Ken's workbench Bagnall meets hacksaw

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Ken Shabby
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Re: Ken's workbench Bagnall meets hacksaw

Post by Ken Shabby »

My first non UK loco, a Fleischmann diesel shunter which set me back £7.50.
Screenshot_20240124_171625_eBay.jpg
It had been overprinted in a thick coat of blue, which took an age to remove using oven cleaner.
It was then repainted with cheap acrylic paint and a coat of clear Rustoleum.. This was a bit of a gamble, but I knew that another go in the oven cleaner would strip it off again.. It turned out fine, and after a minor service and wheel clean it was back in service..

Ken
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Bigmet
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Re: Ken's workbench Bagnall meets hacksaw

Post by Bigmet »

It looks much more cheerful in that mid-green. How about a name? Since it's from Fleischmann it could be 'Sirloin', 'Cutlet' or 'Streaky'...
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Ken Shabby
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Re: Ken's workbench Bagnall meets hacksaw

Post by Ken Shabby »

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This was a spare body from the old Hornby LMS brake van , which had an oversized working tail lamp.
The tail lamp and the square plastic box for it's bulb were removed, and it was fitted with a spare chassis
Some of these vans had a square box on the underframe which I assume was added weight. . I modelled this because it helped hide some of the inaccuracies of the chassis.

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Ken
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Mountain
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Re: Ken's workbench Bagnall meets hacksaw

Post by Mountain »

That looks the part. Not come across the ones with the light. A novel feature for the kiddies! :D

Your Fleishmann loco looks the part. What do they run like as according to Fleishmanns adverts they claimed to have superiour products that run smooth and quietly. Do they live up to their reputation? Never bought one to find out!
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Re: Ken's workbench Bagnall meets hacksaw

Post by Bigmet »

Mountain wrote: Thu Jul 18, 2024 2:23 pm ... Fleischmann loco looks the part. What do they run like as according to Fleischmanns adverts they claimed to have superiour products that run smooth and quietly. Do they live up to their reputation?
At any given time since HO and OO model railways have been in production, up to about 2000, the best large scale production German HO brand's locos will easily outperform the best large scale production OO brand's locos. A good marker is the Fleischmann design motor unit used in the 1970 Hornby 9F and class 47. That was hardly state of the art in HO, but it was way superior at that time to anything in OO for running refinement. And what did Hornby do with this design? They began downgrading it from all three axles driven to two, and an inferior armature and magnet combination which had much reduced torque, in the death spiral competition with Lima to see which brand could foist the worst motor units on the UK OO customer. (I wasn't buying RTR OO from the mid sixties on, with just a few exceptions, most of my 4mm was kit builds to get locos which looked right and ran well.)

From late 1999, as the technique developed for HO production in China started to appear in earnest in RTR OO thanks to Bachmann's Blue Riband range, I finally had a RTR OO loco that I could place on a cousin's HO layout which both looked up to snuff and performed respectably, quiet and very smooth at dead slow: the WD 2-8-0 with its Buhler motor and 40:1 reduction ratio, and the gap to HO has closed further since. Not that everyone is happy, this comes at a cost; personally, this is what an adult modeller range in RTR OO should always have been like, and there is clearly a market for this standard.
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Bufferstop
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Re: Ken's workbench Bagnall meets hacksaw

Post by Bufferstop »

Hornby's attempts to cheapen the ringfield motor actually took a step further than someone must have thought was the limit. I've only ever found one of them and it was in a tender drive version of Mallard. Instead of the motor housing containing a ring of magnetic iron, or a circular band of steel and a couple of ferrite blocks it contained a cloth sausage bag field with iron granules. The field strength was in no way uniform and because the filling was magnetized it was all but impossible to even out the distribution of the stuff. Substituting a real magnet harvested from a broken tender, I got it running again, as well as the rest of the mechanics permitted. I never saw one of theses magnets again so I think someone with a bit more pride in the product pulled it and reverted to the previous design.
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Mountain
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Re: Ken's workbench Bagnall meets hacksaw

Post by Mountain »

I have not come across those older Ringfields as far as I know but I have an amazing 5-pole Chinese Ringfield in a DMU.
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Re: Ken's workbench Bagnall meets hacksaw

Post by Bigmet »

Mountain wrote: Fri Jul 19, 2024 6:39 pm ... I have an amazing 5-pole Chinese Ringfield in a DMU.
Likewise, I purchased a very cheap Chinese production Hornby s/h tender drive B17 as a non-runner about twenty years ago, for conversion to loco drive. One broken wire soldered back in place on the tender drive and it was an excellent runner, the five pole armature and a good magnet restored the motor to the standard of the original Fleischmann design. Had Hornby stuck with this original design, I am sure the majority of customers would have been well content.
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Re: Ken's workbench Bagnall meets hacksaw

Post by BHD »

I have an as original Margate B17 tender drive 'Liverpool' (FC) of course and this with regular maintenance - has always run like a dream - the exception that proves the rule, I suppose.... 8)

On the other hand the Dapol-derived chassis with ringfield type motors - and used in Hornby Castles of the time have had me pulling out what hair's left, leading me to replace their motorisation with overhauled Airfix tender-drive mechanisms... :wink:
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Ken Shabby
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Re: Ken's workbench Bagnall meets hacksaw

Post by Ken Shabby »

The Fleischmann shunter is a lovely runner. I recently fitted it with some small Airfix GMR tension lock couplings, and it's had a lot of use on the railway over the last few months.

This is what I've been working on recently.
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This is a project which I begun nearly a decade ago.
It started as one of the short Triang restaurant cars, and the project hit a dead end because I couldn't make satisfactory ends for the coach.. I searched online in vain hoping someone had produced white metal ends, but I never came across any. Eventually I found a second hand Bachmann inspection saloon and forgot all about the homemade one.
Then, a couple of weeks ago I came up with the idea of making the ends out of very thin card and mounting them on clear plastic, which came from Peco point packaging.
Some scraps of plastic is glued in behind to strengthen the ends and stop them bowing inwards.
You end up with near flushglazed windows in the ends.
There is a lot of extra detail to be added. Probably the most difficult being the curved drainage pipes(?) which run down the ends of these saloons , these look particularly tricky to model. As this is only ever going to be inspired by , rather than a accurate model, I may not both with them.
The old Triang bogies were replaced by some late Hornby ones, and the next stage with be transfers and tidying up
the paintwork.

Ken
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