Britannia (pacific)

This will be an on going progress report on the construction of a gauge one locomotive. The locomotive is the last production run of a steam passenger engine in the UK, the Britannia a pacific class. I have the same locomotive in the following gauges:-

1. N gauge – purchased when our son was very young.
2. 00 gauge – I have two of these both produced by Horby, an early one that is not very detailed and has the power in the tender and a newer one that is very fine detailed.
3. 0 gauge – I built this from a kit in 1992.
4. 3 1/2″ gauge – This is a live loco made by OS Live steam. I bought it in 1984 when my company returned some money from a savings fund. Seemed more interesting than just a bond or something.
5. 5″ gauge – This is a live steam loco that I built from a kit that came in 18 installments. Unfortunately the company went broke and I had to make all the controls.

So the missing versions are 1 gauge and 7 1/2” gauge. As the large one would weigh over 350 lbs I probably will not build that. The following will be a running log of the construction of a kit.

2013 May 10 – Worked on the basic chassis and found that the brass bearings for the main axels were too big to fit into the hole in the side frames. As there was not enough metal to enlarge the hole I decided to reduce the size of the bearing on my lathe.