point have two of them on loan.

    P1010695.JPG
     
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  12. Wolseley

    Wolseley Full Member

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    Oh dear. I just realised that when I gave the body its first coat of paint I made a big mistake. I don't know if it was because I painted it in less than perfect lighting conditions, or if it was because I was painting green over black, but I used the wrong tinlet of paint. I intended to paint it with Humbrol Southern Railway olive green, as it seemed to be the closest I could get locally to Highland Railway green (which by the early 1920s was rather variable in hue in any case) and, yes, I painted it in Southern Railway green, but I used a tinlet of malachite and not olive green. My mistake became obvious when I went back to give it another coat and did what I should have done the first time and switched on a couple of extra lights and pointed them at my work.

    Anyhow, now it has a coat of olive green, with the result that it's looking a bit more Highland now. It was a bit easier this time as the olive green has a consistency more akin to paint than the malachite did. Humbrol paints are a bit variable in quality.....
     
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