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Duncan's 7mm Workbench - Connoisseur 4F Tender Cab


Fastdax
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I'm starting this topic to record my 7mm loco and rolling stock developments, as a separate thread to my Offerston Quay layout-building thread.

 

A while ago I built a Connoisseur Jinty from an etched brass and whitemetal kit. It will be finished with a few added details to make it 47327, which I have driven at the Midland Railway Butterley, but in late-crest 1962 condition, i.e. mucky black.

 

It isn't quite finished yet, so here I'm documenting the final steps to get it complete, running and painted.

 

Most of the detail is there already.

 

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Except for the coal plate and whistle (which broke off during handling), smokebox door rail (how did I miss that one?) and lamp irons.

 

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Details already added to the basic kit include:

 

- Jig built (Hobby Holidays chassis jig)

- Centre axle floating and sprung

- Connoisseur 40:1 gearbox driving centre axle

- Extra chassis bracing

- Sanding steam pipes

- Sand pipe support brackets

- Brake handle linkage

- Brake pullrod nut detail

- Extra inside motion detail

- Slater’s wheels tapped for 10BA

- Replacement crankpins and inverted tapped crankpin top-hat bearings

- Replacement steel coupling rods with joint in rear rod, not on crankpin.

- Relocated rear bunker step

- Extra boiler band bolts

- Removed tank filler (condensing pipe?) blanking plate

- Added later-style tank lifting brackets

- Added lead weight in smokebox/tanks/bunker (it weighs 1Kg now!)

- Sprung buffers

- Sprung cast brass working screw couplings

- Removable cab roof

- Smaller rain-strip profiles from brass angle

- Extra tank-top control rod supports

- Cab rear window hinges

- Extra ejector pipework

- Extra backhead detailing (clack/injector valve wheels)

- Firebox open with new handle

- Replacement backhead pipework

- Added steam heating valve

- Steam/vacuum gauges in cab

- 3-outlet oilboxes on tank fronts

- Steam-heating pipe support chains

 

To Do:

 

- Install DCC sound decoder and stay-alive PowerPack

- Crop crankpins

- Smokebox handrail

- Replace whistle

- Add coal plate

- Lamp irons

- Working LED lamps

- Tank top wheel valves and tank top baffles

- 3-outlet oilboxes inside frames (maybe!)

- Additional rivets to cab front/tank tops

- Cab doors

- Cab water hose and valve

- Paint

- Transfers

- Weathering

- Crew

- Real coal

- Add 2 x works plate and water capacity plate

- Add smokebox door number plate and shed plate (17A)

 

 

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The first job is to install a Loksound V4 DCC sound decoder and PowerPack (a stay-alive capacitor), bought from my local emporium, Rails Of Sheffield.

 

I separated the body and chassis to reveal the motor and DC wiring.

 

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Here are they bits which I will be fitting. Top-left is the Loksound PowerPack, top-right is the Loksound DCC decoder with round speaker and 8-pin plug. Below is a pre-wired miniature 4-way plug and socket which I will use to connect the body and chassis. A 20-pack of these is 99p delivered from eBay, if you don't mind waiting for delivery from China. The wires are thin, but still thicker than the DCC decoder's own wires so that's all that matters.

 

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I removed the DC leads from the chassis PCB ...

 

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... and soldered a red and black lead from a 4-way plug instead. I had to cut off the 8-pin decoder plug to do this.

 

As they say "Red and black, to the track. Orange and grey, the other way". My 4-way plugs and sockets don't have orange and grey so yellow and white will have to do instead. The plug on the chassis side is wired to the pickups and the motor terminals of course. If I ever want to run this engine as DC, I can unplug the DCC decoder and plug in a socket which loops the pickups to the motor directly.

 

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The speaker is a nice fit into the front of the boiler. Its two mounting lugs touch the inside of the tube and were held in place with a spot of superglue each. I could easily remove this speaker to fit a bigger one if space allows.

