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Hello all, long time no post! This project is kind of a wash at this point, but I think it is still worth a share. Perhaps that's appropriate as the SR/Bulleid Leader is best known for being a total flop, an unconventional design with a lot of new features that of course proved too complicated and unreliable to even see regular service. Five of the 0-6-0 + 0-6-0 articulated locomotives were laid down, but only one was completed, tested, and deemed unsatisfactory before the whole lot was scrapped. I usually only build American trains, but I make exception for the Leader as I have a fondness "advanced steam" designs like the ACE 3000 and the 5AT. Also like the 5AT, I had built a mediocre model of the Leader a long time ago and wanted to revisit it... Like almost all of my train models, the Leader is built at roughly 1:48 scale, and the chassis can navigate all the normal LEGO R40 track geometries. At this scale the locomotive should really be 7-wide (as should most British engines), but I fudged it and made it 8-wide such that the body would not be wider than the trucks, which I could not narrow due to the huge greebles on their outside frames. Also due to the trucks I had to compromise on the lower line of the body: the prototype has a very long sweeping curve over the two inner drivers, but I could not get enough clearance between the wheels and the cowling to make this work on R40 curves, even with the pivots right next to the center axles. For now that line is just abbreviated, which is sad. The roof has a bit of a hodgepodge of different curves. The 2x8xN bow is a good approximation of the actual look, but I had to use other combinations of parts to model the various features on the top of the loco. I think the mix of implementations does a good job defining the shape but also giving it some texture, though there are some cracks especially around the bunker that possibly could be smaller. Moving on to the internals! This model has a pretty unique drivetrain and this was one of the main reasons I wanted to build it: when I bought a used 7722 a few years ago, I noted that the 4.5v system had a feature that has never appeared again on any subsequent train system, and that is the ability to run a train point to point** I thought it would be really cool to build a nice model that could leverage this functionality, but it would have to be a locomotive that could realistically pair with the two-axle 4.5v battery box, so revisiting the Leader seemed like a good choice. Furthermore, I wanted to try out an interesting articulation mechanism for the Leader proposed by fellow builder @jtlan, which would theoretically work well with the large outside frame greebles. Unfortunately it's this 4.5v drivetrain that really hasn't worked well. It seemed to work fine in the ample testing I did prior to finishing the model, but the shell turned out to be really heavy, and the motors have trouble moving it at a meaningful speed while pulling a meaningful train. You can see some of the test beds and the final product in this short video: Ultimately, I've tried to tweak it to no avail, so this will probably have to be converted to PF for it to work well, and I don't really have that much motivation to do that as 4.5v was the whole point. So for now, that's that; there are a few more pics once the Brickshelf folder is moderated, but otherwise have a nice day! ** What I mean by point to point is in the video at 0:10
