GWR Pannier (re) build

[peterbkloss]

Thanks for the most helpful comments regarding motors and drive

If the 10 series of Mashimas are still available I'd love to buy some more - I have a couple that are in other projects (that 14XX in another thread has one)

But Branchlines are mail order and shows only? Has anyone up to date contact details for them? (I have sales@branchlines.com) and the website is very very old - so maybe I could get an upto date list mailed out to me

[peterbkloss]

Coreless motors are more responsive than others and the speed can become unstable when used with a feedback controller set-up for iron cored motors. A quick search revealed that there was a later version of the AMR with a switch that reduced feedback for coreless motors - I take it yours doesn't have this luxury. Any hope with your Gaugemasters?

Your motor/gearbox setup is a bit "Hmmm". If it's reluctant to go very slowly you might improve it by fitting some sort of torque arm to the gearbox and increasing the gap between the shafts to give the coupling more space to take up the misalignment. Alternatively a simple pin and slot coupling would allow more flexibility with less drag but would probably rattle. We'll quickly pas over you gluing the motor in place.

You could do a lot worse than copy Tim's pick-ups, although they are supposed to bear on the corner of the wheel flange to get a higher contact pressure - see Dave Holt's threads.

DaveB

Dear Dave - the gearbox does have a torque arm on it now, it was hestitant in one direction and is much better now, I can get a decent crawl. As for AMR controllers, I have two, one with and one without the reduced feedback switch. I have one gaugemaster handheld and one, not yet put to use, panel mount version. I had also built myself a walk about darlington pair controller, pure DC with no feedback that doubtless would be fine with coreless ...

As for the pickups, yes I'm doing something like that for the fixed axle, thats coming in the next episode

[Winander]

Both of High Level's iron cored motors are £9.50 https://www.highlevelkits.co.uk/motors.
This image is from a price Branchlines' pricelist dated March 2021 and received almost exactly 2 years ago.

Screenshot 2023-09-19 at 13.23.23.png (66.47 KiB) Viewed 691 times

[peterbkloss]

Dear helpful people 'out there'

sales@branchlines.com doesn't work - anyone with more recent contact details for these guys? I do have a UK SIM so I could call ...

thanks in advance

[Joe Newman]

S4News 234, which includes the Scaleforum show guide, gives the following telephone number for Branchlines.

01373 822231

HTH

Joe

[Tim V]

You could do a lot worse than copy Tim's pick-ups, although they are supposed to bear on the corner of the wheel flange to get a higher contact pressure - see Dave Holt's threads.

DaveB

Old tech, I wouldn't consider using wiper pickups. I think that chassis was using up some bits. Split axles are the way forward - though outside the context of this thread.

[Hardwicke]

[peterbkloss]

So to the pickups. I wasn't confident that I could keep pickups to the movable axles clear of the spring etches so I decided to try pickups from the top.
Having obtained 0.35mm phosphor bronze wire from Cambrian model rail (thank you, guys, for purchasing Eileen's Emporium stock) I soldered two lengths to a PCB sleeper strip, gapped and feed wires soldered on too. This has been supglued to a piece of scratch etch for reinforcement

A slot was filed into the frames mid way between the front and centre axles to lower the strip somewhat. The strip has had plastic tape applied to where it crosses the frames. The rear motor mount, discarded from its original role has been re-purposed to hold the 'plank' down - it is screwed to the front of centre frame spacer. The wires are over long and I may shorten them in the future, being unsure of the best way to bend them, but they work for now (I await the screams) - this is a trial fit before adding the tape

This is after the tape was added and the ex motor mount wires bent down. The loop joining them has subsequently been cut as it fouled the motor

And a few steps (in photos missed here) - the rear pickups are soldered to a small piece of PCB strip board that sits in the ashpan area, the feed and motor wires are soldered on here, the screw is the one that holds the motor fixing bracket above. The rear pickups have insulation stripped from thin wire to avoid shorts with the keeper where they run under the rear axle

The body need the footplate cutting with a slot (almost out to the splasher fronts) where the front pickup 'plank' runs as the top still sits above frame level. I will fill that back in with thin plasticard when I'm done with all the adjustments.

Everything put back together: some tape was added around the motor to tame the wires and I added a flywheel to the rear shaft. I added a torque reaction arm to the gearbox that is trapped by the keeper rear fixing. Then out for a test run 'bare'. A few tweaks with the pickups required but it does run ...