 

You can see some of the lead shot that the side-tanks, coal bunker and smokebox are stuffed with. Don't worry- these are held in with epoxy resin, not PVA glue due to the number of horror stories of PVA reacting with the lead to expand and split the model open!

 

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Here is the 4-way socket wired to the decoder inputs and motor outputs. To test it, I just blu-tac'ed the PowerPack and decoder inside the boiler and reattached the body to the chassis.

 

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Well it works! I had to play around with a few CV settings to get a nice slow crawl and the chuff rate is not quite synchronised to the wheel rotation yet, but it runs and sounds right.

 

 

It's pleasing how slowly this loco runs at speed setting 1.

 

 

Duncan

 

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Time for another wagon.

 

This one is a 5-plank 13T BR open wagon from M&M Models, also known as Welcome Wagons. I bought it from eBay (from seller OnTheWagon, who is the eBay presence of Welcome Wagons).

 

It was delivered promptly and comes in a nice snap-cover plastic box so there's no danger of damage to the etches.

 

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Here's what you get: the main etch, whitemetal castings and a laser-cut real wood interior kit. There's a pack of information and instructions as well. As usual, wheels, paint, transfers are needed to complete.

 

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My normal wagon standard for Offerston Quay specifies sprung buffers, sprung couplings and some form of suspension, so here are the bits I'll be adding to the kit.

 

They are a compensation unit (to be used on one axle) and Slaters 7122 3-hole wheels. I'll also add sprung buffers as the ones in the kit are solid whitemetal, and sprung screw couplings instead of the WM Instanter ones.

 

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The main body is a single, big etch which needs careful folding in my Hold 'n' Fold. The sides want to bend along the lowermost half-etched plank line on the outside, rather than the fold line on the inside, so it needs a firm clamp and careful bending. Next time, I'd deepen the fold line with the corner of a square or triangular file to make the bend easier.

 

Then the four corners can be soldered together, checking for square at all stages. I kept putting the body upside-down on a piece of mirror glass to make sure it was all level.

 

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The corner plates need their half-etch rivets pushing out. (I use a gravity riveter). Then they are folded to 90 degrees and soldered to the corners.

 

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Some clean-up needed inside, but only enough to allow the wood inserts to sit flat later on in the build.

 

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More soon.

 

Duncan

 

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Next time, I'd deepen the fold line with the corner of a square or triangular file to make the bend easier.

 

 

I do that as a matter of routine with all fold lines. Also use a scalpel. It shapens the fold as well as making it easier. Some kits do have too narrow, poorly etched fold lines and they can be so bad that they will never fold crisply.

 

I do like these kits.

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After the body comes the chassis. This is where I disagree with the instructions a bit.

 

The instructions call for the chassis to be built as a separate unit and attached to the body later. This means assembling a set of loose brass sections together, square and level, with nothing to use as reference except perhaps a flat surface and some right-angle tools. Even then, if the chassis ends up a fraction short or long, it can't be altered.

 

I started by trying to assemble the main solebars to the buffer beams on a mirror, using small engineering squares.

 

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I soon gave up on this though. Whilst perfectly possible, it just seemed more intuitive to solder the buffer beams accurately to the underside of the floor, level with the ends, then ensure the solebars were a good fit between them. One advantage of doing it this way is that there's a nice flat brass floor to tack each piece to, prior to checking for square and making a permanent joint. Much harder to tack-solder to glass.

 

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Six chassis ribs were fixed in place this way. These would have been waving around in mid-air if assembled "loose" and subject to ham-fisted damage.

 

The instructions are very clear where these go - two in the centre and four 41.5mm from the outside face of the buffer beams. These are reasonably critical measurements as the cross members are used later to position the W irons and brake hangers. Those whitemetal parts can always be changed by some judicious filling or filing of course, but better to get it right to start with.

 

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Then two more longitudinal chassis rails.

