Jakesdads 2020 shelf queen comp' entry.

Here is my contribution to the shelf queens competition.
This is a scratchbuild in 4mm 00 gauge LNER F8. I began it years ago but had trouble with the running quality, it lurched around like a drunken sailor in forward, but fine in reverse.
I read somewhere that the Romford gears I was using had meshing problems, not all of them, just some, and I think mine are in that batch. Anyway I ordered some new ones from London Road Models which duly arrived and that is as far as it got.
It is now some 20 years later and I'm going to give it another shot!
Here's the body, made of plasticard with the boiler the center roll from a bus ticket roll.



The chassis frames I thought I had made myself but re-looking at them I think I may have bought them, they have sprung hornblocks which if I remember right ran reasonably well.


Any way thats the state of play at the moment.
Once I get the chassis back together with the new gears I will be able to judge how things will progress.

Cheers, Pete.

 

As the weather is a bit iffy today I had a go at my shelf queen effort.
The main reason for not finishing it in the first place was the poor running. I believed it to be down to the poor meshing on the gears so today I have swapped out the old ones and installed the new London Road gears, well what a faff. I had to attack the gearbox with my files to get the gears to mesh then the screws that hold the motor wouldn't fit so I had to elongate those holes too. As it was getting a bit knocked about and a couple of the plastic brake castings had broken I thought the best thing to do was remove the brakes and rigging too.
Any way I eventually got the gears and gearbox to fit, but I had to remove the wireing then refit that after all was assembled.

Once all was back together, I gave it a short run. The gearbox decided to try and revolve around the axle, so I've had to solder that in place tried another run, and I could hear a clacking noise, after investigating further I found one of the coupling rods clipping the end of one of the brake cross rods so I'm wondering if that was the original problem after all? It does now run pretty well so its on to rebuilding and painting the chassis etc.

Thats all for the moment. Tomorrows weather looks worse than todays round here so maybe I will get a bit more done. Fingers crossed.

Cheers, Pete.

 

My apologies for lack of updates on here, truth be told, nothing has been done to it. Until today.
The biggest problem has been in my building a new workshop, details elsewhere. Suffice to say it was a pita.
Anyway, I've stripped the chassis down and resoldered a couple of frame spacers as they had come adrift. At the moment it's sitting in a bath of Bar Keepers Friend to hopefully clean up the brass for painting, I haven't used this product before but have heard good things. It's had about 20 minutes up to now and with a little gentle brushing with an old tooth brush it's already looking much cleaner, I don't know how long is long enough for it's bath but it has it's work cut out so I might leave it overnight.



Anyway I will let you know how it has turned out in the morning.

Cheers, Pete.