Most of my blog posts, few that there were in recent months, have been over on the S&D blog I started, but this one really seemed to belong back in the old "mostly GWR" bit. So here we are!

 

Way back when, in 67, ... no, that's a Steely Dan song. Way back when, around five or six years ago, I came back from Railwells with a complete Nu-Cast kit for the rather petite 2021 class pannier, including motor, gearbox and a full set of Markits wheels.

 

Nice, as Louis Balfour would say.

 

 

There matters rested, though, as I got distracted by various things and the poor 2021 class gradually sunk to the bottom of the ever-growing kit pile, seemingly doomed never to see the light of day. Whenever I opened the box and peered at the contents, it was a case of ... not tonight, Josephine. In the meantime I built a few other locos and chassis, all of which appeared more attractive starting propositions than the Nu-Cast one. Not that there was anything visibly wrong with the kit, but it just never looked like something I wanted to dive into there and then. Perhaps it was the instructions mentioning early on that clearances are tight between the wheels and the footplate, making it sound challenging?

 

It turned out that, while some care needed to be taken, it wasn't any trickier than any other loco I've made. In fact progress got off to

an encouragingly quick start due to a very well engineered etched chassis. The fit of the parts was so precise that I didn't feel the need to get out the jigs at all, with the whole thing just feeling right from the outset. The axle holes needed very little opening out for the bearings, and the coupling rods were practically a drop-fit straight onto the crank pins, needing just the tiniest smidge of extra clearance to give nice free running. It only took about an hour to get to this stage:

 

 

Next I set about making the simple Branchlines gearbox, which gave no difficulty, and after a short period of running in without load, I installed the motor and gearbox into the chassis. Running on test-leads was very smooth and encouraging, so I went ahead and soldered the rods on and then made some pickups. I also began test-fitting the dreaded footplate.

 

 

The pickups, below, are simple but reliable. I made plastic pads to go between the frames (almost but not quite a force fit) then glued longitudinal strips of pre-tinned PCB to these. I just use long PCB sleepers as supplied by C+L, trimming off a length at a time. The contact wipers themselves are 0.33mm phosphor-bronze, soldered to the PCBs, and with fine lengths of wire connecting everything together and to the motor contacts. Inevitably I got it backwards so the wires will need to be reversed at some point, but once that's done, there'll be no further need to touch the electrics as the loco will only run on DC.

 

 

The next step was to solder the splashers in place (a bit tricky, and needed a lot of adjustment to get them all level and in line) and then tweak things because of the dreaded clearance. It is a bit tight, but I found I only needed a bit of filing around the inside of the splashers, coupled with some slight shimming-up of the chassis to sort things out.

 

I then proceeded with the superstructure, starting at the smokebox end, and working back. The pannier tanks are just loosely in place in this shot below, while I adjusted the rear support to make sure they were perfectly level and parallel to both each other and the footplate. I had to do a lot of remedial work on an older DJH pannier that I built where things weren't quite square, so I was determined to get it right first time here.

 

In case anyone else tackles one of these, I found that the rear support needed to be positioned a fair bit higher than seemingly intended by the kit designer. Fortunately this wasn't hard to arrange and the relationship with the cab then seems to fall into place quite well.

 

 

Once I was satisfied with the basic squareness of things I started soldering it all up solidly, beginning with tack soldering, checking and double checking, and only later proceeding with full soldering along each join. The kit advises that the footplate details be added before the tanks are in place, and I would recommend doing it this way as far as possible.

 

 

I started adding the boiler-top details, but the dome is a bit poor, so for the time being it's just resting in place while I decide what to do with it. It's always an option to buy an alternative casting from another supplier, but I haven't always been knocked out by the quality of these either, so it may be a case of making do with what's on offer.

 

Following a short trip abroad, I then returned to the model full of vim and vigour and completed one of the tasks I'm least fond of, adding GWR-style handrails to the panniers and smokebox. For once, with some careful measurement and taking things slowly and calmly, I was happy with the first go, even though it took all evening (half of which was spent on the floor looking for handrail knobs, but that's another story).

 

 

There is still quite a bit to do but the basic pannier character is starting to come through, I think.

 

 

I should add that the kit caters for many different possibilities in the building of the loco, ranging from bunker type, closed or open cab, different chimneys and smokebox doors, as well as different parts for the reversing lever and sanding gear. The latter is a bit difficult to discern in photos, but I've gone with what seems to me to be the most common setup. As for the cab. the etched parts for the closed variety look very good but I felt it would begin to look just like any other pannier, so I opted for the open cab and the "flared" style of bunker, which provides a nice contrast with my otherwise similar 27XX class. which has the straight-sided type.

 

Anyway, although not yet finished, I didn't run into any big snags with the kit, and I would recommend it to anyone fancying one of these smaller-wheeled panniers.