Ironside was one of a pair of saddle tanks provided by Hawthorn, Leslie and Co. to Southampton Dock Company in 1890 (the other was ‘Clausentum’). When the Southampton Dock Company was taken over by its major shareholder, the London South Western Railway, in 1892 these two locos formed part of the stock subsumed.
After seeing service under the LSWR and Southern Railway our story resumes with Ironside, by now classified 0458 and numbered 30458, working as Guilford shed pilot under British Railways. She survived there until 1954.
The model is based upon the well-reviewed Agenoria kit for Ironside and Clausentum (item AM37/7). There are (inevitably!) some changes I want to make to the build to give the best operation and performance for a working model. I also wished to see if there were any details that I wanted to improve:
This leads to a number of technical issues to solve:
I decided to wait until I had the kit parts in my hands before looking too hard for any solutions. Though I did have some fun looking to see what may be useful. What follows is a description of how the solutions were applied to the model, rather than a blow-by-blow account of what I did:
I like the idea of using conventional compensation as it allows you to control where and how the weight is applied through the chassis. The problem with an 0-4-0 is that it would ‘settle’ on rough track or across point vees resulting an a jerky or bumpy appearance when running.
Springing isn’t without its problems either – particularly with small wheelbases, though the use of Slater’s hornblocks with insulated guides (item 7960) does make it attractive both from the point of running performance and the use of split-axle pick ups.
There is a compromise position, that may well give the best of both worlds. These are called Continuous Springy Beams (CSB) about which there is loads of info on http://www.clag.org.uk/beam-annex3.html. With other locos in mind where CSBs may be useful as a way of providing clear spaces in a chassis I decided that this loco would be a suitable trial, as well as (hopefully!) giving good running performance.
With CSBs decided upon it then became necessary to look for methods of applying the technique, as well as allowing for our simple approach to split axles. There seemed to be two possible methods for achieving this:
In the end I decided to use a set of Martin Finney GWR hornblocks (item HB7/2). They’re simple in outline, nicely detailed and I had them in stock. I did make a passing nod in the direction of the Slater’s insulated hornblocks (item 7961), with the intention of using something like 2mm ‘L’ angle to make up the guides – they remain a possible solution.
If the loco was going to have split axles then a way to split the gearbox would have to be found. Thankfully the recommended drive is one I’m familiar with from my 4mm scale modelling days; Markits 40:1 gears and a Mashima 1430 in an etched frame. Never a favourite back then, I did look to see if an ABC would fit. It doesn’t, which in some ways makes life a bit easier…
With an etched frame it’s fairly easy to insulate using copper-clad paxolin, providing a sensible way of electrically breaking the axle can be established. There are some potential solutions and the example from this loco in the tips and tricks area of this website, which I hope is useful.
The problems with the installation of a DCC decoder, sound chamber and the necessary ballast weights are obviously linked; they're associated with the free volume in the model. Thankfully there’s a fairly straightforward way of getting it all in there. The first thing to consider is that although this may be a small loco by 0-gauge standards, it’s HUGE if you’re used to 4mm or H0 scale. So I am pretty confident that the space for all the gubbins genuinely exists in the model.
First off the weight. It needs to be distributed to balance around the centre of the driving wheelbase and it helps if it’s as low down as possible. So the plan is to fill the bufferbeams, cylinders, valve chest and any clear volume around the firebox and ashpan with lead. I’ve got a set of whitemetal loco crew figures. The smokebox and coal bunkers can be lead filled if necessary. I’ve also had good experiences in making sound chambers from lead and will probably do the same in this loco.
Fitting the DCC decoder and sound chamber. Even with the weight in place as described above, the boiler and saddletank remain empty. The current thought is to modify the saddletank into a sound chamber by putting a baffle (in lead) across its base, with a cut-out for a 20x40mm speaker. The sound would then channel out through the firebox. The decoder can then fit under the speaker, in the boiler, and will probably have to be hard-wired into the chassis.
Well, that’s the theory. The hard bit will be working out how to split (and retain) the saddletank on the rest of the body.
The kit looks to be a very simple, elegant piece of design. For a model of Ironside as running in the late 1940s and early 1950s there were some details and additional parts I decided to purchase to finish the model. Some of these are additions; some are used because they're improvements over the parts provided: