Motorising the City of Truro

The only low-sided GW tender I can think of is the old Hornby Saint/County/28xx one. The coal load has an over-exaggerated 'hump' in it, though, to hide the Ringfield power unit.

David Belcher

Hornby Dean Goods tender? Coal rails etc might need reworking, but it should be roughly the right proportions. The same comments apply about the large mound of coal covering the motor, though.

Truro never had coal rails on its tender - an early one with side sheets.

You mean the conversion of the Hornby inside framed GWR 4-4-0 County of Bedford 3821 to an outside framed City. It was around 20 years ago soon after the County was released so there were no cheap 2nd hand ones available otherwise I might have had a go. The snags were that unless you built a body from scratch, the County body after you had modified it was not all that accurate for a City and the conversion to outside framing meant sending the chassis away for commercial modification which added cost to the project. You could do the chassis mod yourself but it required extension to the axles which were difficult to attach accurately and securely.

However the motor was in the County's tender so a 2nd hand one of those might be suitable, or the original (Mainline?) Dean goods had a tender drive which could be used but may need some modification for the City type. Does the later Hornby version of the Dean goods still have tender drive?

Alan

Back in 1981 (the April issue, I think), Railway Modeller also had a "Truro" conversion article, using most of the original kit but with an adapted chassis from Tri-ang's "Nellie" industrial tank loco providing the motive power. Cambrian Coast route fans could, I guess, take such a job a stage further to produce a DIY "Dukedog" [1].

David Belcher

[1] Seeing as the prototype utilised bits of two different locos [2] to produce one new one, a kit-bashed job like that ought to add to the authenticity ;-) [2] Or was this partly an accountant's fudge, as with the LMS Claughton-into-Patriot conversions?

It was an accountant's fudge the opposite way: to pretend engines built from spares and used bits, were actually new. Strictly, they were Bulldogs rebuilt with Duke boilers.

Greg Procter wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@ihug.co.nz:

Yes, and I've got one. :-)

Seriously it's not that bad but it is showing it's age a little. It's got one of those 'silly built into the frame' type motors Mainline liked to use.

one of those 'silly built into the frame' type motors Mainline liked to

use....

Mine has too and it is the one and only loco I have never managed to convert to DCC because the motor couldn't be properly isolated - some current kept leaking somewhere and shorting out the motor output of decoders. As a model, it isn't very good compared with the current Bachmann offering so I decided to relegate it to the display case and buy a Bachmann if/when I want to run such a loco.

Graham Plowman

snipped-for-privacy@gppsoftware.com wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@i40g2000cwc.googlegroups.com:

I got mine second hand for £8 a cople of years ago, semi-detailed I've put a bit more work into it, fall plate, crew, front tension lock gone, bit of light weathering, real coal, lamps - I think it's got quite a bit of character even if it does make a noise like a coffee grinder. :-)