I had a little Mamod loco that was used at the special school where I taught to engage the pupils. I bought it off eBay and it came with a homebrewed gas burner much prone to squirting three foot burning streams of butane if it fell over. Not good at all.
I sold that to someone on here.
It also regularly melted the plastic sight glass and eventually the soldered joint under the boiler.
So started the long journey to turn it into something reliable even vaguely usable.
Since my home track was 45mm I converted it to 45mm with home made brass spacers. I didn't like the look of the pot metal ones available from the usual suspects.
I pressed out the axles from the aftermarket steel wheels and added some turned spacers on some stainless stock of the right diameter. I pressed bashed the wheels back on with a hammer. Then took them off again to add the frame fixings. Then I tool one off again to get the quartering not an exact mirror image of the other one. Rinse and repeat til you get it right.
From RWM I purchased a silver soldered boiler, couplings and a weather board style cabin front.
I also bought a tiny little pressure gauge which in retrospect was eye wateringly expensive.
I bought a Bix burner to go with the boiler.
From somewhere, I can't remember, I bought a new smokebox.
I turned a new chimney and saddle to replace the one that kept falling off, retained with a hollow screwed piece from inside the smokebox. That ain't going anywhere.
I turned up a displacement lubricator from brass bar. Drilling a 0.5mm hole in a round pipe without breaking the drill ain't easy.
I made some riveted style buffer beam overlays from brass sheet to make the front and rear look better.
Once assembled and finished with some Roundhouse hand rails it looks OK in a butch sort of a way. It runs OK too.
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