Tullygrainey

Kilmore packed up ready for its 2nd public outing to City Church Bangor Model Railway Club's annual exhibition at City Church Bangor Church Halls, Upper Main Street, Bangor. Dates and times: Friday 29 May 2026, 7.00pm - 9.30pm Saturday 30 May 2026, 10.00am - 4.30pm Earlier, locos were queueing up to get their wheels cleaned and paintwork touched up. Alan

That takes the biscuit for tone deaf!

Thanks. Yes, the instructions that come with them recommend that. They’ve been filed back since that photo was taken. It’s negotiating points ok so far

Rice wrote about it. He said it was amazing how many poorly running locos could be improved just by slackening off one of the bolts!

More ThreePee. Time for the tender. A fixed rear axle and the others lightly sprung. Good old lolly sticks. My excuse for eating Magnums. Quite a lot of tricky edge to edge soldering needed here. Hard not to get the stuff everywhere. I think I used a whole fibreglass pencil cleaning this one up. ThreePee is being built with live chassis to escape from pickup purgatory. The loco has Markit insulated driving wheels one side, uninsulated ones the other, but the tender needs its Gibson wheels shorted out on one side. I've used 'spiders' from ScaleLink with the square hole in the centre reamed a little to be a tight fit on the 2mm axles. They're then soldered to the axle and to the back of the wheel rims. Belt and braces. I've done the same for the loco bogie too. Brake rigging fitted. Fiddly stuff with the bits tending to flop around everywhere until the first few joints get soldered. I looked in my notebook to see how I did it when I built Kieran's PPs a few months back. I'd written "Chassis wheeled up and brakes added" Really useful. Quite a handsome beast. The boiler furniture is just set on for the photo. Mating chassis and body always turns up the odd problem and ThreePee is no exception. The first to occur was the driving wheels locking up when the 2 chassis mounting bolts were tightened down front and back. I usually avoid two bolt attachment because it can twist the chassis and affect the running and I think that's what was happening here. I dispensed with the rear bolt and soldered a little bit of angle inside the dragbeam instead. The chassis spacer slides under this and there's a little bit of wriggle room which avoids twisting pressure on the chassis. Seemed to cure the problem, but then.... I thought I'd filed enough clearance for motor and gearbox when I built the bodywork but of course I hadn't. The wheels were grinding on something - so hard to see exactly what - and when that was cured, the gearbox cogs started clouting something too. Par for the course really. At least it is when I build them. There's always a point when I think "This thing is never gonna work" but it's usually worth persevering. After an afternoon of filing, grinding and shouting I think we're out of the woods now but who knows what will turn up next. First run under its own motive power. Loco is a bit nose up and the tender is a bit skittish through points but a promising start. Plenty to do yet. The whole rig needs added weight here and there for a start. It's running on DC at the moment but it'll be chipped once the gremlins have been banished. IMG_5077.MOV Alan

Kieran, whose models those are, tells me it’s a 1st Class Saloon coach

I'm quite sure it will David

As it happens, J26 no556 was back with me this last week or so for a severe talking to. It went to its owner Kieran who painted and finished it for its career at Kirley Junction. All was well for a while but then it began to develop personality disorders, running lumpily, stopping and starting then refusing to run at all. On examination a number of issues emerged. Two of the ScaleLink wheels had developed cracks in the boss where the crankpin screws in, meaning the crankpins may not have been secure. Given that I’ve had trouble with cracking cranks on my little Kirtley project, I suspect I need to rein in my cack-handedness when fitting crankpins. The wheels were replaced with a set of Markits and running improved noticably. Then the final drive gear came loose on its axle. The gearbox that was bundled with the kit is an early High Level RoadRunner Compact Plus with a plain brass final drive cog which has no grub screw. After repeated failures to secure the cog (threadlock, superglue, shouting at it, solder! I suspect it had been over-reamed at some stage. Maybe by me) I gave 556 a fresh RRC+ gearbox. The current version has a more reliable final drive gearwheel with brass boss and grub screw. (I had intended to just use this final drive cog in the old box but the design of the box has changed and it wouldn’t fit). While fitting the motor to the new gearbox, I discovered that the motor shaft was waving about in the breeze. Not normal! IMG_5023.MOV The plastic moulding securing the motor bearing seems to have crumbled away leaving the bearing free to jiggle around. No idea what’s caused this but on reflection, it may have been one of the root causes of the stop-start problems. Anyway, 556 now has new wheels, a new motor and a new gearbox and seems infinitely happier. It has a DCC chip stowed in the boiler and a ton of lead in the tanks. The Markit wheels are insulated/uninsulated pairs so pickups are now only needed on one side. A problem halved! After trial runs at Loughan Quay, 556 is now back on home turf and earning its keep. J26 at Kirley.mov Alan

I tried that but the one I had was a left handed thread and didn't fit. The gauge was wrong too.

I had one of those once but the wheels fell off

Long long ago, on a topic far from here...... Started a thread we did. Lost control of it we have....

Beautiful job Paul. Looking really well. No shame in glueing white metal castings. In my experience, it's nigh on impossible to solder whitemetal chimneys, domes and smokebox doors in place and I never attempt it. Why risk melting the casting whilst trying to get enough heat into the job when you can use glue which gives you time to adjust the position of everything. It's what 5 minute epoxy is for.

Took a while for that penny to drop

Some more pics of progress on ThreePee (Patrick's PP). Alan

Brilliantly quirky and, well just brilliant!