 

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Finally a subtly different picture of one of the corner posts. Previously it had a nice square corner whereas, in reality, these wagons had a corner made of a single sheet of steel, bent to a right-angle but showing a definite radius. Out with the flat needle-file and glass-paper.

 

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As usual at the end of a soldering session, a good clean-up with the glass-fibre pen was followed by either a scrub in the sink with an old toothbrush and some soap (followed by a good rinse) or a dunk in the ultrasonic cleaner. The wagon *just* fits in!

 

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I do that as a matter of routine with all fold lines. Also use a scalpel. It shapens the fold as well as making it easier. Some kits do have too narrow, poorly etched fold lines and they can be so bad that they will never fold crisply.

 

I do like these kits.

 

Thanks Kenton. I have been deepening the (longer) fold lines with a square file to get a 90deg corner as a matter of principal now.

 

This kit is quite fun to make. There's just enough fettling required to make it more involving than a "shake the box" kit. The brass etches in particular are very crisp and well-fitting.

 

Duncan

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The instructions call for the chassis to be built as a separate unit and attached to the body later.

 

 

I do have a preference for modular construction.

 

Having seen the underframe components I think I would have persevered. Placing the longitudinal beams in before the transverse "ribs". The completed underframe would have held together quite rigid once these were in place.

 

Modular also generally means easier for the painter to do his job.

 

But in the end as long as it all goes together, it doesn't make much difference to how you build a kit.

 

Sometimes the instructions can be wrong, sometimes written by the designer who may have built one, and sometimes by the designer who has only built one in his head.

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Time for wheels.

 

As I showed earlier, I'm going to fit a compensation unit to one axle.

 

When folded up, soldered and blackened, it looks like this. I also blackened all four wheels.

 

You can just see a thin strip of brass across the rocking unit, reducing the width of the oversize etched slots so that the prongs protruding from the base plate don't slop around, causing the axle to twist.

 

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The chassis members needed removing where the compensation unit will fit. Rather than be clever and use a cutting disc in a Dremel, I just attacked it with Xuron etch scissors and snipped off bits until I had the desired gap, then cleaned up with files and GRP pen. After I took this photo I saw how mangled the chassis rail ends were, so more dressing and filling with solder ensued.

 

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The bearing holes in the whitemetal W irons needed drilling out with a 2.5mm bit. I carefully held the irons in a vice and drilled them out in the pillar drill. I practiced on the two that would be at the rocking axle end.

 

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A trial go with the W irons showed that they sat a bit too far outboard. This meant that there was a lot of sideways slop in the axle (when the bushes were pressed home) and that the spring hangers stuck out beyond the solebars.

 

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The fix was to solder a bit of scrap etch to the inside of the solebars, to pack the W irons inwards about 0.5mm each. This made the spring hangers line up with the outside of the solebar much better.

 

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So, on with the fixed axle using 70 degree "solder" (it's not really solder but we'll just call it such) and the iron set to 150 degrees C. At this temperature it's quite hard to melt whitemetal unless it's a really thin piece. I tack-soldered the fixed-end W irons first, checking for square and level before blobbing in more solder to fix them firmly.

 

After this procedure, the axle bearings were pushed all the way into the W irons, but not fastened and the wheels were now captive. When the W irons were finally fixed, I teased the axle bushes out of the W irons a bit (about 1mm per side) until there was almost no end-float to the axle. A tiny drop of Roket Hot superglue on a pin glued the bearings into the W irons.

 

The compensation unit needed a couple of thicknesses of scrap etch to pack it up (down?) to the right height.

 

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It's not pretty but a good fillet of solder holds the shims and baseplate to the wagon floor.

 

I've decided not to be too picky about cleaning up the underside of the wagon. It will be well painted and weathered and won't be seen in normal use.

 

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Brakes.

 

These started by soldering the V hangers inside the solebars as instructed. In the absence of detailed positioning, I butted them up to the underside of the floor where the bend in each leg of the hanger just lined up with the bottom of the solebar. Perfect - so you would think.

