Building Stage 1

The instructions start by telling you to screw the side frames and stretchers together, if they were not shipped assembled, and ensure everything is square etc. prior to painting. As the first stage was shipped with the frame screwed together and the driving wheels and axles in place the first thing I did was to remove the wheels, suspension bars and brackets. The screws holding the frames together were loosened and the chassis laid on its back on a sheet of plate glass I have on my bench. This formed a nice flat surface and the screws were then tightened, all the while ensuring everything was flat and true on the glass. I then slacked off, Loctited and re-tightend each nut and screw in turn. The heading photo shows the chassis at this stage.

As England now claims to be metric (so is Jamaica as of April 1 this year!) all screws have metric threads, so a set of metric spanners is essential. Luckily I had a set left over from the days when I drove Renault 16. (Many years ago).

The next stage is preparation for painting. This involved filing any rough edges on the frames or stretchers (none really) and then degreasing the entire assembly, which I did with hot water and laundry detergent in the wash tub outside (when my wife was out!).

The buffer and drag beams and stretchers are aluminium castings that should be etch-primed. Could not find any source of etch-primer in Jamaica, so I used Zinc Chromate primer on the advice of Sherwin-Williams, one of the big paint manufacturers here. After being sprayed with this stuff the frame looked like this.

The next two weeks was taken up with painting the chassis, black sides and backs of buffer and drag beams, red inside and front of buffer and drag beams. The brake gear, suspension bars and axle boxes were painted black, the coupling rods red and the wheel a sort of Royal Blue. The wheels should match the livery of the engine and this blue is my choice because 1. I can get it here, 2. I like the colour, 3. it is a sort of "Thomas the Tank Engine" blue that my nephew will go wild over.

So after all that, on to the assembly of stage one. The Instruction book says to install the weigh shaft, reach rod and reverser stand and lever first. The only thing to be careful of here is that the die block for the Hackworth gear is vertical when the reverse lever is in its neutral position. This is adjustable by moving the reverser stand back and forth, the screw holes are elongated to allow this. I used an engineer's square to adjust it and then tightened the screws. Again Loctite was used to ensure things would not work loose later.

Next the instructions say "turn the chassis on its back". Well with the weigh shaft and reverse lever now attached that means blocking up the chassis and positioning it with the lever hanging down over the edge of the bench. At this point the suspension bars and wheels on their axles are installed. Care should be taken that the axles are square across the frames. Before the screws are tightend the coupling rods are fitted and the wheels turned to ensure there is no binding at any point. There were no problems at all here, so Loctite and spanner were applied again and that job was done.

Now this is where things got a little more complicated. I am not sure if the problem is in the kit I got or the instructions. The next stage is to install the trailing truck. A bracket is screwed to the rear stretcher,and although the braket was pre-drilled, as was everything else so far, the rear stretcher wasn't. Also there are no instructions to do it nor any drawings giving the exact location of the bracket. Also the trailing arm that the truck attaches to was not drilled either for the bolt to attach it to the bracket, nor the two screws to attach it to the pony truck. Again no drawing or dimensions given. Also the arm was much too long. So a little "engineering" was needed to determine the positions, then the holes were drilled and the arm cut to length and filed etc. All finally fitted up OK.

The next step, still with the rear wheels, was to fit the back steel strip stretcher. This acts as a support for the suspension for the rear wheels, as well as stiffening the back of the chassis. This does invlove drilling of the stretcher once the postion has been determined, and it gives instructions on this in the book. However, the stretcher, as supplied, has very rounded corners. Think of it as a very wide section of channel with round corners instead of sharp square ones. Well, when I had the position set and maked through the holes in the side frames the holes to be drilled in the stretchers fell "on the curve", and not on the vertical parts. I had to drill the holes a little "high" and then file them down. Even then, when I came to tighten the nuts on the inside of the frame it was clear that the rounded part of the stretcher was causing the frame to be bowed inwards slightly. I have filed and juggled with it, but I think I will eventually make a new stretcher or dill two new holes in the frames above the original ones. If they had been 1/4" higher it would have been OK. I think the best solution maybe a new stretcher with "sharper" bends.

Final steps are the fitting of the brake gear and the eccentric rods. No problems here at all. You can see the brake gear going outside of the trailing wheels, inside between the rear drivers with the brake shoes in front of them.

Oh yes. I forgot the couplers. Link and pin couplers are screwed on to the front and rear beams. The photo below shows my completed stage one. It runs on my wooden track OK. No binding, although it is stiff as is to be expected. But pushing on the chassis at the drag beam rolls the chassis along, wheels turning and no slipping. So far, so good.

ON TO BUILDING STAGE 2