Scrap Tank - more details
Entry posted by antyeates1983
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I've continued to add some of the never-ending bits and pieces to my Scrap Tank, and it's about time I recorded the progress. Here are sandboxes (I think that's what they are but wait to be corrected) - filed up from spare chunks of brass with a hole drilled in and a little turned cap soldered in.
And here's one soldered in place next to the smokebox:
In front of and behind the sandboxes, the tops of the locomotive frames (on the real thing) are visible above the footplate. You can just about see them in the next photo - I cut slivers of 0.25mm nickel silver and then had a fun job trying to get them to stay in the right place while soldering. It might be better to glue on these small bits, but I worry that they might then choose to come adrift at a later date.
Working in no particular order, I next tackled the details on the smokebox door. The hinge was made from a length of nickel silver wire with some thin (5 thou?) brass for the straps. I made these as a U-shape and soldered the wire on before cutting off the scrap. (I suspect I picked this up from one of Pete Wright's articles in the 2mm Magazine.) The door handle is simply a length of 0.3mm wire with a small washer (which came from an old scrap etch from a wagon kit or something). The darts are made from 2mm Scale Association handrail knobs (the newer etched variety). I think they look better than those on my Banking Tank where I used twisted bits of thin copper wire flooded with solder.
Next I turned my attention to the buffers. The type used are fortunately quite simple, being just a series of cylinders of different radii. For the Banking Tank, I made them all in one piece, but this time I opted to make two pieces. This will let me have a shorter shank "on show", and will simplify painting. This photo shows the two pieces. It's quite fun turning these up on the lathe with a thin parting tool. I made a spare to help ward off the carpet monster (who still operates even on laminate floors).
And this is what they look like when put together:
Soldering in place:
Now it's starting to look the part. The most glaring omission at this point were the cab steps. Again I took a slightly lazy option and used some spare ones from my Banking Tank etch, with a bit of judicious filing. For some inexplicable reason I had lots of spare top steps and only one bottom step. This meant that I couldn't quite fit one of them together as designed (the main hangers are a double layer with slots in the back that fit folded tabs on the steps). But hopefully it looks passable. Unfortunately, I hadn't made any allowance for attaching them to the rear of the valances, having blocked them with PCB. So I drilled and filed away slots for them to fit, allowing me to solder them to the valances - I just didn't want to risk a glued joint as they will certainly be vulnerable.
Finally for this report, something needed to be done about the cylinder covers, which still had unsightly fronts with holes in. I turned up some thin discs with spigots to cover these. Here they are before...
... and after soldering on the new discs. A bit of filler will be needed to tidy them up completely. It didn't help that the cylinder covers weren't particularly circular, but hopefully it won't look too bad once they are covered a bit by the body.
There's not too much more to do now, although there are some bits of pipework under the boiler to be added, and the handrails to be prepared (although they will be fitted after painting). I'm not going to worry about brakes for the moment. If it works well enough to use, I can try to add them later. I've painted the driving wheels and started painting the chassis, so hopefully I won't lose momentum on the project now.
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