Making a McGowans WD 2-8-0 Austerity
Entry posted by bundeena2230
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I thought I would post this blog for those that would like to see the steps in making a metal kit. - More photos than talk.
After seeing Tetley’s Mills in a magazine with a rusty WD Austerity front and center, I just had to make one, so a saved search in ebay eventually brought a McGowans kit up which I won.
For those who don’t know, this is a white metal body kit for which you have to make or find a chassis, and I say find because this kit was designed to take a French Jouef chassis, and due to the ‘highly’ limited supply of all things modeling in Australia I headed for this option rather than trying to locate the unusual wheels she has.
The Jouef saved ebay search "Jouef" found a low cost candidate after a few weeks in ebay France, well two candidates actually, that I bid on, and don’t tell my wife, but I won them both. Oh well, feast and famine.
einy meeny miney mo
Once I had these I could start cleaning up the kit parts, this is done with a brass brush on a dremel, brings white metal up a treat. This is where you find all the bits that didnt come out of the casting process as well as desired, dings, holes, and other nasties.
Eg. here you see the smoke box door after a lot of filing as there was a gouge from to top bottom due to the casting
and the boiler bands dont quite line up, and there was a lot of filing to do as the body was quite rough in places.
here is the firebox end, and you will notice that the pre drilled holes are large enough for a scale frying pan to fit through, notice the blemish that has to be cleaned up
But it cleans up nicely as seen here from the top
I was further blessed with instructions that came with the kit, but not a diagram of which part was what, so put part 3 with part 4 ensuring they are square and not interfering with 12 was, well, not very helpful. But most parts are easy to identify and as Tony Wright says, get the wheels turning first.
This is the Jouef frame, side cutters take off the unwanted bits so that the kit body will fit on it.
You will also notice there are too many wheels, this comes as a 2-8-2, so remove the rear pony.
This in hindsight is the only thing I would change, the entire kit sits on this thin piece of white metal that no mater how careful you are and diligent, it just bends, and you are forever trying to flatten it. Next time I will use it to cut a piece of brass
And check with the body on, make sure the motion still works and nothing hangs down to surprise you.
ALWAYS keep checking for square at this stage.
The strange shape here is the lead weight from the tender, you will see that soon.
It gets annoying when the parts are not the correct shape like the saddle for the smokebox shown here. A very big file is the best you can do here, as long as you dont loose too much before the shapes align
Also you should start to think how this will be taken apart in the future for servicing, once again Tony Wrights excellent tip, use a cocktail stick to mount a 8ba nut
You can see here that the screw will poke upwards into the cavity of the smoke box.
Now for a hard part, the pistons, why hard ? because the motion is part of the Jouef chassis and we dont want their pistion, they need to be replaced with the kits white metal parts, I thought for a while that I should take some brass tube and make a sleeve inside the piston housing for the motion, but I didnt and persevered in trying to get the piston to move smoothly inside the cavity, although it is tricky to align
I decided to make a brass frame to locate them and this makes it easy to align the pistons so that the motion is not entering the casing and then hitting the sides, this initially caused the motion to bind up and took a lot of tweeks to get right, but now I can remove them if that ever becomes necessary.
You really have to get this part right, are the pistons at the right height (dont trust the castings) are they too far forward, back, etc.
This shows the solder tack for the two halves and the screw to hold the chassis to the body.
Check it turns freely, turn it over do it again, put it on the track and do it, do it while you watch tv, do it tomorrow, and keep doing it.
This shows the underside of the Jouef chassis, no gear here, the motor is in the tender.
and that it fits to the body
That d**ned saddle, I would have to file it so much to fit there would be nothing left.... Still where there is solder, there is a way.
Unscrewing the bottom of the Jouef frame releases the wheels and you can lift the rear pony out, but the back end now is loose, so it will require a bit of padding
And now for its first pose with the poor unloved tender which I will show soon.
BITS THAT BREAK
Over several night, you roll her around in your hands, looking for little things to do, and like this example, bits break off, you put them back on, they come off some other night, and after a while you realise, this item does now want to be part of the project, so it was with the reversing rod. Made of white metal and positioned where you fingers just love to be I was forever getting the plyers to straighten it, until it just never looks straight no matter what.
This bit breaks
This bit dosent
take a small lenght of brass tube that fits into a section of square brass tube and with a grinding wheel take a little off the end so that it can be soldered to the white metal stand without ugly solder.
leave the end with a bit of round tube sticking out of the square tube so that its easy to poke into the cab
There was a white metal pipe that came from the cab to the smoke box and just looked so daggy, but it was simple to make a brass one.
This is a brass tube, bent at right angles at the end.
I took some very thin sheet brass, drilled a small hole, then enlarged that to the diameter of the brass tube, then made it an egg shape with nail clippers.
