Bachmann/Brassmasters 3F

It’s just about a year ago that I wrote about working over a selection of Bachmann’s very good Fowler 3F Jinties, also known as Jocko’s.

Bachmann's 3F Jinty

Heres the ‘starter for ten’, the best RTR version to date, and a very good reproduction for the market place in terms of accuracy and in coomparison to Hornbys model which dates if I recall from the early 1980’s. To be fair the Hornby model was seen as a pretty good effort for its time, it too benefiting from a little extra work for those so minded.

Well the first conversion is now pretty much complete, not all the Brassmasters components were used, and some extra detail work was undertaken. I also had a look at the practicality of fitting DCC sound discretely into the model. It can be done but it will be very difficult to hide the speaker and the chip. One solution is to take the boiler weight out and part of the bunker assembly, but this will reduce the overall weight of the model. This probably won’t be an issue on East Dursley, the layout the loco’s are destined for, but may be more of an issue for larger layouts with longer trains. There are alternative weight solutions which will be looked at, but I shall resist for the time being ‘finding’ any depleted uranium from Boeing 747 tailplanes lying around at work.

Brassmasters 3F Detailing kit

http://brassmasters.co.uk/