No.21 Castled

After praising Airfix Castles in this ‘Blog’, I have to now admit to purchasing one of Hornby’s new Castle Class locomotives, Ince Castle.

Historically I had one of Dapol’s engine driven castles, Dorchester Castle.  More recently I tried out Cadbury Castle, the Hornby version.  Neither could cope with seven coaches and the grades on the Longsheds Layout, quite a disappointment.



Ince Castle seems to be a different proposition.  It has quite the longest ‘can’ motor that I have seen.  However straight out of the box it seems to me to be rather light weight and when placed on my 1 in 56 gradient with seven coaches it just sat there with wheels spinning.



There seems to me to be lots of spare space inside the body for extra ballast and I have been able to get the locomotive weight up to almost 400 gram.  This appears to be just the right weight for the layout.  For those of you who can bear to watch trains going round and round there is a YouTube video showing the capabilities of the newly ballasted engine:



http://youtu.be/ud-nhB0FL60



For those of you wishing to follow suit I have attached a few pictures below.






First I cut and shaped some pieces of lead from 2.5mm thick sheet.






These were then attached inside the bodyshell using double sided tape.






There is also some space inside the cylinders.  With the engine turned upside down these voids were filled with lead shot.




Finally the lead shot was sealed in place with black cartridge paper held in place with PVA.



The result I think, is a very powerful and potentially useful model engine.
Location: Dumfries and Galloway, UK

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