Little Engines D10

[60526]

From time to time my club Newhaven MRC gets gifted some old model railway equipment to go towards club funds and yesterday I was given a Little Engines D10 to look at. Not sure yet whether to make the kit up or to sell it as it is, but it does not have any instructions. So, if anyone can help with a copy of some instructions it would be appreciated.
Must admit that I didn't realise that Little Engines had made a D10; does anyone have a list of kits that this Company have made?

[Atlantic 3279]

I can help you out with this one, this evening or tomorrow, unless somebody beats me to it.

They did, I believe, D10, D11, J11, standard O4, probably O4/8, Thompson O1, and the big NE tank engines (4-6-2 and 4-8-0 types). I'm not sure, but there may have been an N1 or similar at one time too. I'm not sure if the range is actually "officially finished" or just a practical impossibility to obtain!

[45609]

For definite an O4/8 was produced as I built one many years ago. IIRC the 04/7 was also covered as well as J11, J11/3, N1, A6, A7, T1, O1, O4/1, O4/3, D10 and D11/1. I suspect if the range is still available then the quality will be highly dependant on whether the current owner has the masters and the ability to make new moulds rather than continue with worn out ones. The likely sales revenue from a kit range that must be nearly 25 to 30 years old must be pretty limited by now. In addition a lot is being covered progressively by RTR and producers of more modern kits (Arthur Kimber and Peter Stanger)

[jwealleans]

I believe the current owner has another full time job and was only producing kits sporadically. The only place listing them since George Walker died were Sherwood Models and they haven't done so for a while.

I think it's fair to say they were 'of their time' and there are better alternatives available for most of the range now. I've seen their T1 made into a very nice and powerful model. I seem to recall a Tony Wright review of one of the O4 variants which was fairly positive as well.

[45609]

I'll agree with that last sentiment Jonathan. I must have built the O4/8 for my uncle's layout when I was 15 or 16 years old and much less skilled at kit building than I am now. It must have fit together reasonably well as I recall that I made a pretty good job of it. Even soldering it together with a plain 25 watt iron and lots of courage. Foolhardy when I look back on it. The copy of Ian Rice's book on building whitemetal kits was my bible back then. However, the memory can play tricks. I bet if I was shown the model now I'd be horrified.

Morgan

[2512silverfox]

Confirm that I have aLittle Engines N1 0-6-2T which came from Sherwood in the 80s.

[60526]

Cheers guys, that's a good response. If you can remember seeing the Borchester Market features in Model Rail, well in Chris Nevards photo of the 04 coming around the colliery curve, this is a Little Engines model, we've also an 04/8 in the pipeline which has a bit of a dubious boiler and a N1, this is fitted with the correct size Gibson wheels but is having problems with them shorting out on the bodywork.

Atlantic, if you could help me with the instructions that would be helpful.

I don't think that Little Engines was restricted to the Eastern, I've seen a LE Southern Q1 in the past.

Charlie

[Atlantic 3279]

It may be worth your while to look at my recent comments on the forthcoming Bachmann Butler-Henderson model too, (and older ones specifically covering my own D10 too if you can find them) as unless your experience of the kit turns out to be different to mine, you may have to build the under-gubbins "other than as per the instructions" if you want no trouble with shorts from the large bogie wheels onto the underside of the running plate, plus adequate balanced weight on the coupled wheels for good haulage.

[Manxman1831]

My dad had one of each of the D10 and D11 to make up for use on Ruddington's layout. The quality was flashy, as though the moulds were getting very tired particularly for the boiler sections. A lot of metal needs to be removed from the boiler underside to allow room for a moderately sized motor, but this is mostly hidden by the large splashers in any case. The chassis was a joy to motorise and wire up; a word of caution here though - it's easier to fit the pickups if you don't have the large springs to worry about.

Overall, the Little Engines kit for the D10 can be turned into quite a lovely model, with a modest amount of skill.

[Atlantic 3279]

I've found and scanned the full set of instructions Charlie. If you'd care to PM me a note of your e-mail address, my easiest means of getting them to you is via e-mail attachment. That saves uploading them to imageshack, linking them to LNER forum, then deleting from imageshack to save space once I know you've copied the files.

Graeme

[Atlantic 3279]

The question of the arrangement of the chassis and tender on my D10 having arisen on more than on occasion and in more than one place, I thought it time I provided a properly illustrated explanation.

