Some time ago I found a beautiful leek and manifold body, well built and well decorated, but a long search for a chassis has proved fruitless. Any ideas folks please I have tried to test fit a Bachmann 08 chassis with no luck, so any suggestions are most welcome
Thanks in anticipation.
Ian H.
Phew, this is quite a difficult one Ian as the solution rather depends on (1) Is the model scratchbuilt or from a kit, and if so, which kit? (!). and (2) How accurate do you need it to be? - ie will an inside frame N scale chassis do for you?
As it is a body with no chassis, then I think it probably safe to assume it is kitbuilt - is it whitemetal? If it is, then I would put my pocket money on it being a Centre Models or Meridian, which is the same as the old Centre Models original, but without the chassis (which I have only ever seen a very few that used the original Centre Models chassis that had actually been made to work!).
The generally popular one when the Meridian kit was common was to use the Minitrix N205 / BR standard 2MT 2-6-2 with a bogie at the back. I believe I've seen one that looked perfectly OK to me that used a Kato 2-6-4 chassis as the basis.
Roger Christian built 2 of the Meridian Kitsons and described them in 009 News, I'm afraid I can't remember which issue - somebody will know! I also can't remember what chassis he used on the first one, but I do remember that the second used an 8 coupled chassis - I think it was a Bachmann (white box era) 2-8-0 and the model was built as a 2-8-2.
So, if you are willing to accept a commercial chassis and probably an inside frame one either 6 or 8 coupled, then there is a wide variety that you could consider - Arnold, Fleischmann, Minitrix, Bachmann etc are 4 that immediately come to mind. Another one, if you can find one, would be the Mike Chinery 6 coupled chassis that used to be sold via Howard Martin's Avalon Lines range. I believe there was an outside frame version, but could be mistaken, there was certainly an inside frame one, that lines up quite well with a Kitson drawing.
Good luck and I hope the suggestions may be of help!
Mick
Dead easy use the 08 chassis and RT models do all the rest frames cylinders and valve gear.Andy
It will depend on what chassis the body was built for.
Without seeing the body and how much room is inside for the chassis there is no way to know what chassis will fit.
An all new outside frame chassis kit for the Meridian/Center Models white metal kit based on the outside frame Graham Farrish 08 chassis was in development, I have seen a couple of working prototypes. However, this was over 3 years ago now and I am unsure if any progress has been made on this in recent years. The revised Graham Farrish 08 chassis is now way more expensive than the early verson of the outside frame chassis and this may well prove prohibitive for the production of any kit based on this chassis.
Not that I've built one of these but like Andy Cundick I'd be tempted to go for the RT Models parts with a Farish 08.
The RT parts can be found at https://www.rtmodels.co.uk/rt_models_015.htm
As to the chassis I'd have a look at eBay, as the priced of the 'non-DCC' versions of the loco have come down somewhat* as everyone wants the newer DCC friendly version, which has a socket for the chip (no need to hard wire one in) and a speaker so can be sound fitted... If you are going down the DCC sound route then it may be worth the premium, but as I can't think of where you'd get a set of sounds for a L&M 2-6-4T from that may be a moot point.
(* I'd expect to pay in the region of £70-80, compared to well over £100 for the DCC version...)
Thanks for the info folks I do have a famished 08 chassis laying around,will let you know how I get on
Ian H
Quote from: Ian Holmes on September 09, 2023, 14:11
Thanks for the info folks I do have a famished 08 chassis laying around,will let you know how I get on
Ian H
Might have to feed it up first...
(sorry, I know it's an attack of the spool chukka but it made me chuckle!)