Model Railway - What's your latest acquisition?

Are there any loco-powered County locomotives with the 5-pole can motors in?

Al.

No, as the County 4-4-0 has been relegated to the Railroad range alongside the original Compound, Hunt and Schools, it is fitted with a 3-pole motor + small flywheel.

@RT "what do I do with the rest of it?"

I suggest finding a non powered tender and stuffing a Lima power bogie into it. I have a number of hybrid locos motorised in this way. It works a treat so long as there is enough room for a decent bit of lead to provide traction weight.

My latest buy a couple of DVD's on the Class 86 and 87 electric locos and one of Rugby Station area in 1997 which showed Electric Classes 86, 87, 90, 92, and Diesel classes 31, 37, 47, 56, 60 in action

The reason for the purchase is to get on idea of what types of trains and make up of said trains in preparation for my planned modern (1980ish) layout. Living in the south where GWR main line runs I have not got a clue what runs on the West Coast Main line in the modernish era. I did like the look of the Post Office class 325 4 car parcel sets.

Threelink and Al, I built a chassis for the Airfix COT years ago by modifying a Tri-ang Nellie chassis following an article in one of the modelling magazines. However, it never got finished for various reasons. I have not tried the county tender chassis in the GBL tender yet but using the tender drive stops me having to get the correct Romford gears for the loco chassis. If all else fails, I have a working County that I didn’t have before!

Does anyone know how to get the tender top off? I have been looking at it and tried to prise it off at the gap but it doesn’t want to move. I don’t want to break it in case the motor doesn’t fit as intended.

The GBL static locos have lots of odd plastic in them that would need to be cut out to motorise the loco and it could affect the strength. I think the tender option may be the best one here.

The County tender body is held to the chassis frame by two upward-facing lugs on the top of the frame locating in to recesses at the bottom of the body sides, approximately 1/3rd and 2/3rds from either end. It may be possible to spring the body off by squeezing the front and rear causing the sides to bow outwards but if this doesn't work, introduce a blade at one corner between the top of the frame and the bottom of the body and move along the side prizing the body outwards until the clips release.

Thanks GS, it came off exactly as you described. Unfortunately it’s too wide and tall to fit the COT tender body. I have a Lima Crab one somewhere I can try as an alternative. Other than that it’ll end up back in the long term projects box.

Not such a good mechanism but the Dapol/Hornby Dean Goods drive unit may be worth checking out as this is slimmer (but needs all-wheel loco pick-ups as it has plastic wheels throughout), Almost all tender-drive tender bodies have to have a piled-high coal load to conceal the Ringfield units.

I just received a Hornby County of Hereford from the famous online auction site. I got it as I have a GBL City of Truro that I wanted to motorise and I have a partially finished chassis that I made years ago for an Airfix version of the same loco with Romford extended axles. If I can fit the tender drive to the GBL version I have no need to motorise the loco, happy days!

It was a lot cheaper to buy the whole thing than just the tender drive….now what to do with the rest of it?

You might want to take a close look at the GBL smoke box door to see if there is an extra handle on the smoke box door dart. If yes should be a simple matter of scraping off and repainting the door.

In addition to the above, the County tender is a larger type than that fitted to the GBL Truro so you will probably not be able to use the GBL tender body. As you would probably have to repaint the County tender body or entire City/County tender to match.

Having broken up a loco powered Railroad county to make a County tank, I fitted one of the tender driven county loco chassis into the railroad body and re-connected the tender to produce an unpowered dummy loco for double heading.

The idea was to re-create a photo I had seen of a Dean Single double heading with a County 4-4-0. The only trouble is the Dean single will hardly pull three coaches around my layout on its own let along with the county on the front!