My expierience with big locos

[Schraddel]

Hello,

when all the lead was inside the 4-8-4 M-68 this loco was pretty heavy, about 800g. When handling it, as a matter of course you grip it on the edges of the running boards, i saw the running boards buckling when the loco was lifted. :o



So i decided to make additional fixings for them by drilling into the boiler shell and solder short pieces of brass wire into the bores and onto the running boards.
But in this case this loco has a radiator for the compressed air and this radiator impeded acess to the boiler under the running boards. So i had to do the nasty thing and install this reinforcements above the running boards.



But ...


No that is not the camera lens fooling you with distortion. That running board is really buckling.





So i had to fix it, don't ask me what i said at the same time when i was doing that :wait:





On the other loco, the 4-6-6-4 L-105 i found this. Here a piece of he additional lead weights ha shifted during the glus was hardening. So it could perfom lateral pressure onto the gearbox and as a result the wheel on one side was lifted up in the air. When i removed the excess material, all the wheels come back onto contact with the railheads.





In this stage the work on these two locos was interupted for several weeks, because other projects got preferential treatments.
But this was last year. So this thread will not be interrupted for several weeks.

Cheers Lutz