A small Mallet

[Hugh Norwood]

A small mallet

I had acquired a Minitrix 0-4-4-0 Mallet a while ago. The problem was designing and building a suitable body to go on it, and so it got put on the back-burner...

I was helping to man the Publicity stand at NG South at Sparsholt, and a fine little loco in the display case caught my eye; it was a detailed Chris Ward body on a Fleischmann Piccolo chassis. The body looked to be just about right to go on the Minitrix chassis, so I splashed out on one (helped by Chris's discount on the day!)

Working out how to take the N body off the chassis was an interesting puzzle. Then I was heartened to see that the chassis was quite a good fit.

The chassis needed a bit of work; it comes with lighting, which I removed, especially the front bulb, which is mounted sideways and its holder needed to be trimmed off the side of the chassis. A word to the wise, to remove the rear bulb, it is necessary to remove the motor and do some fine soldering work; something I did not realise before I started.



The body is in a number of pieces, of which I used the main shell, the footplate, smokebox door and the cab roof. Gently pulling off the buffers from the chassis left me with two short stumps sticking out the rear. I drilled two holes in the rear of the footplate to take these stumps, and was the rear mounting for the chassis. I had to cut off the front of the footplate.

Although the boiler doesn't interfere with the chassis, it looked too short, with the front cylinders well forward of the smokebox. So I cut off the smokebox from the body and fitted a short extension made from a piece of ballpoint pen. I carefully removed the chimney from the old smokebox and used that on the new one.

The front fixing for the chassis uses the existing mounting screws and screw holes, fitting into some plasticard lumps inside the body shell. Lead strip is glued into the boiler and side tanks to add weight; the whole loco weighs in at 50gm.

The spectacle rims are made from some

[Andrew Emery]

Looks absolutely lovely, Hugh. Am really jealous. Congratulations, and thanks for sharing that with us.

[Gerhard Novak]

Beautiful machine Hugh. I like to see some outside drive - and to have it times two is even better! Is it a good runner with all this gears?
Regards

Gerhard

[Hugh Norwood]

It is remarkably well engineered inside.

[kebo66]

Hugh,

It is absolutely gorgeous. It's a remarkable chassis but difficult to come by now at a sensible price.

Keith

[Jeff Schumaker]

Beautiful work, Hugh.

Jeff S.