Here's a look, from running plate level or slightly below, at the very close shave between the flanges of full size bogie wheels and a thick cast running plate set at scale height -it's a pretty close shave for the frame cut-outs too. In the absence of billiard table trackwork, which I don't have, the rise and fall of a floating bogie relative to the running plate would be a recipe for rubbing, catching and shorting:


My bogie does not float up and down / waggle around. The front mainframes are separated from the rest of the loco chassis and soldered to the underside of the running plate. A rigid pin (screw or bolt) fixed to a suitable plate between those front frames projects down through the middle of the bogie. A transverse slot in the bogie allows for sideways movement, essential for running around curves. There is no spring around the pin, simply washers to set the ride height of the frames above the bogie. The weight of the front of the loco bears down fully on the bogie, so its wheels rotate even with rubbing pick-up wires added. The bogie cannot rise significantly to foul the running plate or the frames, although it can tilt.


The bogie set-up would not work unless the front of the body were free to ride up and down in sympathy with the bogie's movement. This is ensured by making the body free to "nod" relative to the coupled wheels. So here is the rear half of the chassis, dropped out of the body, wearing a Mashima 16 x 14 x 30mm Can motor (probably supplied once upon a time by Colin Ashby) and basic Romford open gears - 50:1 by the look of it. Note the L shaped, drilled lug soldered to the frames mid-way between the wheels, above the sweep of the coupling rod. There's one on the other side too. These form part of the "rocking" attachment points between chassis and body.


Directly above each lug, on a block within the combined spalsher, a nut is soldered to the body. The block provides a strong mounting point for the nut. It also prevents a screw (of suitable length, when fed into the nut from below) from emerging at the top of the nut, i.e. the screw "bottoms out" against the block instead. The chassis lugs can thus be screwed to these nuts using slightly over-length screws which tighten up against those top blocks but do not nip the chassis tight up to body. It remains free to rock fore-and aft.


As the body weight pivots mid-way between the coupled wheels, almost any amount of weight can be added to the front or rear of the loco, unbalanced, but will create a balanced load for best traction purposes on those coupled wheels. Here are some lead or whitemetal offcuts providing ballast in the front of the boiler....


...... and here's how more weight in the tender, usually creating only drag, is made to bear usefully on the coupled wheels of the loco:

The inside-bearing sub-frame of the tender is sawn-through completely between the middle and the rear axles (arrowed red), but is re-joined by two strips of springy metal, allowing the front two-thirds of the inner frame to flex up and down relative to the rear one-third, only the latter being fixed to the structure of the tender, as normal. The floor of the tender tank is cut away above the mobile portion of the inner frames to provide freedom of movement. The springy strips provide light downward force onto the front two axles of the tender, but not nearly enough for these axles to support the weight of tender front. The use of two springy strips, side by side, allows vertical movement only for the inner frames, preventing the wheels from catching / shorting on the outside frames. A draw hook is soldered to the loco BODY, not the chassis, so that when the front beam of the tender is placed between the two uprights of that hook its weight is transferred to the loco's body-chassis pivot point, and is spread evenly between the coupled wheels.

As you may also have noticed in the scecond image, since Little Engines supplied the counter-weights for the reversing gear which should be visible below the boiler, I mounted those on a cross-shaft to represent the weigh shaft, and then used some pieces of wire to suggest other (static) parts of the Stephenson valve gear, such as the straight valve rods and the curved expansion links (bent back sharply top and bottom to suggest the front of each eccentric rod - I could not model those in full as they would foul the removable motorised part of the chassis).

[60526]

Graeme, as usual with the quality of your work this modification is pretty exceptional especially since you have a 4-4-0 pulling 20 coaches. I'd intimated to Graeme using a motor in the tender, but with the tender riding piggy back I not sure that it is needed. Wonder if this would work on an 0-6-0?
Anyhow, tomorrow looks like it is going to be wet, perhaps a chance to get on with my Gibson F6, I've been doing a bit of a TW so far and not totally following the instructions.

[Atlantic 3279]

I have no idea why that image of the tender mods above refused to display rearlier today. I've replaced the link with one to a freshly posted version of the image on imageshack, which does not as a website appear to be behaving normally at present. Fingers crossed!