Garden Railway Forum

As mentioned in the Help Me section I'm building a steam outline loco on an HGLW 4wd powered chassis. The loco is a freelance based loosely on a fowler loco which worked on one of the Australian sugar cane tramways.



I didn't want to have to think about making a pony truck as I'm fairly new to scratch building so my drawings changed the loco to look like this...



The axles for the chassis had to be extended to 66mm to let the loco be outside frame rather than putting tram sides on it (my initial idea following Si's example). The loctite holding the wheels on breaks with a little torque (applied using a vice and some molegrips with the wheels wrapped in fabric to protect them) so it was relatively easy to change the axles for longer ones, although if I do this sort of loco again I'm just going to ask David at HGLW to make me a kit with a custom axle length as he is happy to do that.

This is how far I've got so far. The cranks and coupling rods are a little chunky but as I said I'm fairly new to scratchbuilding so wanted to go for solid rather than fine details and mucking it up several times...



I'll keep updating as I make progress

Looks like a nice chunky loco - I'll watch progress with interest. How are you going to get at the batteries? Complete lift-off body?

I might have to go that way, I'm hoping I can get them to fit in one of the tanks but it might be a bit tight for getting them back out again.

This is how far I've got so far. The cranks and coupling rods are a little chunky but as I said I'm fairly new to scratchbuilding so wanted to go for solid rather than fine details and mucking it up several times...

Nothing wrong with chunky at all, I think they look alright anyway. It is always easier to paint they so they don't stand out so much than to continually have to adjust/repair them if they are too fine.

fit rechagable batterys and a charging jack and u will easily get 4 hours run..i got 4x AAA batterys on my hglw loco and it will run stop start all day at open days..

Progress has been a little slow due to real life getting in the way Most of the fake chassis has been made so I mocked up with a mamod side tank and a yeast tin to check it looked okay. The yeast tin will actually be the boiler, it's slightly too large so will be cut and rejoined to get a slightly narrowe diameter and then the firebox and smokebox will be make out of an old plastic spice jar. Measuring up I was very happy to find that the 2xAA battery holder I was planning on using will fit very comfortably in the boiler (it would probably take a 4x AA holder) so I'm planning on having a removable smoke box door for access to the batteries .

Part of me wonders whether David could be pursuaded to do his chassis with cranks.......

HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Part of me wonders whether David could be pursuaded to do his chassis with cranks.......

That would be a very useful little chassis.

David's chassis kits are great value, i used the four wheel drive version on my little diesel loco No.6, only £19.75. It uses 2 x AA and will run for hours.

An outside crank kit would be great, especially as the wheel base is only 2mm smaller thank a quarry hunslet!

pskipper:103886 wrote:An outside crank kit would be great, especially as the wheel base is only 2mm smaller thank a quarry hunslet!

At HGLW we do custom wheelbase chassis too if you want that extra 2mm :-) . Mail me at HGLW@Eagleassist.com if you are interested.

Adding commercial cranks and rods to a basic chassis is possible, but would up the cost significantly. Depends what folk are willing to pay.

What sort of cost would we be talking? Could it be offered as an 'add on' bag of bits? I for one would be interested.