The biggest problem with the Merchant Navy Locomotive was that the front bogie wasn’t attached to the chassis. What was worse was that it appeared never to have been attached to the chassis.
This has puzzled me for a while. Why finish the model as far as painting and not complete the chassis so it can run on your model railway ? The answer wouldn’t have helped of course. What I needed to do was rectify the problem.
Now there is a hole above the place the bogie should be but it’s very high and too small for anything that you’d want controlling O gauge wheels. After a bit of playing around I worked out that a largish (M4 I think) bolt would fit reasonably well. Since the bogie stretcher has a slot in it I needed to bush this. Digging in the bush pot I found what may be a 7mm scale axle bush. This fitted the bolt and was slightly too large for the slot. Opening out the later with a file cured this.
The plate the nut is attached to came from some leftover brass from the G2. Always hang on to useful bits left over from kits as they are very handy. Just don’t forget to turn those empty frets into strips or you will quickly find your work area taken over by them !
Yet again I couldn’t solder to the frames. They are 2mm thick brass and despite my best efforts with a mini blowtorch, no solder will stick as I couldn’t get the metal hot enough. If the whitemetal cylinders weren’t attached I might have been more courageous but I really didn’t want to have to replace these. Because of this, some nice thick Araldite hold it in place. Unfashionable though this method is – it works.
After letting the glue dry I was able to run the model on the test track – a 6ft straight. The fireworks (sparks caused by short circuits) showed I needed to cut the frames away a bit or the loco wasn’t going around corners. More work with the big file, no good using needle files on this stuff, and the sparks stopped. I might find myself insulating the back of the front brake shoes with superglue just be extra sure.
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