Changing!

The line up of trains on the My Last Great Project layout changes with time as I add a few new wagons or a loco and take some off. Nothing like a change of scenery to keep things interesting. However I have just spent a day changing most of the trains as there is a video for YouTube in the offing. So this changed.....

.....changed to this!

I also found my other class 58 so there is now a trio of them!

All this may not look like much but by the time you find the boxes and repack or unpack rolling stock a few hours go by - but so much fun!

Strike whilst the iron is hot!

Strike whilst the iron is hot, so they say. However, whilst my soldering iron was not initially hot I did decide that having uncovered the Hornby duo of Class 58's I might as well DCC chip the motored one otherwise it would be several months before it got done. 

First off was to get at the insides. Unusually the body does not separate from the chassis, you have to take the bogies out to get to the motor and wiring.

First bogie out.

Second one out. I used the 9v battery to test that the motor still worked! It did!

Next job was to unsolder the wires from the motor and dispose of the anti TV interference capacitor which was fitted back in the days of analogue television.

Wiring in a DCC socket I had to use a bull dog clip to hold two of the models existing cables together before soldering the harness wire to it.

The rest of the wires were connected up and heat shrinked at the joins to avoid any short circuits.

I tested the wiring with the battery which proved all was well. Most DCC chips will run on DC so the battery is a good way of testing without full DCC voltage which could blow the chip if the wiring was not correctly done! With that done the wires were coiled up and taped before being pushed into the body shell and the bogies refitted. Then the chip was programmed and the motored loco, with its dummy, was tested on the layout. 

It runs well, just stutters on a couple of  points as not all the wheels pick up current. I may look at adding some more pickups in the future, but for now I am enjoying this pair running on the layout where they do look rather good - to me anyway!

A duo of Class 58s!

In my continued efforts, as Christmas approaches (and now it is the 1 December that word can be uttered!), to earn bonus points with Mrs. Woody for actually getting jobs crossed off her 'For me to do' list i have been doing flooring in the understairs cupboards. Whilst in there I came across this that I bought at the Spalding Model Railway Show last month.

 

I have been that busy I just have not got round to playing operating it and I do need to put a DCC chip in as well. However it is, unusually, a duo of locos, in this case Class 58's in EWS livery. These locos were very much the mainstay in hauling coal trains to the power stations when coal was king and much of the UK's power was generated by coal powered stations. In fact both these locos are numbered and labeled up as being based at Worksop depot in the middle of the East Midlands mining area back at the turn of this century.

Opening the box revels the two locos. One is motored and the other is a dummy (a bit like me then!) as the Class 58's often ran in pairs such was the load that they were hauling. These two date from 2004 when Hornby released them and were discontinued in 2005. Again, unusually, they are both factory weathered and the mid 2000's is when Hornby and Bachman started to offer such models. To be honest I have never been a big fan of the factory weathered locos as they usually look to my eyes as though they have just been blasted with some dirt coloured paint. However, on these two it does seem to work. 

Interestingly, loco 58024 carried the earlier EWS wording of EW&S which was quickly shortened to EWS as worn by 58037.

I do like these two and given my weakness for the EWS livery, these two should be a useful addition to the fleet.

Right! Back to the understairs cupboard flooring and more bonus points with Mrs. W!