John Shares Info On His Trains

November 29, 2010

John from the UK has sent in this article for publication:

All my locos are either Hornby or Bachmann bought new. There are three exceptions to this:-

1. Airfix GWR Castle class 4-6-0. Castle class locos were the front line express passenger locos of the GWR from 1923 until the end of steam. In the nineteen thirties the ‘Cheltenham Flyer’ was declared The Fastest Train in The World and held the title until 1937. The fastest run of all in June 1932 was hauled by no. 5006 Tregenna Castle (It was always hauled by a Castle Class engine) in which the 77.3 mile journey was covered start to stop in under 57 minutes, an AVERAGE speed of 81.7 mph. A total of 165 Castle class locos were built, the last 38 after Nationalisation in 1948. No fewer than seven Castles have been saved for preservation. Recently no. 5043 Earl of Mount Edgecombe was sharing a 500 ton load in 14 bogies with Tornado no. 60163, the new build Peppercorn Pacific (LNER) over the Devon banks. Here there are sections as steep as 1 in 30. This special train was actually delayed by a failing diesel HST125. The 125 mph modern train was struggling with a deposit of wet autumn leaves on the track. The steam locos had dry sanding gear and made light of it.

My model is an excellent loco with tender drive but I may have to add weight to the main loco body because there is some skidding of the main driving wheels. The pulling ability of this loco is very good and it has taken 20 bogies away no trouble.

2. Airfix GWR 61xx ‘Prairie’ 2-6-2T heavy suburban passenger tank loco. This pulls fine but runs unevenly and I have never succeeded in finding out why. I have bought a new chassis kit, wheels, motor and gearbox from ‘Comet’ Models and will build this new chassis and fit when I can find the time.

3. Scratchbuilt Southern Railway general purpose tank engine type Drummond M7 0-4-4T. These engines were used on empty stock train duties taking empty coaches back to Nine Elms depot for cleaning and servicing. M7’s also brought serviced stock back into Waterloo from Nine Elms Yard in preparation for departing trains for Bournemouth, Weymouth and the far south west (Devon and Cornwall). Some M7 locos were fitted with special gear for running on “push-pull” two coach branch line trains in which the driver operated the train from a set of controls in the end compartment of the second coach. This was done to save the need to “run round”. Thus the crew were together on the footplate when running in the forward direction only. This was done on the Swanage and Seaton branches especially. My model hauls a train of ten bogies or thirty goods wagons and is a perfect runner.

I believe the problem with the Prairie tank is too much side play on the leading and trailing driving wheel axles causing jamming of the coupling and connecting rods. If I can put in washers under the driving wheels on these axles it may cure the problem but I have been told that the Airfix chassis leaves much to be desired and I should build a new chassis. This was a new loco but Airfix no longer exist so I have to deal with it myself.