Lo-Co Locos

 If you were to ask the model railway fraternity what are the big ticket items, nine times out of ten the reply would be "locomotives". I think this ignores where we house our layouts but lets run with the assumption that locos are the costly part. 

So how can we reduce the outlay on locos to a minimum? To start with we need to give up on the idea of dcc as it adds extra expense both to the motive power and control set up. Then we need to look at the second hand market rather than buying new. Not all second hand locos are equal; looking at ebay over time it's clear that some are consistently cheaper than others. Right at the bottom of those with some promise comes the Hornby 0-4-0 saddle tank, the evergreen Smokey Joe and it's derivatives. It's  not an unpleasant model as it comes but it will respond well to a bit of tarting up. Here's what I did to mine.

Actually I did two; on the left my original loco which I've had for forty odd years and on the right an example I picked up about a year ago for six quid from ebay, a good clean of the wheels fixed its hesitant running.

You'll have noticed, I hope, that the left had loco has had something done to the cylinders. What I've done is to cut, file and grind away the top part of the cylinder that Hornby cast underneath the footplate and then with this obstruction out of the way clad the bit of the cylinder moulded into the chassis with a three quarter round section of tube clip fitted to it. Does that make sense? I hope so.

I could have left things there as sorting the cylinders is a big visual improvement for little constructional pain but I fancied doing something with the cab too. First job, reduce the size of the spectacles with inserts of plastic tube. Cut over-length they were dressed back to the cab face when the glue had set.

You will see that as well as reducing the size of the spectacles I made a template (the black plastic thing) so that I could mark out where the cab front was to be trimmed back to.

 Here both loco bodies have had the cab front filed back, I've also filed off the ribs on the cab roof and overlaid this with a 20thou plasticard wrapper on both locos. The rear roof has been trimmed back to size the near one has yet to be done.

If we jump forward to after the painting and lining has been done you can see how the locos have turned out. This one I kept for myself ...

.... while this one was sold.

 

Parsimonious points

 One of the reasons, perhaps the main one, I settled on a light railway theme is that the tight radius of set track points don't look too out of place. The reason for set track points? Well they tend to be the cheapest of the commercial offerings on the second hand market. At the recent Shrewsbury model railway show I saw a box of them on a traders stall at two quid a pop. This would be fairly typical of the price asked on e-bay though buying face to face is better as it does allow for weeding out any damaged duffers.

We should all know by now that live frog points work far better than their dead frog counterparts and unfortunately OO set track points are universally dead frog. However this isn't much of a problem as it's remarkably easy to turn them into live frog jobbies. Unfortunately I can't offer step by step photos, but I can outline what's involved. Work starts with pulling out the frog rails horizontally so the plastic rail fixings aren't damaged. The thin electrical jumper strips will become detached but this isn't a problem, cut their remains away. Next cut away the plastic part of the frog but leave the flangeway mouldings which will hold the replacement rails in place; a sharp craft knife will trim away the plastic easily. Two replacement frog rails (longer than those pulled out) need to be cut from some spare rail, filed so they come together to a point and slotted back into the rail fixings. They will need soldering together where they meet and any excess solder dressed back with a file.

Here's the finished item. On the reverse side electrical connections need to be made to replace those broken at the earlier stage.

A wire links the new all metal frog to switch rails, Job done. Of course this technique can be used to liven up any piece of dead frog pointwork; I've done a few diamond crossings this way.

Preparation

 I'm afraid that this week there'll be a lot of dull preparation to wade through. Please spare a thought for me as I had to actually do this rather than just read about it. I'll try to make it as painless as possible but I hope you'll agree that it was worth it in the end.

 Even at this early stage I've come to the conclusion that building a layout in a box is a bit like constructing a ship in a bottle, in that the sequencing of the process is a bit more critical than with the usual layout build. It's all to do with the restricted access; OK nothing like the neck of a bottle but you can only get into the layout from the front. There's also the need to avoid some of the potentially messy processes damaging work already done.

In practical terms this has meant preparing the interior of the box and installing lighting before I can start to fill the space with track and scenery. While the box is a good (and cheap) starting point it comes with some problems in that there may be gaps where the end flaps don't quite meet and there are ribs where the internal corrugations meet the skin which will grin through any backscene. 

 I concocted a home made filler by tearing cheapo toilet paper into small squares, soaking it until it started to turn into mush, squeezing out as much of the water as I could and then mixing the remains with neat PVA. Pushed into the gaps and smoothed over with fingers it levelled out any crevices for the next stage.

To tackle the ribs I applied a couple of layers of thick lining paper. The first layer, stuck on with dilute PVA, was torn random shapes. Smaller sections are less likely to bubble up and they conform better to any irregularities in the shape of the box. I papered all three sides and the ceiling. The second layer was more controlled, torn strips roughly conforming to divisions I would be painting later; sky, distant hills, wooded areas and terrain closer up. 

At this point I installed the LED strip lighting so that I could match all the colours used to the lighting. I'll come back and talk about the lighting later on in the build, but for now it's sufficient to know that it was in place before any colour was applied to any part of the layout. For now I'll leave you with a teaser of the finished backscene, again I'll offer pointers later on.