Peckett Progress

My previous 4mm finescale layout, Kyle of Sutherland, was dismantled at the end of last year, so I’m re-posting a November 2019 progress report on the Peckett 0-4-0 from the Kyle of Sutherland blog to bring the story up to date here. Since last year’s Missenden Abbey Summer School, I continued with the Peckett as described below.

My track record with pick-ups is not brilliant, so I took the opportunity of building a split-frame chassis under the guidance of one of our local gurus (thanks, Frank). I already had a conventional P4 chassis underway for the Peckett (see "GWR 0-4-0ST 1151, 22 July 2018), so decided to experiment by way of making an alternative 00-gauge chassis to compare pick-up performance.

There are a number of potential shorts to resolve in a split-frame chassis, and here is one of them. The gaps in the split axles are off-centre, for example to avoid clashing with the gearbox. However, the gap entered the chassis top hat bearing, which had to be filed back to the frame. The space between the chassis and gearbox frames was padded out with fibre washers to maintain the central position of the gearbox. There are lots more gotchas still to come.