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One item has not been made, the reversing lever, though it was mentioned earlier – This will go from the reversing quadrant, (American Johnson bar) I used the one from the original loco, this location for this is very close to, on the engineers side to the firebox, and it has a couple of small pegs to locate it, mark its location (a dab of black paint on the bottom of the pegs), and then with the firebox off you can drill the floor for it, glue it in position. The lever itself can be made from 3mm x 1mm plastic strip with the front end curving down to the top of the stepboard, at the slot in the stepboard. It is fed behind the air pump, where it ends another part, fixed behind the end, goes down through the stepboard slot and should touch the reversing lever cantilever which is fitted to the chassis and is just behind the brake cylinders for the driving wheels. Add a couple of discs at the join of the two parts to indicate the pivot and paint the lever silver. When it is in position and at the centre of the straight part add a little ‘stepstool’ to hold it in position – this should end at the top with a slot that holds the lever still. This reversing lever goes through the small triangular part of the engineers side of the cab front that is fitted to the boiler in the join between the boiler cladding and the firebox part – cut a small slot to allow it through. Add the small bit of pipe in front of the Johnson bar quadrant – this was missed off earlier as it could not be fitted at that time. It is the larger diameter pipe nearest to the engineer that is the water feed (from the tender) to the injector right in front of him!
The cab can now be again re fitted to have some small bits of tube added where the handrails touch it – this gives a positive location for the end here – paint them black as they are on the steel sheet, it can then be fitted in position and the rods for the sanders, and bell cord made and fed through the holes for them. First the sander rod, this is made from .030 wire, with round nosed pliers make a flattened loop on the end – this is the pull loop for the engineer, feed the rod through the cab front and mark where to cut it so the front end fits inside the tiny bit of tube at the end of the operating arm. It can be either glued in position, or left loose if the front end is a reasonably tight fit.
The cord for the bell – I tried using some heavy thread but it would not ‘lie right’ – not enough mass I believe, so instead I took a long piece of 5 amp fuse wire (very thin it is .010 thick), doubled it and holding one end in a pin vice and the other end in position on the bell crank twirled the pin vice and twisted the two strands together: the result is a nice stiff piece of apparent cord. A dab of glue to keep the single wire in position on the bell crank end, and also stiffens this end, you can then feed it through the hole drilled for it and make a nice ‘drop’ to the cord that will stay put., ‘Viola’.
Do not fit the cab yet but do check that the location is OK and all the bits fit; the reason for this is that you will need to get the firebox of shortly, and that needs the cab off.
We now have a unit comprising the boiler, smokebox, with domes stepboards etc; for under the stepboards; you should have the ‘ladder frame’ that fits inside the chassis firebox sides; there should in the stepboards be a slot where the bottom part of the firebox is to allow the unit to ‘sit down’ on the motor, lying horizontally in the frames. This slot stretches forward from the rear of the cab to the front edge of the firebox, with a cross piece to keep it together in the centre part; this is behind the motor, and will be hidden under the firebox. The smokebox should sit onto the raised square on top of the cross piece of plastic between the cylinders, and the boiler should be level when tried in position. The fixings for this unit are as follows – at the front is a screw directly in line with the smokestack, this goes through several layers of plasticard, I use a machine screw, at the rear there are a couple of screws, one each side that go through the cab floor close against the sides of the firebox when it is slid on. These two screws are hidden in the gloom as they are close to the reverse curve at the bottom of the firebox, and go into the ladder frame underneath.
First, though the ladder frame is fitted and glued (use epoxy resin) and pinned with four pins through and very near to the top of the firebox sides. Ensure that is it level both end to end and across the locomotive before the glue sets. When set the boiler (etc) unit can be laid in position and the holes marked, slide the firebox into position to ensure that the screws will not obstruct it.
When the glue is dry the boiler unit can be test fitted, but first the chassis needs some work on it first. The chassis when I had removed all the Bachmann bits form it had a mass of wires left. After a lot of thought these were reduced, some were redundant; there is no smoke system, or polarity switches for instance. The rest of the loco was re-wired to a much simpler system. The loco picks up current from a couple of brass strips that bear on the driving wheel axles; this can be seen when the bottom plate is removed as they ‘spring out’ as the plate is freed off. On these ‘bus bars’ are a couple of pin and socket connectors. With a friend who knows much more than me regarding the wiring of loco’s everything was stripped out and from here and the loco’s motor was simply connected direct from the connectors on the busbars. I had to decide that the headlight was going to be battery powered so this did not require any connection from the bus bars. The only other wiring required on the loco was a set of wires from the front axle which controls the ‘chuff’ sound system in the tender. Earlier I said that I considered that there was a requirement for the tender to assist in current collection – this entailed fitting to the inside of the tender bogies a pair of wires that bear against the inside face of the wheels, the input from the bogies are combined and then a couple of wires feed that via a plug under the cab into the motor feed wires. Need less to say the area under the cab is a bit congested! There are five assorted connections in all here. The original plug system at the rear of the loco chassis was lowered and then discarded as it was too large to fit under the cab – it did however provide an on/off switch for the headlight battery.
Eventually we fitted in a fan formation, facing backwards. There are three small two pin plugs, these are fixed to a new plasticard plate that can be fitted under the end of the chassis. It is at the extreme rear of the chassis, just behind the removable access plate from underneath the loco. They are used for ‘power to loco’, ‘ battery power to headlight’, and ‘on/off chuff’ to tender. Don’t forget that there are also the two ‘mock’ water feed pipes fitted. These are at the outer edges. When all the alterations were complete check that the loco runs on a test track!
Back to fitting parts together – fit the pilot deck assembly at the front, gluing and screwing it into position, a strong fixing is necessary here, have the braces to the boiler handy as they will soon be required. Add the pony truck underneath, if not painted it is easy to remove for that purpose later. Now add the complete cylinder and slidebar unit, with the (reduced from the Bachmann part) main rod, and again check that everything is moving under power correctly.
Check that all the parts are painted except where there will be some glue required, and if not paint the parts that need it.
It is now time to fit the boiler, leaving the smokebox door off for now, the cab is also kept separate for now, screw the smokebox down onto the plate on top of the cross plate that is part of the cylinder assembly, and add the two screws by the side of the firebox. The firebox can now be slid and glued (with not too much glue so it can if necessary be removed) into position, be careful with the extension on the lower end of the firebox it does tend to catch all the knocks. Add the smokebox braces at the front, Take some time to sit back and admire your creation!!
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