Unusual Thing to Model
This is a story about how I came to model the stripped down Evening Star. The model is a Hornby one from about the 1970s. It is tender driven with traction tires. It came about that I decided to convert it to DCC by installing a chip in it. The chip chosen was a train control systems T4X one. I intended to add lighting at a later date. That’s why the four function chip.
What a job. All manner of problems raised their head. I decided to drill a hole in the frame to access the wheel pickups and supply path for the tender drive. There was little room in the tender so the chip had to reside in the boiler section of the locomotive. This is where the first problem arose. The drill bit snapped off in the hole. No matter what I tried the broken piece would not budge. The solution was to get a tougher drill bit and drill a hole beside the broken off bit.
This worked fine and access was gained through the chassis instead of running the wiring around it. Good! I got the locomotive running on DCC. Next all the rods on one side started coming adrift as I tried to reassemble the locomotive. One of the ones that became unattached was reassembled with the head of a sewing pin. The coupling rod wouldn’t comply with this solution. What to do now? Well being a fireman on a steam locomotive back in the sixties, the solution presented itself. Any loco engine-man from those days would know what to do if this happened on the road.
This incident is not seen modeled anywhere. So I decided to do what we did with the real locomotives. I centered the piston. Put a chock of wood either side so it couldn’t move. Then roped it into position with what I hope looked a bit like tar band. (A type of rope that we used.) You could drive a loco home like this. It is necessary to stop the valve from moving. It should be in mid gear position so no steam can get into the piston. A hard job it is to strip down a locomotive like this. Those rods were very heavy. You can see that I stuck the coupling rod to the footplate. Locktite 401 was used to do this. Just a small dob on each end will do it.
Well that’s it. Do hope you enjoyed this little indulgence.
