Brettell Road, 1960s black country (ish)
- Thread starter Jim S-W
- Start date
David Waite
Western Thunderer
The signals look amazing
David
David
Looking at that bonk the truck is goin down reminds me of Level Street before the Merry Hell (sorry Hill) Shopping Center obliterated the area.
Level Street 2 rail level crossings, 1 canal 'half' hump back bridge (because of the steepness of the hill), 5 houses 3 of which were public houses.
Regards
Allen
Level Street 2 rail level crossings, 1 canal 'half' hump back bridge (because of the steepness of the hill), 5 houses 3 of which were public houses.
Regards
Allen
Kier Hardy
Active Member
Lovely job Jim. I'm guessing the lorry is stuck down, with all that dust accumulating underneath it? 
Jim smith-wright
Western Thunderer
It is. All the vehicles with lights are. The ones without are movable. The whole layout needs a good dusting before I take it to Crewe in a month. I usually use a soft keyboard brush for things I need to get under but it's currently gone AWOL! ♂️
Jim smith-wright
Western Thunderer
Ive always quite liked the Midland 3f tender locos. They seem to be quite nicely proportioned, more so than the 4F's that looked kind of tall and somewhat top heavy. A while ago in quick succession I picked up a Bachmann body followed soon after by a tender body and a Brassmasters Easychas for it. In the last week or so Ive decided to get some sort of progress on it.
So starting with the tender. I never had the Bachmann chassis and if its anything like most RTR tender chassis it will no doubt have all been a bit flat and kinda naff. Brassmasters do a detailing kit to replace the tender chassis completely so I used that. This is just built as per their instructions.
The rear end. Buffers are from Lanarkshire models as is the vac pipe. I think I'll replace the lamp irons too.
On to the loco. If I had the original chassis then based on the 1F I did I'm confident you could have something up and running in a somewhat leisurely afternoon. If you use the Bachmann coupling rods and brakes you might not even need to fire up the soldering iron! However as I didn't have the Bachmann chassis I decided to build the chassis up as a more conventional one by adding spacers left over from a High Level Models Jinty chassis kit. As the easychas caters for EM and p4 the EM spacers are perfect. If you don't have any leftover Jinty bits though Alan Gibson do a neat little etch of spacers.
Before I show you the chassis though some decisions need to be made. The splashers suffer from the usual RTR problem of being too big. Brassmasters do a separate etch for ones that are the right size. The above image shows a comparison so you can decide if it bothers you or not.
As you can probably guess it bothered me so they were all replaced. The original footplate has a solid floor back to the front of the chassis casting so I cut that out. The new reversing lever is part of the chassis kit and the boxes on the side of the cabs have been thinned down by 2mm as per the instructions.
All this means that a little bit of rectification is needed on the body as it had recesses in the boiler for the original splashers that are no longer needed. I believe the Bachmann chassis block comes quite far forward so the base of the boiler was put back in using layers of thin plasticard. Theres not really much else to do to the body other than this.
Back to the chassis then - with the inside motion kit from the 4f - You didn't expect me to leave a gaping hole did you? The gearbox is a high level loadhauler+
How the loco looks mocked up. I will leave the sandpipes until the very end as they will trap the centre wheels in place.
So starting with the tender. I never had the Bachmann chassis and if its anything like most RTR tender chassis it will no doubt have all been a bit flat and kinda naff. Brassmasters do a detailing kit to replace the tender chassis completely so I used that. This is just built as per their instructions.
The rear end. Buffers are from Lanarkshire models as is the vac pipe. I think I'll replace the lamp irons too.
On to the loco. If I had the original chassis then based on the 1F I did I'm confident you could have something up and running in a somewhat leisurely afternoon. If you use the Bachmann coupling rods and brakes you might not even need to fire up the soldering iron! However as I didn't have the Bachmann chassis I decided to build the chassis up as a more conventional one by adding spacers left over from a High Level Models Jinty chassis kit. As the easychas caters for EM and p4 the EM spacers are perfect. If you don't have any leftover Jinty bits though Alan Gibson do a neat little etch of spacers.
Before I show you the chassis though some decisions need to be made. The splashers suffer from the usual RTR problem of being too big. Brassmasters do a separate etch for ones that are the right size. The above image shows a comparison so you can decide if it bothers you or not.
As you can probably guess it bothered me so they were all replaced. The original footplate has a solid floor back to the front of the chassis casting so I cut that out. The new reversing lever is part of the chassis kit and the boxes on the side of the cabs have been thinned down by 2mm as per the instructions.
All this means that a little bit of rectification is needed on the body as it had recesses in the boiler for the original splashers that are no longer needed. I believe the Bachmann chassis block comes quite far forward so the base of the boiler was put back in using layers of thin plasticard. Theres not really much else to do to the body other than this.
Back to the chassis then - with the inside motion kit from the 4f - You didn't expect me to leave a gaping hole did you? The gearbox is a high level loadhauler+
How the loco looks mocked up. I will leave the sandpipes until the very end as they will trap the centre wheels in place.
Jim smith-wright
Western Thunderer
Probably. Nothing was screwed together yet and the body hasn't got much weight in it either so it's sitting high on its springs