 

The trouble is that adding the brake pushrods showed that they weren't very symmetrical. One was almost flat (the left one below) and the other descended at a steep angle. Not ideal for equal braking and certainly not as per the prototype.

 

The V hangers were too high. A bit of head-scratching and I came to the conclusion that the brake cross-shaft, and thus the pivot holes in the hangers, should be at the same level as the axle bearings.

 

There was nothing for it but to remove the brake rods/blocks (a dab with 150 degC iron and the "whitemetal" bit), then the V hangers (more dabs, this time at 320 degC with the "brass" bit).

 

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I re-attached the hangers lower down. A ruler placed across the axle boxes and lined up with the bearings showed that the hanger pivot holes were now at the same level as the axle.

 

They needed lowering about 2mm.

 

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When the brakes went back on, the pushrods were much more parallel, as they should be.

 

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You can also see the vacuum cylinder and linkage above. To be complete, the brakes need safety loops, then the brake levers and pin-down bars.

 

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Is it just me, or the photograph, but that RH axlebox looks higher up the W-rion than the LH one. I'm not usually so picky but still panic a bit when folk mention 150'C and whitemetal in the same sentence. ;)

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Is it just me, or the photograph, but that RH axlebox looks higher up the W-rion than the LH one. I'm not usually so picky but still panic a bit when folk mention 150'C and whitemetal in the same sentence. ;)

 

It must be the iPhone fish-eye lens at work again. The axleboxes and W irons are cast as a single unit but, after your comment, I've had a good stare at them and they look OK to the eye.

 

I find 150'C quite safe with WM except, as I said, for very thin bits. I'd try an even lower temp but that's as low as my cheapo Maplin soldering station will go.

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More undercarriage.

 

The safety loops are provided in whitemetal and would need butt-joining to the chassis members. This struck me a a weak arrangement which, together with the over-thick castings, prompted me to bend up some replacements from scrap etch. These are soldered to the underside of the floor.

 

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Safety loops fitted. Also the W-iron tie bars, made from more scrap etch as the etchings provided are about 2mm too short. I know there should be bolt detail at the outer ends and I intend to test out some Archers decal rivets that I acquired recently. These will go on after the primer.

 

The brake levers and pin-down bars are also on now.

 

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That about completes the chassis and underframe, so it's on with the body details.

 

I scribed lines on the brass ends for the whitemetal brackets.

 

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There are also brackets on the sides. Like the ends, I soldered these on with 70 degC solder.

 

The instructions recommend gluing the door strapping castings on, which I did (Roket Rapid). These are pretty thin castings and I would risk melting them if I tried to solder them on, so I was happy to go with superglue.

 

The diagonal strapping was also superglued on.

 

I must straighten that W-iron tie bar!

 

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At this stage I temporarily put a coupling in place and ran the wagon round the layout, under Jinty power. It went forwards, it went backwards and it didn't fall off the track. That gets a tick in the box.

 

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The doors got glue-on bang plates and the door bangs themselves I slimmed down from the chunky castings (on the left) to something which presents a thinner edge profile (on the right). I was in two minds about whether to simply replace these with brass etch but decided to see how the WM ones look and last. If they break off, it's back to brass.

 

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On photos of these wagons (I use Paul Bartlett's excellent site for reference, particularly this photo) there are floor support brackets quite obvious under the doors. I bent up some approximations and glued them on.

 

It's strange, but once I have started gluing on small details, I find it somehow natural to keep using the glue rather than revert to solder. I know you shouldn't solder in the vicinity of cyanoacrylate glues.

 

In this vein, I also glued on the ticket holder and maker's plates.

 

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OK, I take it back about not soldering after gluing bits on. I did exactly that for the vacuum pipes. The WM originals, whilst a nice shape, were cast with the two halves out of registration by about 0.5mm. In the photo below, the bright line below the curve of the casing is the flat back of the other half, IYSWIM. Cleaning this up would be difficult and would easily lose the regular corrugations in the pipe.