Then on with the the body, just sitting loose:



I then did a check of the body height and found i'd been over zealous with my filing, it was sitting 0.5mm too low. Some packing stuck under the body.

Still to do: brake blocks and pull rods - the pull rods are on their way as part of a Comet models pannier chassis etch. Sadly when I did my RTR conversion I stole the pull rods from the Perserverence etch - so I bought a Comet chassis that will be re-purposed for my 1854 Pannier build, as I have the brake pull rods for that as mentioned before. The screws holding the keeper need to have their heads thinned to be less obtrustive

The wheels need balance weights

Then its dismantle and paint. The body will also need some TLC as unfortunately I've had superglue run amok around the cab whilst trying to refix the firebox backhead and now the perspex cab windows are cloudy ...

[peterbkloss]

S4News 234, which includes the Scaleforum show guide, gives the following telephone number for Branchlines.

01373 822231

HTH

Joe

thanks and to Hardwicke for the photo with the same info ...

[peterbkloss]

Dear All

Not being able to attend Scaleforum sadly, is any member attending here willing to visit the Branchlines stand for me and ask if Mashima 10 series motors are still available from them? Also to (1), ask for a working email address since sales@branchlines.com bounced for me (2) obtain an up to date motor and gearbox list for me? I can Paypal (and would add 10-15% to allow for their extortionate fees) or UK Bank transfer to cover costs for the list and postage to Norway.

Have a great show guys, I know I am really missing something here!

In hope, Peter

[peterbkloss]

Coreless motors are more responsive than others and the speed can become unstable when used with a feedback controller set-up for iron cored motors. A quick search revealed that there was a later version of the AMR with a switch that reduced feedback for coreless motors - I take it yours doesn't have this luxury. Any hope with your Gaugemasters?

Your motor/gearbox setup is a bit "Hmmm". If it's reluctant to go very slowly you might improve it by fitting some sort of torque arm to the gearbox and increasing the gap between the shafts to give the coupling more space to take up the misalignment. Alternatively a simple pin and slot coupling would allow more flexibility with less drag but would probably rattle. We'll quickly pas over you gluing the motor in place.

You could do a lot worse than copy Tim's pick-ups, although they are supposed to bear on the corner of the wheel flange to get a higher contact pressure - see Dave Holt's threads.

DaveB

Dear Dave - the gearbox does have a torque arm on it now, it was hestitant in one direction and is much better now, I can get a decent crawl. As for AMR controllers, I have two, one with and one without the reduced feedback switch. I have one gaugemaster handheld and one, not yet put to use, panel mount version. I had also built myself a walk about darlington pair controller, pure DC with no feedback that doubtless would be fine with coreless ...

As for the pickups, yes I'm doing something like that for the fixed axle, thats coming in the next episode

I had to revisit the torque arm on the gear box as it was able to move - so I redid it with 1.5mm wire with a flat filed on to increase the surface area and crudely glued it with cayano to the gear box (not screwed side) and the rear frame spacer. firmly anchored running has much improved (this was done after disassembly for painting and putting it all back together, episodes yet to come ...). I know gluing it makes it potentially weak but then I can still break the joint if needed for disassembly ...

[peterbkloss]

And so to the brake gear: This was a fiddly operation and will be long in the desription, taking me three or so weeks of little visits to my garage loft to do

The Perseverence etch contained brake hangers (of two kinds) and shoes, and the hanging brackets but no means of fixing apart from gluing or soldering off the 0.5mm hinge wire. I had hoped to use some plastic brake gear I had bought describing itself as 'GW loco brake gear) by AG from a long time ago, but discovered that it was the wrong kind of GW loco for the gear (!) it being the kind on the larger locos - so I elected to use the etched cast hangers (the later kind that I believe are appropriate for 3650) and make plastic brake shoes, not being sure whether I could avoid electrical shorts if I used the supplied etched shoes. My attempt shown here at handcrafting the shoes (using a small divider with pins at both ends to scribe the cuts in 20th black plasticard)

The holes in the chassis frames were opened out 0.5mm and wire fed through to pivot the shoes. Small blocks of 40th plasticard were cut and drilled 0.5mm to act as spacers to align the dangling hangers and to attach the etched brackets that would not quite reach the frames as I had used EM spacers and would be slightly narrow - so eventually I had six of the hangers with shoes dangling from these brackets - not very securely glued as they all had to come off again for painting and the disassembly - reassembly process that went with it ....

