No.3 - Karen
Karen
has been fitted with a brass dome and chimney cap from Roundhouse and handrails, also supplied
by Roundhouse. Lamps from GRS have been added to the front lamp irons.
Other additions have been dummy crossheads and slidebars, again sold by
Roundhouse.
Karen's lady driver is actually an Early Learning Centre farm figure. She has a bucket in her hand inside the cab which stops her falling out!
Some
more modifications have been the addition of a Westinghouse pump to
the smokebox, some dummy springs and hangers and the blackening of the eccentric
rod. The pump is a GRS casting, the supplied bracket is fixed to the smokebox
using a small self tapping screw into a matching hole drilled into the 'box
side. The pump is then super-glued to the bracket, covering the screw head.
Additional pipes have been added using the copper wire from a short piece of
1.5mm twin-and-earth mains cable. The springs and hangers (again GRS castings)
are glued to the footplate under the boiler.
With the entry onto the CSLR scene of a Spektrum radio control set, the decision was taken to fit No.3 with a servo on the regulator. The Spektrum AR6000 receiver is small and light and fits below the footplate on the right hand side with some double sided tape.
A
lick of black paint on the edges and wires means it all but disappears. The
servo is a Spektrum S75 servo that fits between the frames and uses the longest
of the supplied servo arms to operate a rod through a slot already in the
footplate. Two pieces of square section plastic are used to fit the servo to the
loco using self tapping screws as supplied with the servo.
A hole drilled in the regulator lever takes a standard servo link to complete the mechanical installation. For power, a four cell battery is fitted over the axles between the frames. This is made up from 2/3A cells of 1400mAh capacity, wrapped in black heatshrink - this too is almost invisible when in situ. The nature of the Spektrum set means that the twin short aerials are routed for neatness up into the cab, but out of site and there is no glitching or shortage of range at all.
An experiment with a five cell pack was too much for the S75 Servo, and I fried two before reading the specification and finding out the maximum recommended operation voltage is 5.3v. In operation, the r/c allows Karen to haul a greater variety of trains on the hilly CSLR, as the load need not be matched so carefully. With the extra control the regulator can be closed on the downhill sections, opened up on the uphill sections and of course, she can be brought to a halt without chasing her around the garden.
The D-Couplers front and rear have now been replaced with Accucraft chopper couplings. Two holes drilled through the buffer beam allow the coupler to bolt in place, hiding the original hole. The chassis bolt lugs needed to be relieved a little to clear the nuts before refitting - a couple of minutes with the Dremel and a file. The insides of the buffer beams and the cylinder end caps have been given a coat of black acrylic paint.
The
final S75 servo expired at the Portsmouth show in May. The cause of this is
still unknown - the gear train is OK, there are only four cells in the battery
pack, the movement is all free. So, the servo is replaced with a HiTec 65MG -
metal geared servo. This was about twice the price but feels much more robust.
We shall see! Whilst the loco was in the shops, I resprayed the cab roof
and running boards with matt black paint, and added a dummy roof hatch. The
pictures here show the results. As the top of the loco is what you see first,
the simple addition of a roof hatch adds considerably.
Some significant modifications to the appearance of No.3 in early 2010, plus replacement of the coupling and connecting rods due to wear. As can be seen in the pictures, Karen now sports a Geisl ejector in place of her standard (although brass-capped) chimney. The ejector was fashioned from a solid piece of aluminium bar using hacksaw and file to measurements taken from the ejector fitted to Edward-Thomas on the Talyllyn Railway. A brass sheet foot was soldered in place atop the smokebox and a peg on the bottom of the ejector sits in the hole left by the original chimney. A single hole was drilled forwards of the exhaust route to take an 6BA stud tapped into the ejector. A single bolt and spring washer holds the assembly secure. At the same time, dummy hinges and a lamp bracket were added to the smokebox. The Roundhouse rivet heads were smoothed off and the whole given a few coats of stove enamel matt black.
Meanwhile,
I added a pair of Roundhouse buffer beam overlays and some additional coupling
chains a-la WLLR or VoR. These were fitted by replacing the buffer beam screws
with bolts carrying an additional nut to give me a stand-off from the beam. The
first link of the chain is soldered to the bolt head. For additional security, I
glued the overlays to the original beam in case they became bent due to catching
undergrowth or lineside 'features'.
Whilst replacing the coupling and connecting rods, I've added a double slide bar from the Roundhouse Silver Lady. Visible in the top of the three pictures here, my next task is to manufacture a dummy crosshead to take advantage of the lower slide.