We now start a new voyage of discovery.......
THE LOCOMOTIVE!!!
Frames are in nickel silver, so a good start. The springs and hangers are ugly and look as though they've been drawn free hand and, as part of the fret, they are also in only a single dimension. Any ideas about who may make lost wax LBSCR springs and hangers - I've no idea whether these are different from those employed on other railways?
The instructions refer to fitting two spacers at the top of the frames and one at the position of the slot at the bottom of the frames. The two top slots are present but the one at the bottom is not. This is not insurmountable but once again an issue of real sloppiness in design and instruction.
The spacers themselves do, however, fit within the slots with only sight slop horizontally on the front ones and the axle holes are not oversize for the bearings. You'll remember that the bearing holes for the tender axles were oversize. The central holes in the spacers are actually central too, again a considerable improvement on the tender. However, these central holes are intended to take an 8BA screw in to a captive nut. In fact even a 4BA is not a tight fit, so I'll either fill and redrill for 8BA or use a 4BA captive nut and screw - I can see no reason why not.
Here we come to the bit where I need some of the collective wisdom of the WT group. The instructions advise that the drive should be on the central axle, which should be fixed, and that if hornblocks are fitted these should be on the front and rear axles. That seems to me like a route to creating a rocking horse, although I accept that adjustment screws could alleviate the problem. In fact I'm using a Portescap motor/gearbox which I have in stock and if I drive the rear wheels the motor will fit in to the firebox. Would this be the preferred route or is there some benefit which I've failed to see in driving on the centre axle? Also (and bear in mind here that the tender has split axles and insulated hornblocks so that power will be collected via the tender) will there be any benefit in fitting split axles and plastic hornblocks to the undriven axles of the loco for additional current collection? I'd prefer to use brass sprung hornblocks which can be soldered in position.
Finally, is the received wisdom to make the driven axle bearings fixed with the other two axles sprung, or to spring all axles? The benefit of having one axle in a fixed position is that it provides a reference.
I don't trust the instructions at all, hence these questions. However, the frames are now cut out and the cusps filed down. Matched to the drawings these look to be spot on dimensionally. Spacers are ready to solder in place once I've decided on what to do about the over large holes and the cut outs for the hornblocks will take no time at all. Coupling rods, needed for the set up, are yet to be removed from the fret (in fact there are separate replacements as it looks as though those on the fret are the wrong length) and the two halves sweated together. For some reason there's a pair of replacement cylinder wrappers in brass and also a pair on the nickel silver etch. The only difference appears to be that the rivets need punching out on the brass whereas those on the nickel silver are etched. The sizes and number of rivets are identical. Curiouser and curiouser.
Brian