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My last project was making Bittern Double Tender. My new project is going to be as above. To date I have bought a FS body off Ebay. I have on order a set of German style smoke deflectors which are a brass etch, so it should not be too much of an exercise to (ahem!) execute!
I have included a photo of FS which I am going to reproduce.
After a bit more work, the castle conversion now looks like this:
and what's more, it runs like this:
Towards the end of the run it was suffering from a slight slow down every 4th turn of the wheels. I have others that do this, but haven't figured out a decent fix yet, something to do with the timing shaft I believe.
There's no whistle at the moment as I haven't worked out how to fit one in. I did cut one down until it fitted, but by that time it had stopped whistling (or maybe only so dogs could hear it). Also, there's no coupling at the rear of the tender yet.
I was thinking what other locos did Hornby Dublo make and a Dublo 'Barnstaple' locomotive looked promising - a large 4-6-2 Pacific. Still the wrong region for me, but it's what we have.....
The 4-6-0 Castle looks interesting, but is way above my current skill level, but member David is currently making a superb conversion....
A West Country body from Fleabay was purchased ....
The boiler is narrower than the Duchess, so an A3 looks likely to be the doner drive system..
After messing about with solder and a small blow torch, I now have a narrow boiler. Hopefully the Tender body can be fettled to fit, it looks close! 😗 🤞
This was my test rig, the boiler went in the dogs bowl, it was then filled with boiling water, to simulate the heat, then the pump switched on....no bubbles, so all good so far.
Joe
Some time ago, probably last year, at a club roadshow, we commented that there were no GWR live steam locos on the club layout. After some thought, I decided to try and convert an A3 into a Castle, based around an old Hornby Dublo cast body. I've finally made a bit of progress, so here are some photos etc.
I started the tender first, but the Hornby boiler is too tall/wide to fit into the Dublo casting. I bought some 25mm copper tube (Hornby boiler is 32mm) and added a set of live steam parts to convert it into a smaller/longer boiler that stood a chance of fitting inside the Dublo tender once I had machined it out as much as I dare.
I haven't bothered with a new frame to space the wheels correctly, but just cut down the Hornby plastic and threw away the trailing axle. It wil…
Hello Joe,
As it happens, I haven't cut that pipe, just routed it in a long distance way to take up the slack (see photo).
I have cut then before and resoldered using a close fitting tube/sleeve. I used lead free solder and it seems to work OK (good to 220C) without the need for special high melting point solder (350C).
Good luck with the Proxxon - the only thing I found is you need to watch the vertical slide doesn't move when under vibration. It can slide down and dig in to the surface, so use the locking screw every time!
David
I can report that the Castle ran well at Ruddington, with a run time of 13mins on the second fill of the boiler. It still took a long time to get properly hot to start with, but once the cylinders were up to a good running temperature all was well. I conclude that the extra insulation has indeed helped.
Job done !