more like driven batty
The Accentric links proved to be the most troublesome of the motion rods to lengthen. Due mainly to the fact that they are a single etch and not laminated from two etches.
Long and short of it is that I had to lengthen them by approx 5mm so some re-inforcement was needed. Good job I have some 5 thou' phosphor bronze sheet to hand. The three bits of the lengthened rod was soldered to the sheet then the whole thing cut out and trimmed up.
Two rods done, two ho
As the ABS Wagon is done and now to something to pull it. I bought a Lima diesel shunter cheaply off the forum some time ago, so it has donated it's chassis to the project.
Here's what you get with the kit, basically two sheets of etches, although I bought some buffers for it at the same time
As Fourgig is supposed to be a heritage railway I wanted to model a preserved Sentinel and GWR #2 "Isebrook" was an obvious choice. Here's the first problem with the kit - Isebrook has the
Well, I got the bits from Adrian at ABS so the angled planks at the bottom of the doors and label clips were added and then the painting commenced.
Below shows the wagon as it sits now, basic spraying done but there is a lot of overspray on the black where I couldn't mask well enough. No matter, I'll touch up with Tamiya semi gloss black and no-one will know.
It's done in BR period livery, and just needs black number patches adding once the overspray is sorted, oh and a touch of whi
Following a brief interlude with my thoughts on a 77xxx I returned to the Duke yeterday whilst recovering from a nasty bout of Bejing Belly (don't ask)
So deflectors are now modified to the single continuous handrail which involved unsoldering the small lower handrail and the handrail knob from the end of the top handrail. This was re-sited higher up in a new hole, two holes were filled with solder and then a new section of handrail soldered in with the join within the old knob.
Pic belo
The deflectors might be all soldered up, but they have to come apart again!
looking at some photos last night mainly of the cylinders and cam boxes I glanced upwards and it struck me like being hit over the head with a slice of lemon wrapped around a gold brick ........
The deflector handrail is a single piece, not the two part affair that you get with the Brits
When I can summon up the effort the shorter lower handrails have to be unsoldered and removed, one of the holes filled wit
And here's the RHS firebox pipework.
Note the extra bits in copper where I've enhanced the kit whitemetal and where the castings were too short or had missing bits.
The lower casting proved too narrow to fit around the extended firebox/ashpan and was cut and approx 5mm of extra piping soldered into the two pipes leading from the injector that head rearwards. You can still see the join just to the rear of the pip that runs up to the steam manifold.
Handrails next and them I will
I know it's me just being picky, but the cast pipework provided in the kit for the LHS of the firebox just was not good enough for me. So I took a mold off the Comet Exhaust Ejector valve from my 2-8-0 build and cast one in resin. Pipework completed from a good photo of a late fifties DoG with remnants of an old Comet detailing pack and some stripped bell wire gave this:
The RHS is not so troublesome, although I'll end up enhancing that too with more bits of wire no doubt
Not much to show really since the last update - although a lot of thought and planning has been done
here's the Caprotti gear with plasticard slivers epoxied to the backs of the lubricator castings. These will fit into the slots in the cast lubricator mounts on the chassis. The rear mounting points will be bonded to the already fabricated rear bracket.
The seconds shot shows the Hornby cylinders modified with the GA castings. The tops of the cylinders were cut away with razor saw a
Another bit of modelling required to fit the Caprotti gear to the loco drive Brit chassis. The rear motion bracket was really part of the whole weighshaft/reverser assembly so a new bracket was fabricated from plasticard as below
The cast gear is just pushed into place at the moment - final positioning will be done once the cylinders are assembled.
That front mounting bracket will need some mods too - I first thought that it lined up perfectly, but that might not be the case!
Tw
With the approaching end to the current detailing phase on the 2-8-2 thoughts have again drifted to the chassis. I have found loads of photos of Britannia on t'internet and I really want to add sandboxes between the frames and filler tubes etc.
The initial thought was to do them as Britannia with three small box covers on the footplate each side (three instead of two as the 2-8-2 has more wheels innit). However I think I know why the 9Fs have only fillers on the RHS of the loco, because of t
I was getting a little stale with all that soldering and fussing around with th chassis for the 2-8-2, so with some 20 thou' Evergreen sheet bought from Trains4U and armed with a pair of scissors, digital vernier, scriber and steel rule I copied the rear platform sheeting and cab doors from my Bachmann standard 5.
Most satisfying, the styrene sheet glued almost instantly with EMA Plastic Weld.
Driver and Fireman's seats next then handrails
EDIT:
I've just become a rivet cou
Rivetted the eccentric rod to the expansion link tonight, and much to my relief, it works
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbxUvWMP5Ck
now for the conbination lever .....
Progress at last. The Con-rods are connected to the cross-slides and cranks so the little beast has had a preliminary run in "GWR" mode
As is usual with an OO loco that needs to negotiate tighter than protypical curves much of the crank end washers have had to be filed away to provide the necessary clearance behind the cross slides. As usual I had to resolder at least one following the filing down process.
