Model Engine Works: 2025

I took a closer look at how the Kato ‘Hayau-Go’ rocket train’s LED lighting has been fitted - it is a fantastic little bit of fantasy and has the interesting feature of directional LEDs. Kato have used a split chassis design which makes it easy to pick up power. There is, however, an interesting property with LEDs: they are polarised, and only work if wired to the correct polarity. This got me thinking that a model can have lights which work only in the direction of travel – a simple case of switching the wiring polarity to work with the direction of travel.

I decided to try this as a practical experiment and used an idea that I saw at the 009 Rainhill and AGM meeting in April 2025: a small rail van with working lights. I planned to use an old Hornby diecast Austin van. These were sold by Hornby sometime ago as white primed vehicles that you can dismantle and paint yourself and were ideal for what I had planned.

I removed the glazing, plastic interior and wheels, leaving the metal body work, from which I cut off the spine used to screw the interior. The other modifications were to drill a hole in the roof for a 3mm orange flashing LED - this will illuminate in forward travel. I also cut of the bodywork forward and behind the wheel arches - this removed 2mm of metal which I filed flat. This allowed me to sit the body on to a 3D printed foot plate into which a Kato 11-110 could be fitted.

I intended to use the current head lamp holes for a white and red LEDs which will illuminate depending on the direction of travel. As these holes were smaller than the 3mm LEDs, I opened them out on the inside so the LEDs would be closer to the surface just showing through. This allowed me to paint a thin wash of black over them to reduce the intensity of the light to a glow.

I now turned to the power pickups from the Kato chassis. The easiest way I could see of doing this was to piggyback the current motor pickups; but I wanted to make the setup serviceable. To make this work I used bronze strips with black and red wires soldered to them and slid these into the pockets where the current pickups are housed. This needed a little adjustment to the pockets to allow for this, but worked well. The bronze strips were then cut and bent to feed the wires out through the plastic top on the chassis. Once the top had two holes drilled and then clipped back onto the chassis it all held in place nicely and did not affect the running qualities of the unit.

The next step was to test the theory behind the idea. I used pre-wired LEDs from Bright Components on eBay, which I find very good for this kind of project. I used a small 5-amp connector block to attach the wires to the pickup tails from the chassis and did a test run on some track to see if this would work as intended - which it did. In forward motion the white and orange flashing lights worked, and in reverse the red one worked, so that was all good.

To mount the Kato chassis in the correct position on the body work I drew up a simple footplate with cow catchers at the front and a NEM coupling pocket at the rear. After a couple of prototypes this fitted and allowed the chassis to sit nicely into the body. To get the wiring to fit I had to take some of the plastic shielding off the connector block and make it into two separate parts. I decided that I would paint the body before assembly and went for a deep red and cream livery with a grey roof. I did yellow panels to the front and back which does give a more modern vibe; to tone this all down I applied some matt varnish, and, when this had dried, a black acrylic wash to pick up door panels and shading.

The lighting was fixed in place on the body with a hot glue gun. Then the footplate was added to the metal body, bonded with super glue. The wiring could now be connected to the chassis, and all squeezed into place within the body - this was a tight fit. I disguised the wiring with black insulation tape so that it could not be seen through the windows. This was also used to stop the light from the LEDs shining into the cab. With everything squeezed together I sat it on the track and crossed my fingers. It worked, even at lower speeds the lights were still visible. To finished off the model I added some wire guard rails between the wheels which I painted yellow and chipped some paint off when dry to create a used look. The NEM coupling pocket came in useful - it allowed me to add a flat wagon or van behind for tools and materials. With the van being metal it has good weight and has some pulling ability.

When I heard that Bachmann had produced an Emily in their N gauge Thomas range, I could not wait to get hold of one. I have always loved the Dean single that Hornby has produced for years - I had one in my early teens. My thoughts were to design a fictional 009 version, a cross between the Dean and the Sterling singles that Emily is based on, keeping that elegant Victorian look.

When my Emily model arrived, I wasted little time before it was dismantled and inspected to see how I could achieve my goal. The main chassis comprises the large central driving wheel and a smaller one in front, geared to work together. The rear wheel is non-driving with a lot of free play to allow for curved track, while the front wheel set is on a bogie incorporating the NEM coupling pocket. This allowed me to look at two arrangements: a 2-2-2 tank/tender and a 4-2-2 tender loco. Both using similar body work, just a different front foot plate.

I could see the difficult part of this conversation would be the smoke box, cylinders and piston slides, which are very small and incorporated in one moulded assembly. I could have used the existing one but that would limit the design. So, my first job as always is to get the chassis into a CAD format, then I can work round it and develop the body work. I could see that the new bodywork would need to follow the same assembly process as the original Emily and use the same fixing points and screws.

