Stephenson valve gear was very common on the CPR ten wheelers. My
understanding is that it had some performance advantages over outside
valve gear and that is why CPR stuck to it long after others had
switched to outside valve gear. Something about greater control over
the valve position?? Maybe someone knows the reason?
I suspect that the Bachman 4-4-0 piston valves would fit without too
much modification to the 4-6-0 and the existing 4-6-0 valve gear would
work without too much modification, the only question is the length of
the side rod to the piston, if its too short you have a problem that
isn't readily fixed, if its too long you can always cut it!
It shouldn't be too difficult to take some styrene tube and put it
over the existing cylinders and valve chests to make new ones, you
might have to cut the square edges off the old valve chests to get it
to fit, but if you keep the center then that way the valve gear can
still fit into the existing part and the alignment would be correct
for the existing valve gear. I did that with a Model Power 2-8-0 once.
In response to the question about the front number plate on my
conversion, it is just a bit of styrene with numbers from the Black
Cat decal set and a line drawn around the edge using a gold coloured
marker pen. Then the mistakes where I didn't get the line straight
were covered over with with some Bragdon weathering powders!
I would be interested to see any CPRish conversions of the Bachman
4-6-0. It is the only ten wheeler that is readily available to work
with, but it is unfortunately not very close to CP out of the box.
Brent
Thanks Peter, that was very helpful.
And yes, I've given some thought to the Stephenson gear option as an
easy(er) way out. :-)
Happy New Year.
Roger T.
See the GER at: -
http://www.islandnet.com/~rogertra/
