“Charles” Gets a Makeover!

This is a project with a difference. A friend has a Fleischmann™ type 4028 0-6-0 Steam Locomotive which he would like to use as a “proving” loco for his under-construction layout. Sort of a recycling exercise.

He decided that a hypothetical, but possible scenario had occurred with his Wolgan Valley railway: “the NSWGR had decided to import a German 0-6-0 class loco for evaluation. Part of the process involved a repaint into NSWGR colours (or lack thereof) and a later sale to the Commonwealth Oil Corporation, Newnes for use on the Wolgan Valley line.”

Here is “Carl” pretty much as he arrived at Brolgan Road, with the exception of the Kadee couplers which have been fitted as described below.

My task was to implement that conversion on the model and convert it to DCC with sound. This is the story of that conversion of “Carl” (which name appeared on the side tanks) to “Charles” on its rebirth on the Wolgan valley line. I believe it will carry a NSW “X” number.

It is a little over the NSWR loading gauge but squeaks past my platforms. Wheel flanges are a bit gross but have been filed a little and now run through my code 75 points OK. As it is also to be a test bed for DCC it is an interesting exercise. The model itself is beautifully constructed.

Step 1 is the fitting of Kadees to match the rest of the rolling stock.
And in the process give it a good run on DC to make sure that the project is feasible. As you can see in the lead photo, it is running just fine on my layout under DC and it proved to be quite powerful and relatively smooth.

I am impressed by the engineering in this model but not surprised due to its West German origin. The chopper coupler keeper is easily removed by unscrewing the buffers.
That releases the keeper plate, chopper coupler and the centreing spring strip (latter 2 not used).
Tap the metal chassis with an 8BA thread (or to your choice) to suit a standard Kadee plastic machine screw.
As pointed out earlier, I found the existing hole in the front of the loco to be a little large and tapped the hole throught the plastic foot plate under the smokebox door. That means that the front coupler now needs to be unscrewed to remove the body.
The hole in the keeper plate needs to be enlarged to take the Kadee screw – I achieved that with a small file.
The screws are quite long and need to be cut to length (sprue cutter or similar) and the end filed smooth.
The chosen Kadee was a #149 Long Overset Whisker coupler to get the coupler jaws down to an acceptable height. The draft gear box fits within the existing housing and the mounting hole can be aligned with the original holes by trimming the back off the draft gear box.
The #149 coupler needs to be trimmed to length as shown below. You can see here why they are called “whisker” couplers.

The bottom plate is glued in place (I used Faller Expert Plastic Cement which has a nice fine delivery tube).
You can see here how the top lip has been cut and filed flush
The coupler height is still a fraction high – if it is a worry a small styrene shim could be added above the Kadee.
And here is “Carl Charles” happily coupled to a small freight consist. Still running DC.

The next post will cover conversion to DCC using a Loksound V4 decoder with sugar cube speaker in the firebox. Then the re-paint and a video of him chuffing happily away to his new home in the Blue Mountains.

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Rick Fletcher

Born in the steam era and developed an interest in railways when given a clockwork Hornby "set". Surrounded by steam when travelling to school (by train of course) and holidays were always by steam train as we had no car. How lucky was I?

One thought on ““Charles” Gets a Makeover!”

  1. Hi Rick,
    Great article. You inspired me to start converting all my locos to DCC.
    Can’t wait for next instalment on painting.
    Keep up the good work.
    Brolgan road is a very informative blog.
    Bob

    Reply

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