My expierience with big locos

[Schraddel]

Hello,
the 4-8-4 M-68 is still much too light, i got her without the leadweight, so i decided to make my own weight.


But at first SAFETY!
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead</a><!-- m --> Especially the chapter: "Biological and environmental effects"
And:
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_poisoning">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_poisoning</a><!-- m -->

Precise: Lead is poisonous! No eating, no drinking, no smoking while handling lead; wash your hands thoroughly and clean your tools, the model and your workbench painstakely afterwards. And do not allow children get lead into their fingers.



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When my house was fitted with new roof tiles, i kept the old skirting for the chimmneys made out of lead sheet. So the lead i used here is about 100 years old. The sheets are app. 1mm thickness.
The first step to form a cylindrical weight is to cut a suitable piece which can be rolled into a cylindrical form. To get a starting point bend one edge as shown. Here i took the help of pliers and the belief of soft hammer blows.





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With the aid of the pliers you can the roll the sheet. When it reached a certain diameter you will be able to do that with your fingers alone. Roll until you have reached the diameter which will just fit into the boiler. Hammer not so straight ends, lead is soft so it can be easily done.
At the rear point the cylinder was slightly flattened with several hammer strokes to get clear of the gearbox.
Here the cylindrical part of the weight was secured with a woodscrew.




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There a still space for additional lead besides the narrow gear box. Here I preferred the method of zig-zagging the sheet to get a similar "D" shaped part out of a strip of sheet.





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The parts of the weight were fixed with plenty of Pattex glue, a contact adhesive based on Neoprene. Let it stink out and hardening.
When it is all dried and hardened, clean the shell with warm water and soap. Your hands, the used tools and the workbench too! The cardboard, which i used here as pad, was disposed afterwards.

When this work was done the 4-8-4 M-68's weight (loco alone without tender) has tipped the scale at 830g (app. 29.3oz).


Cheers Lutz