I am finally in a position where I can start to put up the layout in the lounge later today. The last of the numerous guests we have had this summer have returned home. It has been brilliant to have had some many visitors this year but it is has also meant that I have not had the time or the space to put up the layout. Anyhow, one task I wanted to complete before a serious bout of layout scenery detailing, was the re-assembling of the Heljan class 33. I purchased this locomotive at a bargain price in BR green and proceeded to completely strip it down. The locomotive had the bogies / fuel tank removed and weathered separately, whilst the body shell had the glazing, handrails and cabs removed before a bath of superstrip. The repaint of the body went a little wrong, courtesy of using the wrong air pressure on a new compressor by mistake; however the final finish is acceptable (for now), although I might revisit it in the future.
With the repaint complete I was waiting for a clear day to reassemble the chassis. In common with the overall project, this initially proved to be a real headache, although I did manage to finish it in the end! The first issue was reattaching the sideframes to the bogies. I tried to force these on and ended up damaging one of them. I subsequently realised that the bogie had to be unscrewed from underneath the chassis block, to enable the bogies to be replaced. Typically I knocked some detailing off one of the bogies and whilst this is now glued back on, it will need touching up with some paint later today. I also managed to fit the speaker into the fuel tank - but it was a tight squeeze.
The wiring up of the DCC chip was also a bit of a headache to start with. The Heljan PCB board made little sense on first inspection; this was primarily due to the polarity of the wires not being marked marked on the PCB board - so for example there are two labels for the track feeds on both sides. What is entirely unclear from the PCB board labelling, is that the wire polarity was reversed on either side of the model. So for bogie A the positive track was feed was black, whilst on bogie B it was red! Luckily, I found a brilliant guide for understanding the wiring (https://www.modernimageogauge.co.uk/crompton.html) and after a few false starts, the rewiring was relatively easy. I then set up the DCC test track and had a little play - fortunately everything was OK and the locomotive started chugging around. The only issue I currently have, is that I cannot independently operate the tail lights from the re-wiring I have done. This is a minor annoyance and I am not sure if there is a solution for this - a little bit of internet searching will be undertaken today to see if anyone else has had the same problem.
