One of my over winter projects was to build some locomotives and stock that would appeal to the younger visitors to the CMES garden railway. The same stock would also be able to be used when I exhibit my 16mm Scale layout ‘Rhydypenderyn’ . For appeal Thomas the tank engine would be an obvious choice, Bachman make a reasonable range of Thomas locomotives and stock in gauge 1 which is quite expensive to buy. The Cardiff Model Engineering Society's garden railway is dual gauge but if I wanted to run the same stock on Rhydypenderyn it would need to be ‘0’ gauge. As far as I know there are no models of the Thomas range made in ‘0’ gauge.
I already have for many years a ‘0’ gauge Thomas which was converted from a toy but no suitable rolling stock just some old Triang ‘Big Train’ skips. About nine months ago we were given nine Big Train steel style coal wagons and two very similar coal wagons made by Lima. For some time I had considered altering these coal wagons to look like the wooden bodied ones pulled by Thomas and his mates. So this was to be one of my winter projects. It then began to escalate first we were given a Thomas toy that had been fitted on a 12 volt Lima 0-6-0 chassis the batteries for which were carried in a Faller coal truck these were used to tow Father Christmas and his reindeer on a flat wagon. The motor in the Lima chassis was get a bit close to its ‘sell by’ date and it was decided to remove the motor from the chassis. It wouldn’t have been easy to fit a motor to the Lima plastic chassis so it was decided to fit a motor in the Faller coal wagon and push Thomas and tow Santa. However the wheels on the Faller wagon were very small and not suitable for powering but it was found that it was possible to fit a Big Train coal wagon chassis under the Faller body. This was done, a motor fitted with a worm drive and using IPE 24mm wagon wheel with pulleys fitted using a Mamod spring connection to give 4WD a powered wagon was made. Thomas also benefitted from a new chimney cap and Mamod buffers. So this gave working Christmas attraction which was used at the CMES Santa Special early in December last year.
In September while visiting the Isle of Bute a model of ‘Percy’ was bough from a charity shop. When we returned to Cardiff a model of Thomas was bought from another charity shop. This Thomas was closer in size to Percy and the coal wagons to be altered. The coal wagons were altered first by cutting off a lot of the angle iron detail and replacing it with plastic card. My wife made some suitable faces for the trucks which had been painted in Thomas colours.
The two locomotives were taken apart and most of their internal bits and pieces cut away to make room for a motor and batteries. Both have basically the same chassis made from 25mm steel square section tube with one of its sides removed. Percy uses some old Binnie plastic driving wheels and Thomas some brass disc ones of unknown origin. Both use the same motors and gears.
Just before Christmas a small wooden boat was bought from another charity shop. It was used as a load on a flat wagon that uses the small wheels left from the Faller wagon.
They were finished a couple of days ago see following photographs and video.
Regards Tony.
Thomas gift.
Power wagon.
Santa.
Wagons as received and used for some time.
Boat as bought.
Video.
