City of Birmingham has been in the collection for a few years but its total running time can be counted in minutes - it made one appearance on the portable layout one evening before it expired. It started life as a very poor City of London, which I bought as part of a biscuit tin full of scrap locos, Silver King was in the same tin!
I sourced the new body and tender as the old one was beyond saving, sadly though the wheels, axles and rod pins also turned out to be badly worn, it threw the rod pins after only a few laps of the layout, one of the wheels also fell off shortly afterwards so the loco was abandoned and left in bits - I've been scouring the Internet on and off ever since trying to find a reasonably priced chassis. The one I eventually found was totally seized, all 3 axles jammed and valve gear stuck but thankfully the armature checked out fine. A throrough clean, grease, oil, commutator clean and neo magnet (I "borrowed Sir Nigel's magnet) and within 30 minutes of arrival it was up and running with the nice shiny body and tender.
The Green 2-6-4 is an interesting repaint, it arrived last week and needed no work apart from a quick oiling. It'll look great pulling a rake of southern green coaches and who cares if they never actually painted them that colour in real life?!
My Silver King, as previously mentioned, was also in the biscuit tin of scrap locos. The tender was missing and the body paintwork too badly worn. I sourced a replacement body and tender but as they were sourced separately I ended up with a gloss body and matt tender. The paint quality wasn't that great either so when another body and tender came up for grabs I took the opportunity. The only minor problem was a missing handrail, which was quickly pinched from the old body.
Looking forward to giving these a good run next weekend.
No comments:
Post a Comment