Prepared by Tommy Day Originator D. Rae

I was one of those lucky souls who did make it to Kettering on Saturday, walking from the station as the bus was not there at the time.

On the 'Bring & Buy' table was a Sevenscal L&YR 'Pug', built but with a loose body and attractively priced. One of these, rather than the Springside kit, is on my acquisition list and after a brief inspection which showed some minor damage which looked repairable, I bought it. After getting it home, it turned out to be no.38 of a batch built for Chuffs in 1982. A nicely built loco, but it had been damaged from what looked to me like a fall [possibly from a basebord onto a hard surface] followed by repairs of a variable standard. It did run, but clearly had some 'issues' requiring investigation. The motion bracket on on both sides is missing so the slide bars are unsupported at the rear, and the lower LHS one has come off, so a tricky repair will be needed here as the slide bars are whitemetal. All the brake hangers are missing [one was in a small bag of bits] so these will need replacing, and there are various other missing or damaged bits. The cab and footplate have a slight misalignment, but the body can wait for now.

Investigating the chassis, the LHS valve gear is missing. Also, the front wheelset B-B is over 1mm wider than the rear, which is unlikely to be the direct result of a fall.

After considering it overnight, I decided the front wheelset at least would have to come out, and removed one of the brass 'underkeep' wires, but a nasty glue had been used in the repair work so this had to be chipped off the LHS before it could be eased out. The frames appear to be quite parallel. I have a new digital caliper from Aldi which is being very useful on this job.

The main problem at this stage is that I can't remove the crankpins. They don't appear to be threaded, but the end caps appear to have a tiny wire through them. Any suggestions on the crankpin design on this loco and how to remove them will be most welcome!

I have removed the motor [a KTM in good condition] and the rear drivers will need to come out too, but the conn rods at least and preferably all motion need to come off.

More work is going to be needed on this little loco than first envisaged, but it looks like a feasible project. I've not been able to locate a scale drawing of the Pug, surprisingly, so it would be useful to know of any sources [the L&YR Society journal is most likely].
David

Bob Alderman - Mar 4, 2018 at 9:01 PM
David
Does it have original wheels? If so they may have suffered from the lubricating oil; cracking and soft around the axle. There is no repair only replacement.
I did similar restoration some years ago. I was able to get replacement castings from Springside then. Wheels from Slater's.
Bob

Rusty - Mar 4, 2018 at 9:04 PM
IIRC the crankpins are glued into the plastic wheel boss. The “nut” is just a small steel collar which is held in place with the wire. Remove the wire and you should be able to remove the collar.
Rusty

Morgan17782 - Mar 4, 2018 at 9:13 PM
Hi David
Peter Hunt, owner of Perfect Miniatures who advertise in the Gazette was originally original Chuffs and I think was the designer.
May be worth a call 01787 375 884.
Regard
Allen Morgan

Rae17432 - Mar 4, 2018 at 9:21 PM
Thanks for the helpful responses, gentlemen.
I'll work on removing the crank pin wires, they don't want to play….
I was aware of the oil problem with the wheel centres on these locos, but this one doesn't seem to be affected by it so far and I've removed the grease etc with surgical spirit.
David

Racman16075 - Mar 4, 2018 at 10:43 PM
Hi David
The one I built had the crankpins fixed in the wheels and the rods retained by steel collars exactly as described by Rusty. Having said that, the builder might have used an anaerobic adhesive to fix the collars to the crankpins rather than rely solely on the retaining wires.
Bob

Rusty - Mar 4, 2018 at 10:46 PM
Thats a good point - they do tend to “rattle” a bit with just the wire. Maybe they have gone for the belt and braces approach, a little heat may help.

Rae17432 - Mar 4, 2018 at 11:29 PM
Thanks, I'll warm the collar slightly & carefully to try & remove the wire.
David

DLOS - Mar 5, 2018 at 9:42 AM
In a cases like this, it pays not to be in any hurry, 'steady as she goes'. Certainly, those wires need to come out, and not broken off at both ends, so I would work on one end of the wire to straighten it out so that it will pass through the collar and pin unobstructed, chip away at any glue that is exposed and then gently warm the wire/collar/pin and try to extract the wire. If that doesn't work, and the wire is broken off at both ends, it's not quite time to panic. The collars are made of steel so, assuming the pins are made of brass or nickel silver (hoping they are not also made of steel!), the wire will need to be drilled out; once you have the drill started in the right place, it should follow the hole. The collar may well be still fast on the pin but, again, a bit or warmth and wiggle may shift it.