The first part to tackle was the smoke box and cylinders. I worked on this to achieve a good fit to the chassis first, developing the shape to match the existing Bachmann parts, then I designed an outer shape to get the feel I was looking for in 009 scale - something very similar to the Sterling, a nice flowing shape between the cylinders and smoke box. The difficulty with this part was adding the wire guides for the cross heads in 0.4 mm wire on either side of a 0.7mm hole for the piston rod. After several attempts at printing these, the best solution was to have a pilot hole for the piston only printed in the part and free hand drill the holes for the guides above and below the piston. It is still a fiddly job, and I wasted several printed parts getting it right. This was confirmed by A fellow 009 modeller, who has also worked on another copy of the model and found it difficult to drill the holes to fit these wires in place. The other option is to use the current Emily smoke box and extend the funnel. However, this does not align with the new boiler profile.

The coupling rods need removing from the large driving wheels to make it easier to locate and fit the cross heads to the guides. A very small bolt is used to fasten the rods to the centre of the driving wheels which is a fiddly job to put back in place.

When I had the smoke box fitted to the chassis and the piston working freely, I then tested the chassis running it on a test track. The next task was to deal with its main body design. This is where I planned to blend the Sterling and the Dean together. My aim was to have the fretwork showing the large wheels like on the Stirling, with water tanks to the front and back of this, on the 2-2-2 tank engine. The tender loco would have large curved shrouds built up to the rear of the splashers back to the cab front, with the top of the boiler and the cab being similar to the Dean with the brass dome and curved cab side cutouts. The back of the cap would remain open, and I would add some simple printed details to the interior, with other fine detailing added in metal parts. I used an etched fret from RT Models to do this, which has various gauges and valve handles. The regulation was made from 0.7mm wire filled to shape.

To get the tank engine version of the model to work I needed to add a coal bunker to the rear foot plate somehow. As the cab was coming out a bit higher than I wanted, I lowered the back of the foot plate by 1.5 mm. By dropping the cab down the same amount, I then could use this to add a plate on top of the cab floor, like a step within the cab but as part of the bunker assembly. The bunker itself was modelled on an older pannier tank engine - the open cab type. This has a nice shape matching the Dean styling of the cab and can easily be added to the cab to form a very different version of the engine.

The front foot plate has two versions: one suits the chassis without the front bogie wheel, being short and having a coupling pocket below the front beam. It is all printed as one with the front of the smoke box.

The other is longer and uses the current n gauge NEM coupling pocket in the bogie, which is ideal to add 009 style couplings.

I have made several detail parts separately to allow some variations to be added to each model. The funnel can be cut to different lengths. The dome is printed, but I used a nice cast brass one again from RT Models. The water tank filler caps are printed, but again white metal one could be used. There is a separate smoke box door with a pilot hole for darts to be added. This was another part from RT Models. I have also printed a reversing leaver to add inside the cab.

The tender I have used is an adaptation of a general 009 one that has been designed for some of my other models. It is a 4-wheeler using a Peko R106 wagon bogie with a 3D printed body and foot plate. The design of the upper body has been adapted to align with the new engine style and a simple drawer bar and pin is used to connect it with the locomotive - like the current Emily one, but this time in Plastcard. I printed a break handle column to which I added a handle using a small handrail knob and a handle bent from 0.45mm wire. To fall in line with the Victorian tender style I added a wire guard rail around the sides and the back of the upper edge of the body work made from very fine 0.45mm brass wire bent and super glued into place.

For the colour scheme of this model, I want to match my current 009 Beyer Peacock in the older GWR livery for the tender loco and a mustard for the tank engine. I found some Vallejo acrylic paints in green and red that meant I would not need to mix the colours this time giving a more consistent finish. So, having fitted the brass components, I primed the model in a combination of Tool Station rattle can acrylic grey primer and clear gloss lacquer, built up in alternate coats to smooth the surface before the final hand brushed finishes which are thinned with Vallejo acrylic thinner medium. This allows a better flow off the brush and dries slower allowing it to level and not show brush marks.

Once I had applied a few coats, I added 0.35mm cream lining by Fox Transfers to form panels on the tender and cab and banding on the boiler. I also hand-painted the large wheel splashers in a matching cream.

To allow me to at least display the other version of the model as the chassis is not cheap, I used the chassis drawings to create a print of both the 4-2-2 and 2-2-2T as dummy chassis.

I asked a fellow 009 modeller to have a go at building a model to see if they encountered any issues. They concluded that drilling the two fine holes for the guide wires was their main difficulty, but it may be easier to achieve on a drill stand.

It is extraordinary to think that someone may have built something like these singles in narrow gauge, but a fellow 009 modeller on Facebook noted that three narrow-gauge singles were commissioned for the Glasgow Garden Festival 1988. They were built by Severn Lamb Ltd based on the Caledonian Railway 4-2-2 Locomotive no 23, and were diesel driven by the tender. Apparently, at least one of them has been sent to Japan and used in the Rusutsu Resort there.

Wednesday, 10 December 2025

Wiring directional lighting into a Kato 11-110 Chassis

Sunday, 22 June 2025

009 Victorian Single