 

I used to make scratch-built vac pipes for my EM Gauge layout, so it was out with the 1.3mm copper wire for the core and 5 Amp fuse-wire for the pipe reinforcement.

 

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I took the opportunity to make the pipes hang a bit more vertical to ease access for the shunter's pole round the couplings.

 

A bit of extra fuse-wire wrapping at the top and some solder & filing gives a representation of the top joint. The free end of the fuse-wire at the bottom stands in for the "ears" on the coupling end.

 

Cruel close-up:

 

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They were soldered on. Real solder this time, not 70 degC stuff. These are sufficiently far away from any glued-on bits that it didn't cook the cyanide out of the CA glue apparently, as I am still here.

 

I need to do a bit of clean-up round the buffer beam but this gives the impression I'm after.

 

Oh yeah - and buffers. Slater's RCH sprung ones. The photos of these wagons show all sorts of buffers in use, probably whatever was lying around the wagon repair shop, so good ol' RCH seems as appropriate as anything.

 

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Your work is very good. The wagon and Jinty look the part.

 

Is the vac cylinder the right side of the cross shaft?

 

Hi Peter and thanks for the kind words.

 

About the vac cylinder: the instructions are clear that it goes on the end of the shaft with one hole in the V hanger (i.e. the end with a normal brake lever, not the one with a dog clutch).

 

To me this makes sense. When the vac cylinder operates to engage the brakes, it pulls its operating rod upwards. This will pull up on the lever arm attached to the shaft and rotate the shaft clockwise (in the photo above) which will push the brake rods towards the wheels. The brake lever on that side also rotates the shaft clockwise when pushed down, which matches the vacuum movement.

 

So I think it's right but thanks for sense-checking me!

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This is all very nice workmanship and the finished result is going to look very good.

 

Can I make just one small observation around the use of the word "rivets" and "rivet-heads" which we see so often in descriptions of rolling stock? On a wooden bodied wagon like this, we are actually talking about bolts, not rivets. Some of them will be coach-bolts with round heads, and some will be hex-head bolts. On the other (inner) side will be a hexagon nut. Hardly any kits or scratch builders or RTR items represent these correctly. Just about the only time you will see rivets on a wagon are with the relatively rare examples of all-steel riveted body mineral wagons and other similar vehicles.

 

John

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Guest Isambarduk

And whilst we are at it, if I may make a similar observation:  "The diagonal strapping was also superglued on."  modellers may call it strapping but they are washer plates.  David

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And whilst we are at it, if I may make a similar observation:  "The diagonal strapping was also superglued on."  modellers may call it strapping but they are washer plates.  David

 

Thanks David, I'm always happy to find out the proper names for things.

 

In a similar vein, I know that "Jinty" is a modellers' affectation (or possibly a trainspotters' term). Railwaymen usually called the Fowler 3F a "Jocko" AFAIK. But referring to it as a Jinty does convey a meaning to most modellers.

 

John - you are quite right. I used the term "rivets" erroneously when referring to the wagon's corner plates. I guess they are dome-head coach bolts really and there should be a nut (recessed into the woodwork?) on the inside. The wooden interior kit for this wagon does have a representation of the interior fixings, but just a laser-burned dot really. Still - more than you sometimes get, as you say.

 

Duncan

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Thanks David, I'm always happy to find out the proper names for things.

 

In a similar vein, I know that "Jinty" is a modellers' affectation (or possibly a trainspotters' term). Railwaymen usually called the Fowler 3F a "Jocko" AFAIK. But referring to it as a Jinty does convey a meaning to most modellers.

 

John - you are quite right. I used the term "rivets" erroneously when referring to the wagon's corner plates. I guess they are dome-head coach bolts really and there should be a nut (recessed into the woodwork?) on the inside. The wooden interior kit for this wagon does have a representation of the interior fixings, but just a laser-burned dot really. Still - more than you sometimes get, as you say.

