Here it is pictured in the Down loop at Dduallt with the green and ivory push-pull set.
This is the 2nd version of 'Mountaineer' to have run on the layout. Both have been built from venerable GEM whitemetal kits but the one you see here has been altered and improved in a number of places to more accurately show the loco in the condition it ran in the late '80s and early '90s.
The most obvious change is to the cab. The GEM kit shows 'Mountaineer' with the slope-sides it received during its first rebuild at Boston Lodge. It took full advantage of the FR's loading gauge but left little room for the the driver and his mate to safely poke their heads outside. It was changed to a more traditional FR Fairlie-style profile in 1983 after one too many of the Alco's crew had brained themselves on lineside structures.
At the front end we built up the are around the cylinders to look like the piston valves it received in 1982 and - although you can't see it in the picture, unfortunately - Himself knocked up something approximating the not-so subtle lubricator.
The chassis is one of the least sophisticated in the fleet. It is an unaltered Arnold 0-6-0. There are no outside bar frames, cranks or clattering bits of Walschaerts valve gear to be seen and wouldn't be surprised if the layout operators visibly wince every time it emerges from the fiddle yards into public view.
Getting something better down below has long been on my wish list. For a while I considered fitting a Roco outside framed chassis, as others have done. I don't mind admitting it was the cost of purchasing one of these which put me off and it was probably just as well seeing how other 009 modellers who have shoehorned these mechanisms beneath heavy whitemetal kits have watched helplessly as they self-destructed and wobbled into oblivion.
At the moment my current thinking is to adapt a Backwoods outside frame chassis, but as with so many other things it's just a question of getting round to doing it.
Hi Rob,
ReplyDeleteThat's great, thanks, I wasn't expecting my request to be responded too so quickly! It's good to know it's a Gem kit, Mountaineer was the first NG loco I rode behind, so a kit has long been on my list to obtain.
If you wanted to improve your loco, how about using the Meridian kit for the Alco, and making the alterations to that which the FR made to the prototype? Then you could use the Bachmann chassis and the outside frame conversion cranks which Meridian sell for it. Just a thought.
I wonder how one would look running on Isle Ornsay... :)
Tom.