What’s the point of having wagons if you don’t have something to move them around? Welcome to my first ScaleFour locomotive project.
After an awful lot of faffing about, I have finally settled on a project for my first ScaleFour locomotive. To be honest, I’ve been an indecisive butterfly for far too long and, in the end, a railway modelling truism has won the day: we tend to end up modelling the railways we remember from our youth. And, in my case, that means BR Western Region in the late 1970s.
When I coupled that realisation with my affection for freight only lines and the fact that I think I’m getting the hang of this soldering malarkey the end result was that I’ve settled on one of the Plymouth Laira-based Class 25 “rats” that served time on Cornwall and Devon freight duties including china clay traffic.
The plan is to convert a Bachmann Class 25 using Penbits sprung bogies and Ultrascale wheels. Now, I know the Bachmann 25 bodies have quite a few er… issues with prototype accuracy but, for this first attempt, I can live with the limitations. That’s because I intend to use this project as a proving ground for the future. In the long term, I’ve got my beady eye on the forthcoming new tooling Bachmann 25 and/or one of the Sutton Locomotive Works ones. Ultimately, I want to see if I can combine one or the other of those with the Penbits sprung bogies. So the aims of this project are:
- Actually get my first ScaleFour locomotive up and running on the track!
- Learn about the ins and outs of the Penbits sprung bogies kit so that I can understand how it could be adapted for future projects.
- Test out some of my ideas for paint stripping, repainting, decaling and weathering diesel locomotives.
I anticipate this project being a long slow burn that will run in parallel with my wagon builds. With that in mind, I’ve pencilled in the aim of getting it finished by the end of this year. Hopefully, by then, the new tooling Bachmann Class 25s will be on the market and I’ll be ready to work out what to do next.
In the meantime, to get the ball rolling, I’ve acquired a second hand Bachmann Class 25/1, a Penbits sprung bogie kit and (with kind thanks to fellow ScaleFour Society member Tony Wilkins) an Ultrascale conversation wheelset. And that’s the first lesson I’ve learnt: if you want to use Ultrascale wheels, then prepare yourself for a long wait before your order gets fulfilled. I’ve been lucky to pick up an unused set from a fellow Society member but other options are the Alan Gibson sets or, if they are in stock, the sets sold by Sutton Locomotive Works for converting their Class 25s to ScaleFour.
The other thing I’ve been doing is a prototype and modelling research deep dive. In particular, I’ve got hold of Karl Crowther’s pair of Model Railway Journal articles about how he modelled a Class 25 plus Jim Smith-Wright’s detailed article about how he constructed a small fleet of these diesels. In addition to that I’ve picked up a couple of second-hand books about Class 25s and found the really informative BR/Sulzer Type 2 Classes 24 & 25 website.
Work has started with something rather prosaic. I needed to check that my second hand Bachmann Class 25 doesn’t have any nasty lurking mechanical problems. So I’ve been running it up and down a stretch of OO track listening and watching for any problems. All seemed well, so I opened her up and fitted a simple Gaugemaster DCC90 8-pin decoder chip before doing some more test running.
To do this, you need to locate and remove four deeply seated screws on the underside of the locomotive (they are semi-hidden by the bogies). Next the body unclips at the cab ends and can be gently eased off. Then I removed the blanking plate from the DCC 8-pin connector and plugged in the decoder chip. It makes sense to put the naked locomotive chassis on the track and do some test running to ensure all is well before refitting the body. After I confirmed everything was working as expected, I used some BluTack to secure the decoder in place and replaced the body while being careful not to trap or damage any of the wires.
And that’s where I’m up to so far. The next job is to tackle the first stages of building the Penbits sprung bogies. So grab your popcorn and make yourself comfortable because this will be a steady and potentially winding journey. After all, if every wagon tells a story then why can’t every locomotive paint a picture?
Bibliography
- Diesels In Depth: Classes 24/25 – D. Clarke (Ian Allan, 2006): a really nice reference that covers the history, liveries and modifications/variants of these locomotives with plenty of big, clear photographs.
- Looking Back At Class 24 & 25 Locomotives – K. Derrick (Amberley Publishing, 2016): essentially a large collection of thematically grouped prototype photographs, each with a detailed informative caption.
- Model Railway Journal (No. 231, 2014) – A Fully Sprung Class 25 For Hebble Vale Goods – K. Crowther pp. 129-136, 160: a thorough step-by-step account of construction of the Penbits sprung bogie kit and fitment to a Bachmann Class 25 chassis. The article has the added bonus of an enlightening response from Penbits’ Ian Penberth.
- Model Railway Journal (No. 239, 2015) – A Class 25 For Hebble Vale Goods – K. Crowther pp. 125-132: follow-up article in which attention turns to how the author fixed the prototype inaccuracies of the Bachmann Class 25 bodywork by grafting on cabs from a Hornby body alongside numerous other careful modifications.
Every Wagon Tells A Story 