 

Duncan

I lean towards the Monet school of railway modelling in which I try to create a convincing impression rather than an exact miniature replica; it suits my innate laziness.

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You are welcome, Duncan.

 

"I guess they are dome-head coach bolts really and there should be a nut (recessed into the woodwork?) on the inside."

 

Yes, that's a possibility but not always.  However, there's always a washer and sometimes the washer plates are on the inside.  Also, the nuts were sometimes on the outside so as to leave a smoother surface on the inside and so that any that are working loose or missing will easily be spotted.

 

See here

 

SULLYFOT.jpg

and here

 

sr10-ft_wb.jpg

David

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Its not clear to me which BR open merchandise is being built, however some of them were flush on the inside with the bolts externally

http://PaulBartlett.zenfolio.com/bropenwood/e22c57aa0

http://PaulBartlett.zenfolio.com/bropenwood/e22f3502f

 

Very nice modelling although I don't like the holes through the brake lever guide going so high up as they wouldn't work to hold the brake lever down.

 

Paul

PS I agree, the vacuum cylinder is in the correct place.

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The safety loops are provided in whitemetal and would need butt-joining to the chassis members.

 

 

The over-use of whitemetal castings really does let this kit down.

 

I accept that it is difficult to get bulk into brass parts but quality of whitemetal casting and often resultant over scale needs more thought. I think I am correct in saying that providing the whitemetal castings is more expensive than brass etch though cheaper than brass casting. But it is annoying to see and pay for poor castings.

 

Some of these parts would have been better provided in brass or on the etch.

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Hi Peter and thanks for the kind words.

 

About the vac cylinder: the instructions are clear that it goes on the end of the shaft with one hole in the V hanger (i.e. the end with a normal brake lever, not the one with a dog clutch).

 

To me this makes sense. When the vac cylinder operates to engage the brakes, it pulls its operating rod upwards. This will pull up on the lever arm attached to the shaft and rotate the shaft clockwise (in the photo above) which will push the brake rods towards the wheels. The brake lever on that side also rotates the shaft clockwise when pushed down, which matches the vacuum movement.

 

So I think it's right but thanks for sense-checking me!

I actually meant the other side of the shaft rather than the other side of the wagon. The way I thought vacuum brakes worked was the vacuum lifted the brakes off not pushed them on.

Edited by N15class
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I actually meant the other side of the shaft rather than the other side of the wagon. The way I thought vacuum brakes worked was the vacuum lifted the brakes off not pushed them on.

 

A vacuum-braked train has a vacuum (or near-vacuum) throughout the train of vehicles. The loco creates and maintains the vacuum.

 

The vacuum keeps the brakes *off*. The whole point is that if the train separates at mid-point anywhere, the vacuum is destroyed and the brakes come on automatically, stopping both sections of the train. It's a fail-safe feature.

 

The vacuum can also be reduced under the driver's control, to gently apply the brakes on the whole train rather than relying only on the loco's brakes to slow down.

 

I guess I should amend my earlier statement that the vacuum cylinder rod rises when vacuum is applied, putting the brakes on. Logically, the vacuum must keep the rod in the downward position, keeping the brakes off.

 

But now you've really got me thinking, Peter. Photos do show the cylinder on the side of the shaft where I put it. 

 

So what applies the brakes when there is no vacuum present?

 

Duncan

Edited by Fastdax
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Its not clear to me which BR open merchandise is being built, however some of them were flush on the inside with the bolts externally

 

Paul,

 

The instructions call this a diag. 1/032 or 1/034 BR 5-plank wagon, depending on whether it had vac brakes fitted as standard or retro-fitted later.

 

Running numbers:

1/032: B475000-475049, Lot 2082, Swindown 1949 (vac braked)

1/034: B477050-477649, Lot 2153, Ashford 1949/50 (retro-fitted with vac brakes)

 

I haven't yet picked a running number for this wagon.

Edited by Fastdax
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