Thursday 31st March

Fitting body to chassis, as DB says, requires some careful chamfering of the top of the solebars. More chamfering than I'd imagined. Be careful you don't chamfer all the way through the top edge. You need to include the top of the inside V hanger in the chamfering, gets right in the way. Also check the inside slope of the brackets 10, 11 and the tabs that the brake hangers are soldered to. Needed to make tiny adjustments to the length of a couple of the body side ribs. Eventually it all sits neatly on the chassis, touching everywhere it should.

Flanges onto body end supports 18. I'm opting for the scale thickness flanges, and I'll take DB's advice and use a higher temperature solder, Carr's 224. Holding the flange in position while soldering isn't easy. I drilled a 1.6mm hole in a block of wood and stuck the handrail projection into it, trapping the flange square against the wood.

Similarly the two small projections on the other edge can just be pushed into the wood block, trapping the flange. After a bit of a fiddle and some cleaning up they're done.

2.5 hours. Total 26.5 hours.
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Friday 1st April

Checking the fit of the body end supports between chassis and hopper reveals a problem. The supports don't seem long enough to bridge the gap. They appear to be about 0.5mm short. The body is sat at the right height and there's no latitude to move it longitudinally to bring it in contact with the supports. What to do? Filling the gap with solder would be messy, and the location would make it difficult to clean up. Extending the supports will be difficult now the flanges are soldered on. The end supports are tabbed to locate in slots etched in the end platforms 16, 17. If the tab is reduced in length it allows the end supports to be moved closer to the body and the gap eliminated. The downside is that the inside end of the support and its flange no longer sits on the end platform, and I'm assuming it should do. I'm afraid it's the only practical solution I can come up with and I hope the inside end of the support won't be noticeable on the finished model. We'll see.

The body is soldered to the chassis underneath, where the lower part of the hopper rests against the chassis cross members. Easy to solder, robust joint and not needing any clean up.

With tabs reduced the supports can be slid along the locating slot until they wedge between hopper and chassis, with no gaps. The support is most easily fixed in position by soldering the end of the tab projecting through the slot in the platform. A good joint here is all you need, and it can't be seen so doesn't need cleaning up. The supports fit so closely to the hopper there's no gap, and I can avoid trying to solder the two together here in an awkward place.

End of shift.

2 hours. Total 28.5 hours.
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Saturday 2nd April

Probably time to fit the brake levers. Monkey tail brackets; no I can't figure out how to make the ball ends either.

I'm leaving out parts 29, 30 because the bottom of the hopper is the only place I can put the ballast weight.

Handrails. Bit of a fiddle, but soldering them in position is easier than fitting them to plastic bodies.

2 hours. Total 30.5 hours.
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Sunday 3rd April

Handrails completed. And that's the brassy part done.

There are some useful photos of handrails on these hoppers; Google 'Bowes Railway'. There's an excellent close up photo of the end of one just about to go over the top of the Bowes incline in the archive section of the Bowes railway website 'bowesrailway.uk'. Shows handrails and buffers in detail. Wish I'd found that photo before fitting the handrails! On the subject of good photos I'd recommend, 'Industrial Railways in Northumberland and County Durham in The Latter Days Of Steam', by Malcolm Castledine, Book Law Publications, 2004, ISBN 1 901945 35 9. Several good photos of this type of wagon including the wooden body variant. For anybody interested in colliery railways and rolling stock, or industrial steam in general it is an excellent source of information.

DB recommends MJT 2242 axle box and Spring castings. I'm using 2241 because I happen to have some. They look the part, and I'm not sure what difference there is. There follows about half an hour of carving off lumps I don't need, straightening the springs and general tidying up and fettling of the castings. Oh, and the compulsory chore of scooping out the back for the bearings. I manage to break one in the process but that's about par for the course! We have injection moulded rail chairs and all sorts of tiny accessories now, so why not springs and axle boxes? It would be so convenient. Must look into the economics of this sometime.

Buffers. DB recommends ABS 723B buffers. Can you even get ABS castings any more? The photos I've been able to find do show some small differences between buffers, and I imagine that they were overhauled or repaired with whatever was to hand. So there's some latitude in buffer choice, but they would always have carried a self contained buffer and not a spindle type. From looking at photos, and my collection of buffers, I reckon MJT 2350 is a good match, a BR 1'8" heavy duty buffer. Not sprung, but that's not really a problem. The castings are good and need little cleaning up, but the base needs to be reduced in size to match the pads on the headstock. They do look big, but that's how the prototype looked with a fat 18" self contained buffer bolted on. Buffers fixed with epoxy.

Couplings. I'll use the hooks in the kit with my own links. I've found it easy to make my own links for 3 link couplings. Doesn't take long to make loads of them, and I can make them to a size that suits me, slightly over scale.

Couplings and suspension units are chemically blackened and left overnight to dry out.

3 hours. Total 33.5 hours.
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Monday 4th April

Axle box and spring castings fixed in place with a couple of drops of cyano. Couplings fixed by bending the shank sideways about 45 degrees just after the hook, feeding through the headstock and setting in a blob of epoxy. The bent shank in the epoxy means it won't ever pull out.

Wheels fitted, and it weighs in at 32g. So a further 8 g required to make it up to my standard 40g weight. A rectangle of 1.9mm thick lead flashing 26mm x15mm calculates as 8 g and fits neatly into the bottom of the hopper. Epoxy lead in place. That's the build complete, and here it is with a couple of it's NCB internal user buddies.

1 hour. Total 34.5 hours.

Next episode should cover painting, weathering and a load of coal.