Hi.

In the absence of Graham Farish not following Dapol's example of offering locos as unpowered dummies, I'm thinking of having a go at creating my own dummy loco or two, from a model in 'spares or repair' condition.

I realize that I won't be saving much money (probably why GF don't do it), but I would like to top-and-tail my rakes fairly easily when my (DC) layout is done.

Could someone give me a rough idea of what I'd have to do to?  I wouldn't strip the whole mechanism from the loco unless it was exceptionally easy to re-install - I prefer the idea of having the option of restoring the loco if I want to.

yeah sorry - some detail would help...!

A class 20 would be great, but I'm open-minded.  Definitely a diesel, and preferably something that I can fit into Era 9, but I'm flexible.  It'd probably depend on what came my way when I start looking for a broken loco.

I made several dummy chassis a number of years ago from plasticard for Farish diesels - and Ian Stoate also did some in resin( although I believe they are no longer available).
I may still have some in my stock cupboard, especially for the OLD Class 20's. I note that your layout is DC so I don't imagine the lack of lights would be a problem ?
PM me if you are interested ?

I converted an early class 20 to a dummy to run as  a DRS pair on a flask train. You need to strip out all the gears in the bogies as otherwise they will not free wheel. I removed the motor and magnets as the motor would still run. The up side of this is that it can be rebuilt to a runner in the future, plus you have spare gears and a motor if ever needed.

Geoff

One other that I managed to do was to modify the bogies on the non-powered HST power car so as to use "pin-point" axles. Made the thing MUCH more free-running than when the axles ran "inside frames" and meant that the one powered car would pull a full rake (including seat inserted coaches) with ease. A while since I've done one but I'm sure I can still remember how.......

I think the biggest obstacle to doing this is as koyli55002 points out the wheels in locos are meant to be driven, so it doesn't really matter if they don't freewheel too well as they were never meant to.

Once the gears and motor have been removed, the wheel sets have a tendency to skid along the top of the rails rather than rotating. Adding more weight to the loco may solve this, but that might also introduce running problems that you don't want.

Would be interested to hear how you get on with the conversion, keep us updated.

Cheers, Mark.

You maywell be right on this, depending on the loco you convert. My class 20 was one with the diecast body so weight was not a problem. I have a Dapol factory dummy class 66 and this does suffer from a lack of weight to keep it on the rails as the chassis is plastic.

Geoff

As far as bodies are concerned, take a look on "BR Lines" and "Peters Spares"- both have painted bodies for sale. You may also find "body only" models on that FleaBay spot. Dummy chassis could then be made, or you could go the "It's broke so don't fix it but strip it out" route !

The Farish diesels are a pig to make work well as dummies. It can be done. Ian Stoate used to do resin chassis with pinpoint wheels and those worked a treat.

I've got a pair of the old 20's one of which is motorless and full of speaker instead - that works well but took a lot of fettling and is still too heavy on steep grades but works ok on my nice flattish layout