About a year ago, I finally managed to set up my layout and get some trains running. The layout was only partially constructed (it still is!) and there was no fiddle yard. My Heljan class 03 was being driven around the layout and performing poorly. I presumed I had a fault connection on the track somewhere and headed under the baseboards to have a look, when the locomotive suddenly came to life and drove off the end of the layout, smashing into a hard wooden floor. It was a bit of sobering moment – the chassis skirt and several buffers were cracked/broken, the roof was dented and the locomotive no longer would run. Nothing for it then but for a complete strip down and rebuild, alongside some weathering. Taking the locomotive apart really made me admire the number of hand fitted components that goes into building one of these locomotives, alongside wondering whether I would be able to get it back together.
I started with rebuilding/repairing various cracks/snapped of details on the chassis/buffer beams and I kindly had some spare class 03 buffers donated to me. I set about painting the body and chassis separately, using a combination of AK interactive weathering washes, alongside my air brush. Everything was finished and sealed with a satin varnish.
Putting it back together was a lot easier than I thought it would be and in the end it went back together pretty quickly. I took the opportunity to add a stay alive to the decoder alongside giving the wheels a good clean and this has really helped the running of the locomotive.
The final result – well it is not perfect (there are still a couple of areas that bother me and I might well revisit these one day), but overall I am really happy with it. I now have another locomotive to run on the layout and I have also purchased a traverser (Tim Horn) to stop such incidents happening again!
I still have a lot of projects on the go at the moment, although several of these are getting to the transfer stage, namely an SPV and 25T SR brake van. I have also made a start on the buildings for the micro layout and getting these finished and the micro layout track painted and ballasted is a priority. As a dcc test track, the micro layout works really well – but it needs some scenery to stage the rolling stock – it all looks a bit bare at the moment.
