Brian Daniels has an excellent collection of detail photos of Locos on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/brianews/sets/72157626899029003/
these are his class 31 shots. He has very kindly allowed me to use a couple to illustrate the different types of roof arrangement found on 31's, over the engine bay.
The loco on the left is preserved D5600, and it can be seen that the central 'catwalk' section is removable; the loco right is preserved 31101, and the catwalk section forms an integral part of the whole roof section over the engine bay.
What I dont know is if the style on the right is how they were all built, then some were later modified to the style on the left, or whether it was a design change introduced from a certain loco onwards.
Even If i did know the answer, it's clear that my Triang TT 31's will need some extra work, as there are none of the gaps around the edges of the opening flaps, the whole area of roof is modelled as 'solid'. The answer may be to cut out the sections and mount them onto like a subframe, I'll need to have a think about that...
You may have already found an answer to your question about the roof catwalk panels but this is my experience of them: as far as I know they were all bolt on from new for access to the engine exhaust manifolds but this was overlooked during the 1980s refurbishment programme during which time at Doncaster Works they were welded in place. The first I knew about this was during 1987 or thereabout, whilst employed as a fitter at Frodingham, when I encountered a 31 so treated which came on shed shortly after overhaul with a blowing exhaust joint. Needless to say everyone right up to the gaffer was not impressed and certain about the dubious parentage of the daft b*****d whose idea it was to weld the things down in the knowledge that sooner or later access to the upper gubbins would be needed without having to remove the entire roof.
ReplyDeletea belated thank you for that David, it had to be something like that.
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