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!

Inspirational! Excellent weathering, as always.

That's a sensible idea David and I always intend to do that. Then laziness takes over

A strong sense of déjà vu hereabouts as another GNR(I) PPs 4-4-0 makes its way through the erecting shop. This one is destined for Patrick @Patrick Davey. The kit is available from Studio Scale Models these days but it's essentially the same kit I built for Kieran Lagan recently (see 12/11/25 post above) from etches originally designed and marketed by Northstar. Chassis is compensated with a fixed rear axle and hornblocks on the other one which rocks on a horizontal beam fixed to a frame spacer. Some of the lessons learn on Kieran's build are proving useful here though I'd forgotten just how tricky some of the jobs are. Those splashers, big and small, take a long time to get right, as does the cab roof and the whole running plate is very floppy and difficult to keep straight as bits are gradually added. However, it's a nice kit and it's coming together well so far. Boiler and smokebox next Alan

That is a radical transformation! You'd be hard pressed to guess the model it evolved from. A lot of painstaking work but worth it for the end product. You've certainly captured the essence of Slieve Gullion. Great to see projects like this. Thanks for showing us the process.

This resonated with me John, having come up against the same issue only a day or two ago. I think I might follow your lead and start using my London Road Models tapered jig axles again.

With the Kirtley's chassis out of commission for the time being, I've done some more work on the body shells, replacing handrails and adding some missing details. Still need to source some buffers. Nothing in the drawer to suit.

Probably David. I'd say inserting the crankpins caused the cracking in the first place but in use, the weight would surely have finished the job in the end. Replacement rather than repair is probably the better option now, with a bit more care next time!

The Kirtley comes unstuck. Having arranged some chassis mounts for loco and tender and fitted an insulated drawbar, I stripped the Kirtley of its black paint to reveal some quite nice white metal castings. Then this happened... It's difficult to see in the photo but the crank on the centre axle has fractured. What seems to have happened is that inserting the crankpin into the crank - standard Gibson practice for wheels, the crankpin cuts its own thread as it's screwed in - weakened the crank and caused it to break. On examination, 4 of the other 5 have cracks. I think John @Mayner may have alluded to this possibility in an earlier post above. I should've listened Having a think about how to proceed. Repairing the crank is probably futile. The others may go the same way. I'm happy with the Gibson cranks but if I use them again I'll ream the holes a bit before inserting the crankpins and secure them with Loctite or similar. Parked for now. (It, not me) Alan

Excellent. Your little jig is a fine bit of work. Beautifully made and it seems to do the job well. A useful addition to your tool kit.

A little square of thin Plasticard will do the job