mickoo
Western Thunderer
Ok,
New thread, does what it seez on zee tin, my rabblings and scatter gun dabblings in the Eurozone.
Picked up a couple of German locos at Telford this weekend, an O gauge MBW V200 which was going for a good price, I think not checked if it was a bargin or not, best not to I suppose
Sadly it's numbered in the V200 series and I'd of prefered 220-xxx-x or even better a 221 which I think are a better shape, but you can't be too picky when starting out. The items viewed through the engine room window are a bit 2D so I may change that with some better 3D parts later on. I'll also look at the decals and see if it is possible to get them off and preserve the paint work and perhaps renumber, but that's for another day and photos to follow shortly.
The other item was the Marklin Gauge 1 BR.78 I picked up from Dikitriki, overall I'm pleased with it and I did buy it to bash about and super detail where possible, they go cheap enough so that you don't wince when you take a knife anywhere near it
First off there were a couple of immediate points of concern, all from the model aspect, nothing to do with previous owners.
First off there's a massive amount of side play and associated slop in the motion, I'll look at trying to tone some of that down later on, side play should be easy with some washers on the axles, though the wheels look like they're on the axles for life, so, perhaps some slotted spacers attached to the chassis.
The second was traction tires, ouch, horrid! thought they went out with pancake and ringfield motors in the late 80's. This is a harder item to fix, especially if the wheels will not come off the axles, ideally you need new wheels to be honest and I have been flirting with trying to use some form of UK based wheelsets for other projects, again we will see how that all pans out. My biggest concern is perhaps not the traction tyres but obtaining replacements in years to come.
The final immediate issue is the footplate, there's a very nasty upward kick to the footplate at the front.
The footplate here is plastic and quite thin, it can easily be bent back to shape but won't hold it, don't really want to bend it any more in case it breaks.
Flipping the body over we see the obvious culprit when we add the chassis back in.
You can see the lighting circuit board trapped between the frame and footplate, hmm not quite right so stripped it down, BTW these photos are not in the order of strip down LOL
View underneath
Here we can clearly see the circuit board and the red paint from the chassis, there are no other marks so this is probably an issue from the factory , the circuit board simply does not fit this model.
All one needs do is trim the hatched area and it should all fit just right, or at least remove the pressure from the frame and prevent further bending of the footplate, it's obviously been like this for some considerable time and to be honest I had spotted it on other models I'd seen on Ebay, but had just put it down to camera angles or a slight bend that could be straightened. I'll probably fabricate some sort of brass or NS plate work in here and attach to the rear of the buffer beam to pull it all flat, I've a few ideas kicking around in my head as to how to solve this.
The final part is the massive thick front buffer beam when viewed from the side, quite clearly these fictional plates are to cover the buffers when compressed.
Yet at the rear of the loco they decided not to bother
I'll trim back the fictional part and leave the small flange on there and cross reference with real photos and make as good a job as practicable.
Other aspects that might be improved, there's a huge amount of side play on the bogie frames and wheels, really does need new bogies fabricated and the main frames are also narrow and devoid of pretty much all but the most basic details. Easiest thing to do will be to etch or scratch build up some overlays and slot behind the wheels, there's plenty of places to drill and tap the metal chassis and screw the overlays on and keep the screws hidden. The overlays can at least then have the correct profile over the rear bogie
The rest of the work just includes details on the chassis like brake rigging, sand pips and oil pipe runs etc, other than that it looks pretty good overall
New thread, does what it seez on zee tin, my rabblings and scatter gun dabblings in the Eurozone.
Picked up a couple of German locos at Telford this weekend, an O gauge MBW V200 which was going for a good price, I think not checked if it was a bargin or not, best not to I suppose
Sadly it's numbered in the V200 series and I'd of prefered 220-xxx-x or even better a 221 which I think are a better shape, but you can't be too picky when starting out. The items viewed through the engine room window are a bit 2D so I may change that with some better 3D parts later on. I'll also look at the decals and see if it is possible to get them off and preserve the paint work and perhaps renumber, but that's for another day and photos to follow shortly.
The other item was the Marklin Gauge 1 BR.78 I picked up from Dikitriki, overall I'm pleased with it and I did buy it to bash about and super detail where possible, they go cheap enough so that you don't wince when you take a knife anywhere near it
First off there were a couple of immediate points of concern, all from the model aspect, nothing to do with previous owners.
First off there's a massive amount of side play and associated slop in the motion, I'll look at trying to tone some of that down later on, side play should be easy with some washers on the axles, though the wheels look like they're on the axles for life, so, perhaps some slotted spacers attached to the chassis.
The second was traction tires, ouch, horrid! thought they went out with pancake and ringfield motors in the late 80's. This is a harder item to fix, especially if the wheels will not come off the axles, ideally you need new wheels to be honest and I have been flirting with trying to use some form of UK based wheelsets for other projects, again we will see how that all pans out. My biggest concern is perhaps not the traction tyres but obtaining replacements in years to come.
The final immediate issue is the footplate, there's a very nasty upward kick to the footplate at the front.
The footplate here is plastic and quite thin, it can easily be bent back to shape but won't hold it, don't really want to bend it any more in case it breaks.
Flipping the body over we see the obvious culprit when we add the chassis back in.
You can see the lighting circuit board trapped between the frame and footplate, hmm not quite right so stripped it down, BTW these photos are not in the order of strip down LOL
View underneath
Here we can clearly see the circuit board and the red paint from the chassis, there are no other marks so this is probably an issue from the factory , the circuit board simply does not fit this model.
All one needs do is trim the hatched area and it should all fit just right, or at least remove the pressure from the frame and prevent further bending of the footplate, it's obviously been like this for some considerable time and to be honest I had spotted it on other models I'd seen on Ebay, but had just put it down to camera angles or a slight bend that could be straightened. I'll probably fabricate some sort of brass or NS plate work in here and attach to the rear of the buffer beam to pull it all flat, I've a few ideas kicking around in my head as to how to solve this.
The final part is the massive thick front buffer beam when viewed from the side, quite clearly these fictional plates are to cover the buffers when compressed.
Yet at the rear of the loco they decided not to bother
I'll trim back the fictional part and leave the small flange on there and cross reference with real photos and make as good a job as practicable.
Other aspects that might be improved, there's a huge amount of side play on the bogie frames and wheels, really does need new bogies fabricated and the main frames are also narrow and devoid of pretty much all but the most basic details. Easiest thing to do will be to etch or scratch build up some overlays and slot behind the wheels, there's plenty of places to drill and tap the metal chassis and screw the overlays on and keep the screws hidden. The overlays can at least then have the correct profile over the rear bogie
The rest of the work just includes details on the chassis like brake rigging, sand pips and oil pipe runs etc, other than that it looks pretty good overall
Last edited: