Atlantic's works: Portable layout update

[Atlantic 3279]

Not the brightest, sharpest pictures at the first attempt I'm afraid:

[52D]

Stretch gets my vote.

52D

[Atso]

Stretch gets my vote.

52D

I'll have to second that!

[rob]

Judgement of Paris between the SEF as built by Mick and the stretch,both look wonderful,though if I were to build one I'd plump for SEF as I can't control plastic but can beat and heat W/M into some semblance of shape! The SEF also has better slidebar/crossheads etc than the Railroad-I presume that Hornby fit the older style of assembly for robustness as well as economy given the market Railroad is intended for.
How is the running of the Railroad chassis?
Shows how big the prototype was in those photos! Am I correct in remembering plates were cast but for some reason this was never named?A pity,this machine deserved the dignity of a name!

[Atlantic 3279]

I quite understand that metal v plastic is a personal choice. The Railroad chassis runs every bit as well as the top-of-the-range version, being identical as far as I can see but for that one disappointment of inheriting the old chunky/robust/child resistant valve gear. As I commented above, it could be tolerable for this fully skirted version, especially when darkened down, although I'm still thinking of substituting some spare etched parts, and it would really do at all for the post-1942 de-skirted version.

Another job I may do, especially if I bother witrh the valve gear, is to transplant the top end of the lubricator drive to a mounting on the chassis. Having it connected to the body, requiring to be disconnected and then (with some difficulty) re-fitted every time the body comes off and goes back on, is quite frankly a pain in rump!

[Atlantic 3279]

I did my bit to help England to win the ashes this afternoon by spending a ridiculous amount of time transplanting that lubricator drive and dealing with the most unsightly parts of the heavy valve gear as best I could. I wasn't able to replace as much as I would have liked (not without doing even more work anyway) owing to the large holes for the pivot pins in some of the Hornby valve gear parts. I did however do some slimming down by filing of the worst features of the parts that I couldn't readily replace, and then finished off the job by darkening all of the rods down with some grey-brown thinned paint. I'll add pictures tomorrow, I hope.

[Atlantic 3279]

The main thing(s) I wanted to replace but couldn't conveniently change were the (I think) excessively long and chunky return cranks and possibly the eccentric rods which seem too long also. The Finecast A2 items would have been about right, but I couldn't safely enlarge the hole in the return crank enough to locate properly on the Hornby crankpin arrangement. The work involved in fitting the shorter rods without the better cranks seemed unattractive to me, especially as the problem of "incompatible" hole sizes would again rear its ugly head, so I settled for sharpening the bends in the Hornby return crank to disguise its length, and filed some of the metal off the heel of the crank too.

[Atlantic 3279]

A better connecting rod and crosshead might have been nice too, but the skirting largely hides the rest!

[Atlantic 3279]

On observing last night the all-but-finished loco attempting to haul a relatively long heavy train at speed around my layout where such trains are seldom free of the extra drag caused by curves, I wondered whether the coupled wheels were flailing around rather faster than they ought to be. Closer scrutiny then showed that the leading coupled wheel treads were more frequently airborne than on the rails . I began to wonder whether the increased rear weight and overhang had un-balanced the loco and thus spoiled its adhesion. This evening I started to look for space to add ballast inside the front of the body, and there would in fact be plenty of space if necessary. However, I then tried the balance of the un-weighted loco and realised that its centre of gravity was in fact still well within the length of the coupled wheelbase, yet even when I simply stood it down on a dead flat surface the leading coupled wheels were not firmly grounded - until I put finger pressure on the front of the loco and then I realised that I was compressing Hornby's rather firm coil spring for the leading bogie as I pressed down! Maybe others have observed this phenomenon / problem with Hornby's pacifics in standard form? Hence I've now removed the Hornby spring and substituted a much softer home-made item coiled up from 0.3mm brass wire. I hope that the bogie, which is reasonably heavy in its own right, will still track perfectly well and that traction will now be adequate without having to move 10000 up into the super-heavyweight division.

[Atlantic 3279]

No traction trouble now !

[rob]

Worth the extra bother on the valve gear Graeme,and delighted to hear she goes as well as she looks!..and there must be lots of space in there if you ever did need more ballast aboard!
Rob

[Atlantic 3279]

I'm glad you approved of the improved "chunky" valve gear Rob. Now however, thanks to the kindness and efficiency of a certain gentleman at Hornby, I have even nicer looking valve gear on the W1:

The attachment STA74593 new valve gear arrives.jpg is no longer available

[Atlantic 3279]

In the process of test running the chassis with body off to see that the valve gear was satisfactory, I also observed the reason for the onset of a slight lack of smoothness in the chassis that I'd suspected in recent days. The right rear coupling rod was nudging my revised mounting for the top end of the lubricator drive, so I've "adjusted" the latter to clear the rod at the top of its travel:

[Atlantic 3279]

Whilst I've been trying to get just the right final sheen on the overall varnish on the W1 (spraying equipment not helping - it's misbehaving), I've had a visiting loco in the workshop.

A friend picked up this fairly nicely built DJH A3 at auction, and subsequently discovered to his dismay that it was built to EM gauge. I've regauged it to OO for him (shrieks of horror from the EM enthusiasts), replaced the Mashima + GB1 with a 1624 Portescap (his choice), and to allow it to traverse curves and badly laid track without shorting to a standstill I've opened up numerous clearances around wheel rims where the original builder hadn't bothered.
The regauging has worked well, despite the frames having been built to a bit more than normal DJH width, presumably as a half-hearted attempt at "scale" frame construction. With the main bearing outer faces filed back flush to the frames there's plenty of sideplay in the coupled wheels to cope with a smoothly laid 2 foot radius curve. The loco also copes with the 3 foot radius reverse-curves in one of my slightly dodgily laid crossovers.
On close comparison with the latest Hornby models perhaps the latter has slightly nicer surface details in some areas, but the scale-height DJH product betrays the fact that Hornby still set buffers and bodies slightly too high on the LNER pacifics.
Performance is good, scale 90MPH having been managed on my rather confined circuit with 8 coaches, and up to 18 coaches hauled on the same circuit at slightly more moderate speed, neither task causing any discernible heating of the motor over a few laps.

[ceejaydee]

I do enjoy reading workshop threads and I've certainly enjoyed looking through yours.

Whilst it makes me feel guilty for not doing enough modelling in recent times it also gave me great satisfaction to know that people still build fine models and are happy to run them on OO track