Gaiety N2 - what have I bought now!

Browsing around a local charity shop I came across this;

I had no idea what it was, the diecast body suggested Hornby Dublo but somehow I had my doubts.

The loco is in a bit of a state, one driving wheel was hanging off, I suspect a broken insulating bush, and the pony truck only has one wheel;

Still, for £8 I couldn't resist it. Under the body is stamped JVM and B'ham, which lead to a bit of searching and I found out that I have a Gaiety N2, produced in the 50s. There's more information here.

Here's the underside;

Note the label - "I need a little TLC!"

To remove the chassis you unscrew the buffers;

The front buffers still have the 'pips' left from being parted off.

Here's the chassis, both sides;

Note the pick-ups. The driving wheels are pretty good, much better than anything Tri-ang came up with, but the pony wheel is a bit coarse.

Gears;

An interesting arrangement!

Unscrewing the two large brass screws allows the wheelset to be dropped out;

Whilst the wheels were out of the chassis I decided to see if the motor would turn over, I don't want to try it with the wheels in place as I know that at least one insulating bush needs replacing;

I used my 'dual fuel' controller, first just on the 9v battery which didn't have enough 'oomph' so I plugged it in to a 12v wall-wart, this did work and proved that the motor will run.

Finally, here's the underside of the body;

My plans for this are to clean the body with soapy water leaving the paint as it is, sort out the driving wheels which will mean turning at least one insulating bush, cleaning up and oiling the motor and geartrain, and turning up a new pair of pony wheels, using the original one for a pattern and making the new from brass, which would I feel suit the age of the model.

Paul.

SM32 Harvest Trucks - wheels and bearings

I'm using 20mm dia. Binnie wheels for these waggons along with Binnie axles. As I couldn't decide between straight and curly spoked I bought a pack of each, and fitted straight to one waggon and curly to the other. But first I needed to knock up some bearings;

These are made from 3.5mm brass tube, into which the 3mm dia. Binnie axles fit quite nicely. They're cut to 7.5mm long and are soldered to some 1/4" x .010" brass strip, a rare job for my RSU. On the right in the above photo can be seen a spare probe for the RSU with a curve filed into the end, used to hold the tube in place whilst it's being soldered.

Each bearing has a pad made from .040" styrene epoxied to it. A bit more epoxy marries the bearings to the chassis together. The easiest way to get everything lined up was to assemble the wheelsets and fit them one axle at a time, checking everything for square then letting the glue set before fitting the second axle.

Here's the underside of one wagon with the wheels in place;

The undersides of both waggons;

And side by side;

Wheelbase is 40mm.

Next I need to fit couplings and start thinking about the finish.

Paul.

SM32 Harvest Trucks - building the bodies

Someone recently scanned the instruction sheet for the long-unavailable Saltford Models harvest trucks and posted them online. These were a 16mm/SM32 kit for a simple but rugged waggon designed in the main for helping with the fruit harvest in your garden, carrying plums etc. The inspiration for the kit was some rough peat wagons used at Ashcott, near Glastonbury, locally made with plank bodies and a wooden underframe. I never built any when the kits were available even though I built a few other Saltford 16mm kits at the time. Now however I'm going to put that right.

As designed the bodies would have been made from plasticard, however I've mine made mine from 'craft sticks' from The Works, which cost a pound a packet. These are 114mm long, so the first job was to cut 7mm from each end to cut away the rounded ends and give me a pile of straight planks 100mm long. This sets the body length, it should be 115mm according to the drawing but hey, 100mm is still good. Wood glue holds everything together.

Using lolly sticks is quite good fun, and also a chance to use my NWSL Chopper, a tool that I rarely use but when I do need it I'm glad that I've got it.

Chassis rails are cut from '9 x 9mm' pine strip, which is actually 8 x 8.5mm. The drawing shows these to be 10mm longer than the body, again I've done my own thing by making them 20mm longer. They are spaced so the outer faces are 24mm apart.

Ironwork would have been cast from whitemetal in the original kit. I've used .030" styrene cut into 3mm wide strips with .040" Evergreen rod for bolt head detail.

I'm not sure how to finish these. I've been playing with Citadel's 'Devlan Mud' wash, applied over several washes, which looks like it will give me the dirty peat stained look that I want;

Comments and suggestions welcome!

Wheels and bearings next.

Paul.