The arrival of the Modern Locomotives Illustrated on shunters nudged me into doing something about the 01 diesel that's been sat on my shelf for too long in brass. Perusing the instructions I can't work out where I should be so I decided that as the chassis was obviously unfinished I'd start there.At each end of the beast, there are these beams to assist in re-railing it if it leaves the track. I'm fascinated by the idea that the trackwork in some yards was so rough that they expected to be shoving the loco back on a regular enough basis to warrant modifying it to make life easier.
To etches are supplied for this - one for P4 models 'cos they will fall off a lot, and one for OO and EM versions with those coarse flanges. Each part is in two bits. The back vertical and the front with the half etched plates above the beam. Assembly is easy apart from forming the bottom bend. There's not much to grab hold of so I started it in the hold'n'fold and finished with some square ended pliers which I find grip better.
After this, the verticals are soldered to the chassis using some half etched lines as a guide. With the minimum of solder, they look very nice with little cleaning up around the fiddly bits.
I wonder if I should insulate the beam to stop it shorting the rails if the loco comes off ?
2 comments:
I helped my friend the other Matt clean the generator set of the pioneer 09 at Peak Rail, where I encountered the last surviving 01 shunter, fascinating loco, I had a look in the cab and discovered that it was done in pretty much steam style. There were even fold down wooden seats on the cab sides!
Pay attention Scrutton - I've already mentioned that cab seats.
http://philsworkbench.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/cab-controls.html
There will be an exam later to see if you have been reading this stuff properly !
Serioulsy though, it is a fascinating little loco. Early shunters seemed to owe a lot of steam loco design with all sorts of odd fittings including coal bunkers !
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