This slipped onto the end of the brass tube, and a dab of solder. The brass tube is held onto the boiler side with bands, dead easy, take some very thin brass or copper sheet and with sissors cut a long piece off the sheet not quite as thick as a match stick, this is easily bent with the fingers, and you can wrap it around the tube, repeat as many as you need.
The other end, and note this is the same proceedure to do the water pipes. I used copper here as its dead easy to bend into complex shapes, and its was copper on the real one.
I used 10 or 12 ba nuts on the end of the copper tube to give the appearance of a fitting.
FIDDLY BITS
consume endless nights.....
Drain cocks, well handrail standoffs looked a good idea until I checked a photo of the real thing and saw they should be smaller, still, try and then fix it up, or you get nowhere.
Note, when dealing with small parts, try to make something to mount them on, like this short length of brass I drilled mounting holes into, then soldered the brass to the piston housing.
And a bit of wire makes it easy to line them up.
Top Feed
Well I couldnt see anything in the bucket of parts that looked like a top feed, so I made one.
Some small white metal parts soldered together, brass tube drilled through and 10ba nuts on the ends.
It looked good when mounted.
The McGowan didnt have this rod that I saw in photos of 90733, and what a God send she has been for me.
The other end of the rod, what to do ? When stuck I think of what the original builders would have done and improvise. Note, when doing these bits, always drill the hole first and then bend and grind it to shape.
If you like Fiddly Bits
then how about the pipes that connected to the lubricators. In hindsight this is a bad idea as they are not seen after painting. Oh well, try it and learn from it.
This is four lubricators laid out (white metal), then four strands of wire laid on top of them and superglue added, as I couldnt control solder on this small a part, might end up melting them.
Fiddly bits continue
Well, if you are going to put copper tubes along the side of the boiler, do you make them just long enough and glue the ends to the cab front?
When I looked at photos of 90733 I saw gaping big holes where the tubes passed through into the cab. OK
I spent ages trying to make a scale lubricator, and when I realised it would maybe never get seen, I didnt bother trying to make sight tubes in it. Here is the first pipe being threaded through.
The pipes have small chairs to hold them down
This view shows the pipes passing through the cab, and a view of the water pipes underneath
Pipes done
Another view of the cab, with the pipes attached to the lubricator on the right.
When I show the tender, you will see that it has a very small footprint to pick up power, so I put some phospher bronze pickups on the last four wheels.
Getting close, the port side
and starboard
TENDER
Well this is an education, firstly the motor is in the tender, it looks like an old triang motor, and it passes its rotation to a capstan that is mounted vertically onto the front bogie of the tender via some gears. Weird.
Anyway, thats not a problem, what is a problem is the length, its not the same as the tender used in the UK, the French bogies are further apart, so to make your model more acceptable, you need to saw the tender frame to remove a short length in the middle.
And cut some from the front, and the end, and just follow the instructions that thankfully I got with the kit.
Better still is the fact that the tender weighs a ton thanks to carefully molded lead that will unfortunately no longer fit the UK tender body. BUT you really need it all or there is no adhesion to the track ! ! !
All this leads to the reason why God invented the Dremel.
First, four views of the Jouef Tender before the chainsaw massacre.
1 - shows its the wrong shape
2 - this shows the longer wheelbase
3 - the capstan / motor drive
4 - even the space between the bogies is filled with lead.
This shows the tender with the white metal sides next to it, you can see how the chassis must be shortened.
Also another problem is these sides, they are much tighter than the French tender, you will notice that the Jouef model has plastic moulded sides on the bogies, springs and stuff. This has to be cut off to allow the bogies to turn in the confines of the UK tender on curves. These frames are live with track voltage and the kit is metal....
She has a tight skirt
Cut as much away as you can
Then you get to glue the poor thing back together again
A sea of Araldite
The mini Dremel is a dream, but even with the most careful cutting the frame started to form cracks in unexpected places, fortunately warm glue flows well and finds them
The body is easy, just keep checking for square.
Then fill EVERY little space with lead. These pieces came from the original tender, cut into pieces to fit...
Just leave some space for the motor to vent heat.
I elected to cut the top of the tender off where the coal should have gone, mainly because with so much lead in the body there was nowhere to put the DCC chip.
Just make sure its well insulated, I put a sheet of very thin plastic under the chip, and plastic sides to keep the chip isolated.
This is how I prototype parts, making things from copper shim that I can cut with scissors, it makes for fast consruction of complex parts in a few minutes. When done you can use it as a template to make a brass one.
This will cover the dcc chip and hold at least some coal
Near finished, wires handing out te back still, next is connecting wires to the loco
Does anyone know how to remove these 2 thumbnails that have somehow attached themselves ?
Kevin
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