Your Projects

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…

So, this build started several years ago, but got left behind when I got to starting the tender conversion....I didn't have the tools to do it..... so I have recently bought a cheap drill, for tackling the tiny holes that need drilling for some of the threads required...

The drill is very basic, but has speed control and can hold drills from 0.4 - 4mm ( though I doubt it has the power to drill much above 3mm - depending on material )

First up was to drill and tap the threads for the heater electrical connections/

As the Stanier tender has totally different axle spacings to the Gresley tender, the electrical pickups needed modifying.

I am enclosing a picture of BDT. The 3D printed second tender performs without problems. Also I have decided to use the Hornby 20mm magnetic hose couplings. These also perform without problems, able to haul a 9 coach train without the train separating. My track circuit uses set track 3 & 4 radius curves and the consist runs around with no hint of anything going wrong. Poetry in Motion!!

Posted on behalf of club member Cees Molenaar

Hello Live steam friends.

Last weekend I had the opportunity to put my lay-out in a workshop see picture and movies attached.

Yesterday I drove my Seagull for the first time, the connection rod between the tender and loco I had to bend in shape, the 3rd run it did fine and I had a run of 40 minutes.