Heljan 05 Shunter to P4?

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iak
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Heljan 05 Shunter to P4?

Postby iak » Sun Dec 25, 2016 5:13 pm

Afternoon all and seasons greetings.
My missus bought a wee surprise for me this year, a Heljan 05/Hunslet Shunter.
The thing is, has anyone converted one to P4 and how?
It runs beautifully and has a real "substance" about it and looks decent.

Slàinte agus beatha.
Iain
Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest
enemy of truth....
Albert Einstein


Perfection is impossible.
But I may choose to serve perfection....
Robert Fripp


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Armchair Modeller

Re: Heljan 05 Shunter to P4?

Postby Armchair Modeller » Sun Dec 25, 2016 11:14 pm

I had a quick look at one but sourcing wheels might be a problem. They seem rather different in character to the normal Ultrascale/Alan Gibson offerings.

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jim s-w
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Re: Heljan 05 Shunter to P4?

Postby jim s-w » Mon Dec 26, 2016 9:48 am

They do look a bit wierd don't they. Unfortunately they don't look much like the real thing either which seemed to have a raised centre. Wonder if you could ask Alan at modelu to print some centres for a standard Gibson tire? Looks like a 2mm axle

Cheers

Jim
Jim Smith-Wright

http://www.p4newstreet.com

Over thinking often leads to under doing!

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John Donnelly
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Re: Heljan 05 Shunter to P4?

Postby John Donnelly » Mon Dec 26, 2016 1:16 pm

I know that Paul (Porcy Mane) has been working on this for some time now and I know that there was certainly some lathe work involved, I'll drop him a line and see if he can elaborate...

John

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iak
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Re: Heljan 05 Shunter to P4?

Postby iak » Mon Dec 26, 2016 7:18 pm

Thanks all thus far.
Not having access to a lathe and having very rusty skills mean a straight wheel change would be the easy option, even if it does not appear to be presently available.
Now if only.... Wibble! :?
Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest
enemy of truth....
Albert Einstein


Perfection is impossible.
But I may choose to serve perfection....
Robert Fripp


https://www.facebook.com/groups/PadgateWorks/

Porcy Mane
Posts: 131
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Re: Heljan 05 Shunter to P4?

Postby Porcy Mane » Mon Dec 26, 2016 7:23 pm

Thanks John,

Nowt like being dropped in it at Christmas. :-P
Coincidence you should have mentioned this John. "The boys", over the last few week have been reminding me that the 05 is virtually complete and I should get it finished. I've still got one wheel to convert and that was going to be the Christmas period job but the maladies have kicked in quite severely over the last few days so no modelling until things return to near normal.

Yep my conversion involved a lot of lathwork but most of that was to make up mandrels, holders and presses to liberate the plastic Heljan wheel centres from its OO tyre and then press it back onto a modified Ultrascale class 24 tyre.

I'd have preferred to use a Gibson steel tyre but Colins 13mm tyre has a too large internal diameter to allow an interference fit of the Heljan centre. Colin and I spent a while going through his range but came to the conclusions there was nothing near prototype .

To save writing up again it is probably easier to give links to these three posts on RMweb. The pics and text may go some way to explaining how carried out the conversion.

http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/65792-hunslet-class-05/page-11#entry2175835

http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/65792-hunslet-class-05/page-11#entry2177708

http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/65792-hunslet-class-05/page-12#entry2182136

Fortunately I had a few sets of Ultrascale economy class24/5 wheel sets stashed away, the tyres being dimensionally suitable. This pic shows the wheel/tyre combination before cleaning up. The front axle is mounted on a temporary axle to check concentricity and appearance.

Hlt05Medelling-130-EditSm.jpg


Only my opinion, but it think the Heljan wheel centre does a very good job of capturing the prototypes appearance. Earlier BR Hunslets which Heljans model doesn't represent had a different 10 spoke wheel.

There are two excellent albums on flickr They are worth a good looking at to compare appearances.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/brianews/ ... 7589593950

https://www.flickr.com/photos/95430950@ ... 3796022231

One job I'm going to do, is use modified Ambis 03/04 coupling rods as the look like they will give a more prototypical appearance than the standard Heljan items. The rod between the crank drive and rear axle needs shortening by 2mm.

Also, for anybody using three links, the drag beam will need securing more securely to the chassis. I plan to use two 16mm countersunk setscrews directly below the buffer housing. It is just lightly glued with reflective tape, The rear of the drag beams are moulded to seal the optics that transmit light to the markers.

hth

P

Ps The running number wasn't put on with a catapult. It's an experiment to see how durable rub on transfers are without sealing. As you can see with continual handling the answer is, "not very".
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