Rob Pulham
Western Thunderer
My mojo has been lacking for a couple of months or so and I was struggling to decide what I might do to try to get me back into the swing of modelling. While on holiday last week after listening to me huff and puff about building different tank engines, Chris had the idea of conducting a lottery to decide for me.
I have 8 tank engine kits in the pile so I wrote out the names on some strips of paper and Chris folded them up. Initially I though thast she was going to put them in a bag to pick one but to make it a little more fun and long lasting she divided them into two piles and put one in each hand getting me to chose a hand. This process was repeated a couple more time with the result that the F8 was the one that I ended up with.
I bought the kit from the Bolton show a couple of years ago for £95 from the bring and buy stand and this is what was in the box.
At the time the kit was £115 from Slaters without wheels so I counted myself as getting a reasonable deal with the wheels and the photos. The only basic thing that seems to be missing is brake blocks but I will pcik up a pack of the Slaters plastic ones at Telford.
Since getting back from my hols I have had it out of the box and done a bit of reading up in the RCTS green book albeit there isn't much on them.
I have a few dilemmas in terms of I do, do I:
1. Make it spilt axle? If so how would I accommodate point 2?
2. Make radial trucks - I have the MRJ article where Laurie Griffin made some.
3. Fit working valve gear - my reading tells me that these had JOY single slide bar valve gear so I would have to buy some in and would it actually fit between the chassis? Out of the box the chassis is a fold up type and I suspect that I may need to separate the frames and make new spacers to do this.
4. Fit dummy Valve gear - Could the Gladiator dummy JOY valve gear be modified to represent the NER version (giving me quite a saving over buying working parts from Laurie Griffin?
5. Do I replace the radial truck wheel sets - I ask because I have never used Gibson wheels in this scale before and they are 3'8" diameter not the 3' 9" that were fitted to the F8's? My initial thinking is that I could probably get away with this discrepancy due to my plan to model it in the mid 1930's when there may have been some wear on the tyres by then.
So many questions and any thoughts/experiences on some of my questions will be gratefully received.
I have 8 tank engine kits in the pile so I wrote out the names on some strips of paper and Chris folded them up. Initially I though thast she was going to put them in a bag to pick one but to make it a little more fun and long lasting she divided them into two piles and put one in each hand getting me to chose a hand. This process was repeated a couple more time with the result that the F8 was the one that I ended up with.
I bought the kit from the Bolton show a couple of years ago for £95 from the bring and buy stand and this is what was in the box.
At the time the kit was £115 from Slaters without wheels so I counted myself as getting a reasonable deal with the wheels and the photos. The only basic thing that seems to be missing is brake blocks but I will pcik up a pack of the Slaters plastic ones at Telford.
Since getting back from my hols I have had it out of the box and done a bit of reading up in the RCTS green book albeit there isn't much on them.
I have a few dilemmas in terms of I do, do I:
1. Make it spilt axle? If so how would I accommodate point 2?
2. Make radial trucks - I have the MRJ article where Laurie Griffin made some.
3. Fit working valve gear - my reading tells me that these had JOY single slide bar valve gear so I would have to buy some in and would it actually fit between the chassis? Out of the box the chassis is a fold up type and I suspect that I may need to separate the frames and make new spacers to do this.
4. Fit dummy Valve gear - Could the Gladiator dummy JOY valve gear be modified to represent the NER version (giving me quite a saving over buying working parts from Laurie Griffin?
5. Do I replace the radial truck wheel sets - I ask because I have never used Gibson wheels in this scale before and they are 3'8" diameter not the 3' 9" that were fitted to the F8's? My initial thinking is that I could probably get away with this discrepancy due to my plan to model it in the mid 1930's when there may have been some wear on the tyres by then.
So many questions and any thoughts/experiences on some of my questions will be gratefully received.