Monday, August 16, 2010

Front bogie

C15 Bogie

The C15 locomotive front bogie is an interesting construction. You make up the side frames with bearings (again, phosphor bronze) and then inset bolts in the middle. Then equalising beams are soldering place which cover up the bolt heads.

Next the stretcher is folded up and soldered in the corners. The pivot point in the middle is supplied as a hole with a half moon either side. Since this model is to go around corners I elected to join these half moons up to allow the thing to slide side to side as required. Now I'm not sure how much this will help because without side springing it won't be guiding the model around said curves, but for the moment I'll go with it. If needs be I'll restore the hole by soldering a washer in place.

The nuts are put in each side. I didn't solder them in place, just screwed the sideframes on. The nut holes had to be made larger to fit an 8BA nut but that was only a few minutes work with a small, square file. When you can't get a screwdriver into the bolt heads, doing them up is fun. Squashing the beam hard against the bolt seemed to give enough purchase through.

Anyway, after all this you end up with a bogie that incorporates some compensation and can't fail to sit flat on the track. Quite nifty really.

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