If none of this works and you've run out of ideas, if you would like to send me the wheelsets, I'm reasonably confident that I shall be able to cut off the collars, drill out the pins and make four new steel collars for you … but let's be more optimistic and hope that it doesn't come to that.
David

jbe - Mar 5, 2018 at 2:17 PM
I wish there were many more threads like this on the Forum. Helpful, supportive comments and practical assistance offered if the OP gets really stuck.
Julian

Rae17432 - Mar 6, 2018 at 12:15 AM
Thanks for the good advice and offers of help.
'The operation was partly successful, unfortunately the patient died!'. 3/4 of the crank pins responded to being warmed with a 12v iron and the tiny wire extracted, one of the rear ones has not so I'll have to drill it out. Now I see the wheel centres there is a tiny crack in each from the axle towards the crank boss so they have the condition referred to and a traction inspector would fail them for main line service. Replacement with Slaters wheels will be the eventual solution but meanwhile I can work on the chassis rebuild.
I've been offered a copy of the instructions and with the parts list can order replacement slide bars, motion brackets, brake hangers and other parts from Springside. This will all take longer than perhaps I thought, in the meantime I have an 014 gypsum mine microlayout to work on….
David

DLOS - Mar 6, 2018 at 9:19 AM
Maybe yours would but my Pug wheels have been like that for the best part of thirty years and my traction inspector has passed the loco every time, with a note to 'Keep an eye on them'. They are not necessarily lost yet.
David

Rusty - Mar 6, 2018 at 11:19 AM
Mine too, but my traction inspector has found they have been fitted to some funny 4' 6 3/4“ track gauge so it's going to need re-wheeling at some point.

Rae17432 - Mar 6, 2018 at 8:42 PM
Thanks for the advice on the wheels, they can probably be passed for light railway and shunting use with Superglue repairs to the cracks for the time being. Back to the crankpin removal tomorrow.

David

Rae17432 - Mar 8, 2018 at 9:32 PM
The last crankpin came out last night, enabling me to extract the rear driving wheels. In the process it became apparent that the wheels were shifting on the axles, so they are likely to need replacement after all. I now have a set of the Sevenscal instructions so will identify the replacement parts required and order these from Springside, if they're prepared to supply. In the meantime not very much is likely to happen on this project, so it may go quiet for a while as I have 'Bunny Mine',the 0-14 gypsum mine microlayout to prepare for the 7mm NGA show in June.
Thanks for the interest and suggestions!
David

koyli - Mar 19, 2018 at 7:40 PM
I was lucky enough to win one of these Sevenscale Pug kits on a fairly well known auction website for just £94 complete with the same KTM motor and wheel sets. Unfortunately, the superstructure and part chassis already built (some 25 years earlier) were put together with a mixture of superglue and two part epoxy. After a good examination I decided to carefully dismantle everything and start afresh soldering as much as possible.

The attraction for me was that I was raised in Goole and my dad worked in the docks where two of these great little locos were based. I also thought (and still do) that it is a very detailed kit. Sadly, although most of the parts were in the original box, some things were missing - including the crank pin collars you mention. However, after firstly having considerable difficulty with the motor which sometimes didn't want to run and then discovering that the interference fit of the wheels was not holding enough to keep them quartered I decided to bite the bullet and bought replacement wheels from Slaters and a very nice motor/gearbox from Markits.

The superstructure is now largely complete and the chassis at a point where I need to paint it before putting in the new wheels and motor. Although my white metal soldering has improved considerably since buying a soldering station, the kit has proved challenging mainly due to the sheer amount of white metal detail castings that are very fragile. So I have decided to leave some of them off until it is largely finished and fit them right at the end.

Even with the cost of new motor, gearbox and wheels I'm really happy that I should end up with a very detailed kit for less than £200. Plus, of course, a suitable DCC sound chip if I can get Paul Chetter to do the necessary!

David

End of thread