Lady Anne restored to full health

 

When I failed to persuade my Roundhouse Lady Anne to light at a meeting, I decided it was time to look at the renovations the bargain loco needed properly. 

I'm willing to admit that I know little about tiny steam trains. More than some, but less than others. One of those other being my freind John Campbell. A metal basher and loco builder from the Black Country. 

So, I had a chat and he agreed to assess the loco and tell me what I needed to do. I passed to the model over to one of his mates at Llanfair show, for delivery to John. "I bet he won't be able to stop himself taking it apart." I was told with a laugh. 

He wasn't wrong. A couple of days later, I had a call, and then a series of photos showing the model in bits. 

The good news is that it's not in terrible shape. The non-working pressure gauge was traced to a bunged up pie running to it. A dip in the pickeling solution cured this. There was some weepy pipework, cured with a bit of silver solder. 

And the bolts holding down the back end of the boiler have been replaced. I had planned to do as much of the work myself as possible, but John described drilling out bolts in the boiler as "squeeky bum time", and it was a job that required a better pillar drill than I own - so I was happy to let him do this!

The loco came back to me at the L&WMRS reopening, but it took me a week to find time to get it out on the track. 

As you can see, it steams well. Really well. John tells me there is wear, but nothing to worry about. The loco is 25 years old, but has plenty of life in it for the time being. 

Of course, things didn't run quite smoothly. On the track, it wouldn't light. I could get a POP when holding a flame over the chimney, but no burner sound. I diagnosed a blocked jet, and working on the nothing ventured, nothing gained principle, decided to take a look. 

Undoing the pipe from valve to burner, I worked out that the valve was working, so extracted the jet, and blasted gas through it. Reassembling it with the jet poking upwards, I could now hear gas flow, so put it all back together properly, and it worked!

I know this is a fairly simple job, but I'm well pleased with myself for doing it. All that chatting to people like John and I'm learning a little.

Motor

 

According to the box, this is a Japanese motor, and it is in a pink carton marked "Mashima", so it's reasonable to assume this is true. 

The motor is also a bit rusty, and full of foam crumbs, the source of which is a mystery. 

Still, a few minutes with a stiff brush, some emery for the rusty bits, and a little light oil, and we have a result. 

Whack a 9v battery across the terminals, and after a little hesitation, the motor spins over very nicely. This thing was well engineered all those years ago!

Replacement Romfords

 

Close up, the Ghillie chassis is very much of its time. Rectangular frames made from thick brass are screwed together with spacers. Plastic centre wheels screw to a D-ended axle. There's a lot of K's kit technology in here. Not terrible, but dated. 

I'm not going to replace the frames. Since the loco is a pastiche, what shape should they be? Anyway, I like a bit of over engineering. The wheels will have to go though, as they are falling apart. 

Fortunatly, I have enough of a parts stash that four 16mm diameter Romfords are quickly found, along with the axles, which fit nicely into the original holes. I probably bought them for something else, but have forgotten what right now. There's almost certainly the wrong number of spokes too, but then this isn't a real loco, is it?

DJH "Ghillie"

 

I don't need any more locomotive kits, but when I spotted this unusual whitemetal model from DJH on RMweb marketplace, I snatched it. £28 later, and the box was whinging its way to me. 

You know by now that I enjoy weird stuff, and this loco is definitely oddball. Quite what well-respected firm DJH were thinking when they produced it I don't know. It's obviously based on an England class loco, as found on the Ffestiniog, but with a coal bunker and not the tender hauled by the real thing. Did someone expect that modellers would scratchbuild a tender - if so, why not put one in the kit? 

Anyway, it's wrong, so I want to build it. 

The body is part assembled, using epoxy glue. Whoever did the work has done a good job, so I don't expect to have to dismantle it. Instead, I can concentraite on sticking all the bits in the bag to it. Hopefully, not too bad a job (Famous last words?).

Underpinnings are also part assembled. K's type D wheels are included, but the plastic centres are crumbling, so I'll need to dig through the stash for some replacement Romfords. The axles should be the same size though, so this won't be a problem. 

A motor, that at first glance looks like and X04 is in a Mashima box. It's 5-pole and with a slightly more spohisticated brush arrangement than the Tri-ang version, so let's see how it goes. My guess is that the sheer size of this was part of the reason for picking the prototype, plenty of space in the saddle tank!

Note: Matt, if you post that you have two examples that I could have bought for a song, I'm not listening...

RIP Classic Train & Motor Bus

 

We start the week with some sad new - my local model shop has closed down. After 25 years, the owner has retired. 

(Click to expand)

To be fair, the shop never recovered from Covid. Tiny, they never engaged with online sales and so there wasn't much in the way of new stock much of the time. That said, they could get stuff in, and seemed to have a healthy number of locals who would drop in and buy ordered items from them. They also offered a service where you could put things away in a box, and pay for them as and when you could afford to. 

I always got the feel that the shop was a bit of a social service. Aside from the railway enthusiast hangers-on, various locals, I think living in the attached flat above, seemed to drop in and bother the owner, who was IMHO a bit too nice to them. 

That said, I managed to leave money there over the years. 

I bought my APT set from there. There was also the purchase of a Hornby operating accesory, the blog post for which I can't find, even after 20 minutes searching. I bought this the day they reopened from Covid closure. 

I'm sure there are other buys, on the rare occasion I bought big ticket items, I tried to do it at the shop. 

There were also a few occasions when I'd drop in there looking for an emergency project. Something from the second-hand pile to turn into a magazine project. 

Like all shops, sometimes it even surprised me with something random and good tucked in the back, including a tea pot that had, I was told, been around the West Midlands in a Class 37!

Sadly, I didn't know about the closure until someone mentioned it at the railway club. Pity, as I'd liked to have dropped in on the last day, for one more purchase, just for old times sake. And a final chat. There was a lot of chatting about trains, and I'll miss that. The scuffier end of Leamington is worse for the passing of this little shop.