A Dunalastair 1 part 6
I made up most of the tender body and then spent a while getting things level. Set the buffer heights and shim the compensation beams so the footplates are lined through. Then place the loco and tender on the tightest curve I have ( about 48 inch radius ) and that gives me the minimum length for the tender - loco drawbar. The Caley coaches tender kit includes these, but the size I needed was between the two. Easily adjusted. I put the whole thing together and ran it up and down for a while. Tender needs a bit of weight but apart from that smooth.
It is always satisfying to see what is essentially a scratchbuild run well. But something was niggling at me. The overall look was right, but somehow the line of things was broken. I went back and looked at photos of the real thing.
It dawned on me. Cab doors. The Caley liked cab doors hinged on the tender side plates and opening out. In the shut position they covered the lower half of the cab handrail. They shut them. Looking at pictures of engines out on the mainline they are well and truly shut. Well, they would be. The ballast is a long way down and going past rather quickly. Doors are a good idea.
Ok, I then wondered how everyone else had tacked the issue. I searched, I looked, I went away. You see cab doors on tender locos are one of the modelling worlds little secrets. We ignore them, particularly in the smaller scales. I am as guilty of this as the rest, I have built tender engines and quietly ignored the gap. In rtr terms the gap is often the size of the grand canyon to get the thing round train set curves but even in more accurate layouts they seem to be quietly ignored. The problem is simple, models go round tighter curves than real trains so the door would either be too big of too small. Even with my 48” curves the door would have to shrink and expand by 3mm ish.
Time for a bit of a think. I ran the D1 and its tender up and down a while and had a tidy up of the bench. A thought struck me, the doors don’t have to shrink and expand, they just have to appear to shrink and expand from a normal viewing distance. Sliding doors in effect.
I dug out some fine brass tube, 0.8 mm od, 0.4 id. 4 sections about 20 mm long were inserted into the tender as parallel to the body as I could make them. Ok, the top two intrude into the coal space, but thats where the coal will be. 
Next I made up some doors, 10 thou brass with 10 thou spring steel wire as the runners. 
These slid into the brass tubes like so. The hooks at the front go round the lower part of the cab handrails. 
So with the tender and loco together at the biggest angle between them you get this sort of telescopic action.
The proof of the pudding is in the watching…..
I’m actually quite pleased with that. It’s probably been done before, so I wouldn’t claim to be original. Just a first for me.
Paintshop next. Might take a while.
Edited by Dave John
-
11
-
2
7 Comments
Recommended Comments
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now