It will have a quick oiling and proper running in tonight on the rollers b
Something about the Dapol/Bachmann DP1 did not look right. Only when I put the Lima body back on it's chassis did I realise that the Dapol body was far too high, buffers were a good 2mm up on what they should be Easy job to file off the ridges on top of the Bachmann chassis.
Then I looked at the bogies, they overhung the front and the steps were 2.5mm out of line with the doors. Ideally I would have liked to have moved the bogie pivots back but this would have been an almightly job not wit
Whilst I am waiting for the bodyshell to come back I spent a pleasant evening with some wet or dry finishing off the coupling and connecting rods.
You can see the additional section added to the con-rod at the crank end to lengthen it to 47mm. This is 1mm longer than the drawing - I made up a test rod from scrap etch to the correct length which proved a tad too short for the Comet slidebars
Just the accentric link to lengthen and then I can start assembling the motion. It will be
Been a bit busy recently with kitchens and ISO courses at work, but I've finally fitted one brake hanger to the chassis and it has become apparent that once they are all fitted the wheels will not come off.
This means that the chassis will need painting before the brakes are fitted. The hangers are glued to the frames in any case to isolate them from the live chassis sides, so no real hardship. I'll continue to fabricate them whilst I make a start on the valve gear.
One step forward, two
Well, there was a bit of frantic activity on the chassis front ahead of last Saturday's Member's Day. I decided that before I go any further with the chassis I had to prove that the live outside faces of the PCB frames with pickups soldered directly on behind the wheels would work.
I'd never seen this before and frankly was a bit of a flight of fancy spurred on by the fact I have loads of spare PCB material left over from JZ sleeper panels.
First effort, straight Pb wire about 8mm long a
Well, now the chassis is basically powered and on it's drivers the time has come to think about all the bits that will fit to it!
Firstly the front bogie has been assembled and a mounting fabricated from scrap Kemilway etch (you can still see the "KEM")
Must get that nut soldered back on for the weighshaft/motion support bracket!
The boiler lower has been trimmed up and placed on the chassis.
As the lower will need to be fitted to the chassis before the bodywork I thi
Managed to get the left hand side rods soldered up last night
and here's a shot showing how they are articulated
The photos are very cruel in showing up the joins etc. They don't look this bad in real life. I will put some more work in with the files and 1000 grit before they are finished though!
I've also fitted the motor/gearbox to the chassis. There is a problem here because as designed there is no side play in the Comet gearbox or drive extender. Result is that as it st
FInally got the tender pickups done. Used a whole length of EE's 0.35mm phosphor bronze wire to give me these fancy springy coiled backscratchers
They are soldered to two bus bars made from double sided copper clad PCB material (thanks JZ for the offcuts with your sleeper panels!) These were low melt soldered to the chassis frame on the underside then the pickup springs soldered to the top.
Took a lot of fiddling and repositioning to get them right, you can't see it but the en
Some of you may have seen my questions in the main forum about rear tender footsteps on this loco. Well, a couple of evening's fiddling with 3mm brass strip and a soldering iron has given me a fair representation of said steps.
Don't worry about the roughened area around the base of the step, it's where I've glassfibred away some cyano overspill
So all that's left to do is fabricate the tool tunnel and maybe open up the corresponding hole in the tender front bulkhead. Not sure ab
Well folks, I've made a start in reality rather than just buying bits and planning. The 2-8-2 is under way
Comet tender frame soldered up and fits the Triang tender body like a dream
Keen eyes will notice the tender body has had all the moulded handrails removed and also I've removed the (damaged) lip from the top of the coal space. I'll glue 20 thou' brass strip on the top surface to sort this once the body has been stripped of all paint.
Next steps is the tender chassis whic
Over the last few days I have been putting together this for my "Missing" Standard 8F:
Basically the chinese built 5 pole tender drive was incompatible with Peco code 75 turnouts, the 3 way especially. I tried removing the centre wobbly wheels and set the b2bs to 14.4mm (which then needed the wheels shimming to maintain gear mesh!) but then I looked at the way the Crosti 9F just ran at shows without fuss and I remembered the old drive that originally came with the 9F.
It's basically
Thanks to Ramrig for the loan of a tender drive brit (so the frames I make will fit the Hornby body) I now have a "comic" for the 2-8-2 frames.
It's a hybrid of 3 different sources, the Hornby Brit chassis, the original cox drawing of the 2-8-2 and Comet's Brit frames for the better front end and cylinder mountings.
Plan is to tidy it up and glue a copy to some PCB material and cut out 3 sets, drilling the pilot holes for the axles in one go to provide a jig (the 3rd copy) for the c
I thought I'd get a quick update in before the server goes down ...
Both bodies are now blue, the Lima one is well on the way to getting it's Fox transfers applied. I'll post pics once we are on the new server.
Airbrushed the Dapol body today and I'm pretty pleased. Think it might do with another quick waft. My proper airbrush arrived today, don't think I'll be able to use it until my birthday in June though
Might get this loco done for the Nottingham Show yet
