LSWR corridor third coach - bogies
Entry posted by Barry Ten
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As mentioned in the previous entry, I promised to document the building of my next Roxey coach kit in a series of photos, so here goes.
The first thing is to have a look at the contents of the kit, in this case an LSWR corridor third. Most of what's in the box is here, except
for a few castings and bits related to the corridor connectors, which I won't be using.
The etches are excellent and well laid out, with no issues encountered in separating any of the bits from the fret.
Note the two bogie etches. I like to start with the bogies as they can be a bit repetitive to do, so good to get out of the way. In
addition, it's nice to have the bogies good to go when the rest of the coach comes together.
I separated one of the bogie etches and removed the etched washers included within the same component. I haven't
found them necessary with these kits but they're useful enough to go into the spares box.
Step one is to punch out the etched rivet detail on the bogie sides:
In this exciting action shot I'm using my new riveting tool. It's a pin-point Gibson axle in a pin-chuck, being tapped lightly with a small hammer. Crude, but it works!
The next step is to solder in top-hat bearings. I think the ones I'm using are Romfords - I bought a bulk pack of several hundred. The holes in the etch are perfecr
as they come, so no need to ream them out at all. I just tin the area around the hole with sole 145 solder, drop the bearing in, apply some more flux, then touch the
iron to the etch, adjacent to the bearing. The brass gets hot very quickly so a clothes peg comes in handy for manipulating the work.
The next step is to fold up the etch. This is easily done using a small pair of pliers - no need for specialised bending tools (yet). The etched folds can be reinforced with more 145 solder. The Roxey bogie has brake shoes built into the etch that just need folding down - fine by me and a lot quicker than the Comet ones, where the brake shoes have to be soldered in separately. I dab a bit more solder onto the brakes to reinforce the folded joint.
With the etch folded, I'm also tinning the outside (and part of the inside) in readiness for adding white metal castings. Hopefully you can see where I've smeared a layer of solder around the area where the axlebox castings will go.
Onto the axleboxes! These are invariably a pain because I've yet to find a set of castings where the hole in the back of them is deep enough to sit over the protruding bearing. The hole needs therefore to be deepened, and possibly widened, which I find to be a fiddly job. I use a drill in a motor tool, not turning too quickly or it'll heat up the casting, and then just go at it carefully. With these Roxey castings, I always seem to break through the side of one or two of the axleboxes. However, it's easily attended to with a dab of filler later on. The castings with this coach were a bit better than some of the ones in the previous two, although I still needed to drill them out. I see no reason that the holes couldn't be cast to the adequate clearance to begin with, but it seems to be a universal thing that they're undersized or not there at all!
On with the castings:
For these, we're soldering white metal to brass. Provided we've tinned the brass with normal solder. there'll be no problems. I dial my Weller soldering iron down to 6 (its maximum) to 4, and then let it cool for a minute or so. Then - using the same flux, but low-melt solder - I can solder the castings to the tinned area. A spring casting has to go behind the bogie frame on each side, and the method is the same.
A footboard has to be soldered on as well (not shown). In this case we're soldering a brass part to a white metal part but the methodology is the same - just make sure the contact area of the brass part is tinned.
Switching between high and low temperature settings makes for inefficient modelling, so once you get into the swing of it, you soon try to do as many jobs at one temperature before dialling up/down.
With the bogie completed, the appropriate wheelsets can be sprung in very easily. I prefer this to the all-white metal type of bogie where the wheels have to be trapped in the bogie as you're building it, and are then difficult to swap. I use bog-standard Hornby coach wheels, by the way. They roll really well, are affordable, and stay on the track!
Hope this has been of interest. I'll try to post another installment soon.
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