The spacing blocks look rather large and clunky and did get visit from a knife to trim them down and after painting they are as good as invisible. I could have used brass tube, but at this stage I hadn't perfected cutting that with a knife to nice reproducable short lengths (!).

By this time a Comet Pannier chassis etch had arrived in the post, with the missing set of brake pull rods:

Plus a couple of brackets to substitute for the levers fixed to the rearmost brake shaft that pull the brake rods as labeled in the photo above (being attached to the brake cylinder and hand brake in the real thing). This was missing altogether from the Perserverence etch so I had a go at making a replacement using spare etch strip that came from a hornblock etch that just happened to have small holes etched in to take the fixing wire. I also looked hard at where the rear brake block cross shaft passes under the ash pan, and noted that the ash pan had a 'bump' in it to allow the rod to go under. (I also looked at photos of the high level chassis kit and see there that a suitable notch is etched in the ash pan to let the cross shaft go through) so first I decided was now time to disassemble the chassis ready for painting as various things got in the way of the brake fixings. Then I filed a bump in the ashpan and fixed another piece of ex hornblock etch to take the cross shaft wire. Then with the newly arrived pullrods I started assembly of the brake gear, using 1mm brass tube around 0.5mm wire to make the cross shafts, full width for the front and middle shafts, but the tube only as far as the brackets on the ash pan for the rear wheel shaft as a full width shaft would foul the PCB strip with the pickups that is hidden in the ashpan on my chassis. The position of the brake hangers would be determined by these brackets at the rear as these are fixed to the chassis, at the front and middle they dangle, though being fixed with cyano they doesn't really move. So a hard look at the drawings and squinting at the hangers was needed to get the right position of this fixing. This was all temporarily lashed up as in the photo below as it would all come apart very soon as I decided that now was time to take everything apart and paint ...

(PS - in the list of things yet to be done in part 6 I had omitted the sand boxes and pipes ...)

[peterbkloss]

So to painting the disassembled chassis - I'm trying 'Hammerite special primer' for non ferrous metals that is also water based, trying to avoid the organic primers I've used so far, I'm not sure I'm totally impressed as cleaning the chassis 'thoroughly' in hot water and detetergent with an old tooothbrush first the primer did not seem to want to cover that well and I had to put on much more than I wanted before it would cover the metal (being water based it behaved just like water on metal if you get what I mean). I did spring off the brake blocks first BTW I reckoned they would be too delicate for this process:

Then Humbrol dirty black (brush painted, sorry thats all I have out here, I don't really have space or ventilation for spraying and its too wet to do it outside) on frames and after adding the balance weights, painting the wheels too and then reassembling wheels and keeper plate

Then putting motor back ....

Before reassembly of the brake gear, that meant adding tube spacers between the brakes and pull rods to clear the wheels, cut by sharp knife from 1mm tube. I've probably made them too wide so the rods sit unprotypically far out from the wheels in excess of what is needed for my sharp curves. First time effort on this, I'll be less generous next time. This is actually the first brake gear assmbly I've attempted, I don't really count hacking the ready made stuff on the two Bachmann chassis conversions I did before (you'll have to see my old RMweb blog for that)

and then sitting the 'right way up'

After this I decided that the feed wires to the motor were too thick and didn't route well enough., touching the body and transmitting sound from my ropey motor so I repaced them with thinner stuff from my wire scrap box beofre replacing the body:

you will see that the brake brackets have missed paint, and the body has lost some too with the superglue accident. So I spent a while with TeeCut and a cocktail stick cleaning up the glazing and putting paint on all the missing bits, so here it is, finished apart from those sand pipes (sigh). The cab side needs a clean up and repaint to get rid of the tar paint effect where I haven't cleaned up that superglue properly The cab roof also needs some gap filling and sticking down. Runs quite well and crawls nicely despite the ropey innards. I'll be ordering some Mash 10s really soon now to upgrade the motor ....

So, sand pipes and a smokebox number left to do (the latter I'll order from Railtec), but hopefully thats and its useable, remotoring will come eventually ....

Its all the little jobs that prevent declaration of it being truly finished (sigh again!). Hopefully the next one will be more straight forward - either a 4F or 22XX