My English Electric 'GT3' Project.

I bought this kit from the various providers of parts some few months ago, but due to the kits total cost, (£250 so far!) and my lack of experience in brass fret chassis construction, I held off starting it until now. The chassis kit is one from Chris Gibbon (High Level Kits), resin body from 'Golden Arrow Models', detailing frets from Ian Macdonald, decals from Cambridge Custom Transfers and wheels etc from Alan Gibson. I'll have added costs for paint etc, but for now, I hopefully have all I need to get stuck in. I went for the 'Deluxe' kit, which includes Mashima motor, gearbox etc, plus hornblocks and compensation beams to build a fully compensated chassis (nothing like jumping in at the deep end!).......just hope I can do it justice.
Anyway, I made a start this morning by removing the tender chassis from the fret, as I figured I may as well start with the easier(?) bit first, so here we go. Here's the complete fret.

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The tender chassis is the part at the left hand end in the previous pic, so I carefully removed it and cleaned up the odd attaching bits, leaving it ready to tackle the bending with my 'Hold'n fold.

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I'm pleased I bought the Hold'n fold, as it's coming in very useful, leaving perfect bends quite easily. Chassis bent ready for various bracing struts to be soldered in.

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The various holes etc in the fret are intentionally slightly undersize, so it's necessary to open them out as required with a taper broach to accept 2mm brass tube or 1mm brass rod, testing for correct fit before soldering into place.

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I've assembled the six hornblocks for the tender axles, built and soldered in the compensating beam which is soldered to 2mm brass tube, pivoting on 1mm brass rod, and removed the first of the 6 sections which would accept plain bearings, but need removing to accommodate the hornblocks in due course. This will be a "Slow & Steady" build, probably over the course of several months, as I'm not rushing this job, and it's quite likely that I'll be breaking off to do other projects from time to time if I get stuck or brassed off with certain jobs.
Keith.

 

Spent some more time today on this build, and got the very time consuming job done of making up the horn blocks and soldering them into place. You need to be careful not to solder the blocks to the sliders otherwise the compensation won't work. All seems ok.

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Having got that done, I thought I'd just test fit the axles and wheels to see if all is well.

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While I had the packets of wheels out, I thought I may as well do another fairly easy job, that of constructing the loco's front bogie, and gave the wheelsets a trial fit. Once again, all ok it seems. Here are tender chassis and the front bogie.

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Next I turned my attention to the motor/gearbox setup, as the gearbox has to be built up and motor fitted to the gearbox frame. Not too difficult as almost all spacers are supplied, just had to add a couple of fibre washers to complete and then gave it a test run. Also made a start on the loco chassis itself, more hornblocks to make as the loco chassis is also compensated.

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This is the completed front bogie the right way up! the side extensions are there to mount the bogie side frames onto. Hopefully more progress tomorrow.

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Hi Pete.
The chassis is set up to have the drive axle fixed, only the middle and rear axles are compensated. Saying that, I appear to be short of two 3mm 'Top Hat' bearings in the kit, which take the drive axle through the chassis itself, so I'll have to order those in, and while testing the Mashima motor yesterday, it quit on me, so that's another snag I'll need to sort. Anyway, here's the chassis set up in my 'Builder Box' jig, everything seems square so far, and it's a useful bit of kit.

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Next job is to build up the connecting rods, these being a laminate of 3 separate fret layers soldered together. Chris Gibbon (Highlevel Kits) suggests using two 1mm twist drills into a bit of wood at the required centres to allow the 3 frets to drop over and stay in position while soldering, and this seemed a good idea, so This was duly done, although the second set of rods (they are articulated) is not quite so straightforward as only one layer has a hole at both ends. Nontheless, it's not too difficult to get these all soldered up.

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Here are both sets of rods soldered up and just placed in position for the next step.

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The next step was to link the two parts of each rod together, and Chris suggests the use of 'Brass Lacemakers pins' for this. A trawl of Ebay for these drew a blank, and then I had an idea. One of our fellow Lady bowlers has the hobby of lacemaking, so I asked if She had any and was duly presented with half a dozen, so, problem solved. The pins are passed through the connecting rods to link the two parts together, and secured with a small amount of solder on the back, the remaining pin length is cut off and the stub filed flush to leave the rods articulation intact. Job done!
(To be continued)

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