Minerva GWR 8750 Pannier Tank conversion to Stud Contact
RG Thomas - Gazette Vol 20 No. 8 August 2018
Minerva Model Railways
Now, I normally scratch build my model
locomotives, but when I saw the Minerva GWR
pannier tank at Doncaster last year I could not
resist the urge to place my order. The loco arrived
safely in October and I was duly impressed. I put it
on my short length of two rail test track and as I
expected it ran smoothly and silently. It then spent
the next week on show on our bookcase but I
wanted to see it running on my stud contact
layout.
To do this, I needed to remove the mechanism,
something we are all a bit apprehensive about
tackling first time round for fear of damaging the
model, but the instructions for doing this are clear.
I undid the four fixing screws, and using a blade, I
carefully unclipped the balance pipe on both sides
and it fell out in two pieces. When this happened,
I felt a warning shot that reassembly of this part
might be tricky, but I pressed on.
With the mechanism free from the loco I was
able to design a suitable parallelogram type skate
that would be hidden behind the wheels and then
glued this to the keeper plate. I disconnected the
connections to the DCC socket and wired the
wheel wiper contacts together. Then I connected
the skate to the top motor brush, put the
mechanism on the layout and away it went with
no trouble.
Next came the reassembly. Not bothering about
the balance pipe at this stage, I reassembled the
mechanism into the loco body and put it to real
work. It ran well over all my pointwork and
negotiated the tightest radius curves with ease. It
slipped badly moving a five coach train round the
mainline reverse curves indicating more weight
was required.
The hunt for some suitable ballast ended when
I visited a car tyre depot to see if they had some
spare wheel balance weights. I was shown the
latest type which are supplied in strips of different
weights that are ready to be stuck in place. I was
given four strips to try out. These fitted very neatly
inside the pannier tanks and being coated with
adhesive are an effective and neat solution to the
problem of adding weight to the loco.
With the loco now able to handle all the traffic I
needed, I was faced with putting together the
balance pipe assembly. I wasted a day in
frustration trying to reassemble the two parts. I
could not get my fingers in to position the pipe
even on one side, let alone two. I tried tweezers but
they were hopeless because all the parts are round
and they swivelled out of position at the wrong
moment. Pliers were little better and I feared that
they might damage the sanding levers as well as
scratch the paintwork. In the end, realising that I
may well have to remove the mechanism for
future maintenance, I decided some drastic
alteration would be needed.
I decided to carefully cut the outer ends of the
pipe of so that the mechanism could pass in and
out freely with just the end pieces glued into the
pannier tanks. The remaining two parts of the pipe
were joined together and glue to the underside of
the boiler, taking care to ensure perfect alignment
with the already installed tank connections. While
I was there, I painted the underside of the boiler
GWR green, it was black on my model, and the cab
roof black which was green on my model.
The alterations I have made have not detracted
from the model’s appearance and I hope that
other Guild members who have bought this
excellent model might find my experiences useful.
Minerva GWR 8750 Pannier Tank Photo Robin McHugh