by David Hoskins

Whether you scratch or kit build, using plastic, brass, nickel-silver or white metal, it’s important that you also take into consideration the weight of the model. After building a dozen or so locomotives I realised that the heavier they are, the better they run, irrespective of the type of wheel compensation.

I thought that if we can work with 1:43 scaling, then dividing the prototype’s weight by 43 cubed, we should come up with the total uniformly distributed weight of any model based upon that fraction of the prototype.

Example 1. The biggest UK locomotive I have built, the quasi-Baltic, known as the LNER Class W1 Rebuild, weighs in at 107 Tons or 239,660 lbs. Dividing this last number by 43 cubed (79507), shows that the scale weight should be 3lbs.

Example 2. The smallest locomotive I’ve built, the LNER Class J71, weighs-in at 38.5 Tons or 86,240 lbs. Again, dividing this by 43 cubed, I found that the scale weight should be 1.1 lbs.

From this you can start playing with those kitchen scales to see how close your model’s scale weight is.

There’s a nice epilogue to the above. The W1 Rebuild was constructed using a limited edition DJH Kit. It utilised white metal body. It was difficult to handle and adding the details was a nightmare. Never-the-less, it runs well in spite of a finished weight of 4.5 lbs. However, being the equivalent of 53 Tons over-weight, it is a bit of a Peco turn-out ‘basher.’ The J71 model actually weighs 1.2 lbs. I over did the lead in the tanks!

I’ll not apologise for using LNER examples; that’s my forte.