Nonneminstre Muir Hill Fordson
I have had this Nonneminstre Muir-Hill Fordson Tractor for a long time, so long in fact that it was one of the early kits which required an Ertl tractor donor. As these became harder to source, later kits included the required parts cast in whitemetal.
I was going to put this on a Wrightlines 14mm gauge bogie but changed my mind when Locos n stuff introduced their etched replacement. It is a bit taller so the original whitemetal cross members had to be cut out and replaced by two strips of thin brass strip soldered across the top of the frames.
As with earlier bogies (apart from the experiment I am conducting with the Nonneminstre Hudson Hunslet loco chassis which is belt driven) I am fitting spur gears to this one. The normal belt is effectively trapped and would need the layshaft to be removed if the belt needs to be replaced. Although the belts used in the bogie are different to those from Nigel Lawton and should last longer, I prefer the longer term robustness of a spur gear drive. I have found that Mod 0.4 9 tooth and 20 tooth gears fit with appropriate meshing. I have 10 tooth and 18 tooth gears to try but haven’t got around to this yet.
At this stage I hadn’t worked out how to retain the chassis and ended up using two small blobs of Blue Tack.
Although I had an Ertl tractor I decided to use an Andy Duncan Fordson tractor instead. This was built up before I worked out exactly where to fit it. I mounted it higher than on the prototype so that I didn’t need to remove too much from underneath. This was made easier as I could adjust the angle of the side chain guards to suit the position.
The chassis had moved a bit in this photo but it gives an impression of what I was trying to achieve. I was a bit worried about balance as the chain guards are solid and bigger at the back so together with the driver makes the whole body a bit back heavy. I decided to drill out some of the rear end of the chain guards to reduce the amount of weight and back-fill with some lightweight foam. The loco is still back heavy but appears to run okay.
Aligning and soldering the body to the frames was a bit of a fiddle. Given that I wasn’t fitting the roof, I thought that the whitemetal exhaust and air filter pipes were likely to be vulnerable so I replaced them with brass rod but re-used the air filter body itself. I thought they would be nice and secure if I soldered them in place, forgetting that I had super glued the manifold onto the engine block. The heat from the soldering weakened the glue so I ended up with a botched solder job to secure it. Hopefully dirt, rust and grease will disguise the botch.
I was looking for a way to disguise the front of the motor bogie when a friend suggested a crate on some timber across the front of the frames.
The box carries some chain, an oil can and the starting handle. I understand that these tractors cost as much to start on petrol (from the small tank near the driver) as they did running all day (8 hours) on paraffin or tractor vaporizing oil (TVO) so having the starting handle in a box isn’t necessarily wrong! That’s my excuse anyway.