Curing the wobbly boiler, for now

 

The biggest worry with the Lady Anne, was the wobbly boiler. Everything worked fine, but the boiler shouldn't move when you prod the dome. 

With the boiler off, I spent a lot of time trying to work out how the thing was supposed to be attached. After downloading the instructions for the kit version of the loco, and reading this online build, I think the answer is that the two screws going through the Boiler Mounting Foot should screw into some threaded fittings in the boiler. 

Mine didn't. In fact the screws that were fitted, were too short to extend beyond the back of the foot. 

Pondering how I fix this, I wondered about putting some packing behind the foot to effectivly clamp it between the foot and smokebox. Experiments with card seemed to show this would work, and intiailly, my plan was to replace this with shim brass. 

With another nights sleep on the problem, an even simpler solution came to me - slightly longer bolts. Digging through my collection, I found a couple that could be shortened to stick out the back of the foot by around 3mm. Not much, but enough to lock the boiler in place. For the moment anyway. 

Needless to say, I worried that I'd damaged the boiler, so indulged in a little steam-up in the sunshine. 

All was fine, and it gave me a chance to set up the radio control system to put the controls on the right transmitter sticks. 

So, that's my solution. For now. Not ideal, but better than wobbling. 

What I think has happened, is that when the loco was dropped on the floor, bending the chimney slightly, is that the bolts through the Boiler Mounting Foot have sheared off. My bet is that thier remains are still in the back of the boiler. To get those out means dismantling the model, then drilling and tapping the holes to remove the old bolts. That's a lot of work, with no guarantee of success. I could end up having to replace the boiler itself - £552 from Roundhouse right now. 

Long term of course, this is the right course of action, and maybe I'll have another look in the winter. First, I need to replace the pressure gauge, and a few other bits. At least the smokebox has the right number of bolts holding it down now, which will help a little.