Leaderboard

The roof detail goes on... Choice of Prototype So far I hadn't really done anything that had limited the choice of loco that I could build, but on reaching the roof that was about to change because this is one place where there were lots of variations. The pilot scheme locos D6300-6305 were ruled out because they had a different layout for the louvres and doors on the sides and would need a different body etch. They also had a much simpler roof layout than the production series locos. The roof detail differences appear on the train heating boiler roof (that's the roof at the end of the loco that has the little door high on the side for filling the boiler tanks from water columns). There seem to be two small raised panels on the exhaust side of the loco. Earlier production locos tend to have a grille opening in the upper of these panels. Later locos have the opening on the lower panel. The obvious conclusion would be to say that this variation depends on the boiler type - the books say that D6306-6325 had Clayton boilers and D6326 onwards had Vapor boilers. The snag is that the photos don't quite match this theory - D6326 has the grille opening in the upper panel and the switch to the lower panel happens from D6327 onwards. Dapol seem to have made their opening cover both of the panels. For a while I thought that this was wrong, but inevitably I found a photo of D6311 that shows otherwise… http://www.flickr.co...941510/sizes/o/ Later locos (D6329 onwards?) also have an extra opening on the opposite side of the boiler roof. To complicate matters further many locos had one or both of these openings plated over later in life. Possibly the boilers were isolated although I don't think I can remember seeing any sources that actually say so. I also wanted to avoid having to reproduce the 'eyebrow' vents over the windscreens on some locos. These almost follow a pattern - D6300-D6312 have them D6314 onwards don't. I think that D6313 didn't have them but the only photo I've seen is not 100% clear. The fly in the ointment is D6333 which also has the eyebrow vents. Quite why this happened is a mystery to me. Like I said in another posting, class 22 variations are a minefield. As ever, the story boils down to the fact that you need one or two decent roof photos of your chosen prototype at your chosen period to be sure that you've got it right. So which one did I pick? As I said in Part 1, I wanted a green loco. My initial choice (in spite of eyebrows) was to go for D6309 because there is a very nice 1969 photo of it at St Blazey on John Chalcraft's site at… http://www.railphoto...-RP175.jpg.html I couldn't find any decent roof photos of D6309 so in the end I picked another green loco with no eyebrows which was known to frequent Plymouth and Cornwall - D6323. I have 3 photos of this which show the roof detail clearly. All of them are fairly distant and I don't have a really good close-up photo. One of them is here… http://classictracti.../class-22s.html ... still if a photo of the roof of D6309 in the last few years of its life does materialise, I still might go back to that one... eyebrows and all. The Roof I was originally intending to use the roof overlay provided in the kit but the more I looked at it the less happy I was with it. It correctly shows that the main grille is off-centre but I feel that the grille is too far off the centre line and loo large. I wasn't happy with the position or sizes of some of the other features either. I decided instead to make my own overlay from scratch using 5 thou nickel silver. This is half the thickness of the one in the kit, so should be better in appearance on that score as well. I sketched out the features of the roof and then marked the whole thing out on the nickel silver sheet. After cutting it out and making the exhaust and fan grille holes I formed the curve (around the solder sucker again) tried it on the loco. The fan grille opening was in completely the wrong place because I'd made a mistake in my measurements somewhere along the line. Darn. I scrapped the first roof and went back to the drawing board (or rather CAD) and did a proper drawing of the roof features. I was then able to print this out and try the paper roof on the loco to check that everything was in the right place. Of course I should have done this in the first place. I often spend way too long researching and planning instead of getting on with the job but on this occasion I cut metal in haste and repented at leisure. Once I was happy with the paper roof I marked out the second attempt at the overlay onto the nickel silver and I cut out the overlay. I then offered it up to the main roof and marked the position of the grille opening onto the roof. This was then cut out 1mm oversize to avoid having a 15 thou edge showing and so that I could attach things directly to the underside of the overlay behind the opening. The photos below show the roof overlay in place, the CAD drawing and my failed first attempt. ... plus a comparison between my CAD drawing and the interpretation of the roof in the kit The fan grille is something that has been giving me some cause for thought. The easy option would be to take one of the spare grilles from the kit and attach it behind the opening in the overlay. At the moment, however my plan is a bit more ambitious - I intend to model the four walkway strengthening ribs which are visible in photos and to model the cooling fan beneath these. I don't have anything suitable for the grille itself, so I'm going to try leaving it off and see what the result looks like. I'm intending to glue everything together in this area so that I have the option to change things if it doesn't work out. To make the walkway ribs I blu-tacked a couple of pieces of nickel silver strip to some wood so that they were parallel with a gap of just over 8mm between them. These were then fluxed and tinned. A piece of Eileen's 0.45mm brass wire was then soldered across them and snipped off with wire cutters. I then used a 0.75mm drill to space the next rib from the first, held everything in place (with my fingers), applied flux and quickly soldered each end in place. I managed to successfully repeat this process twice more so that I had four parallel ribs. I think that holding things with fingers helped here because it made me really careful not to dwell too long with the iron… and as a bonus I didn't burn myself either. The excess wire was then trimmed and filed off and the whole thing laid wire-side down onto a file and given a rub to flatten the top surface of the ribs. The photo below shows the finished walkway. The extra panel on the roof of the engine room was the next job - this was marked out on 5 thou sheet and a small hole drilled to start the vent opening. Photos show a distinct 'lip' around this. My original plan was to use one of the small grilles from the kit but I think these are too big. I was thinking about making a lip with 5 amp fuse wire but then a much easier answer presented itself. I started using a tapered reamer to open out the hole and noticed the lip that it was raising on the reverse side. I filed this off and started reaming from the back of the hole instead. Once the hole had reached 2mm I then cleaned up the lip but left some in place. This left a nice subtle lip that I don't think I could have made any other way. Finally I cut out the small extra panel for the boiler roof. I'd picked a loco that had all of the boiler roof openings blanked by the late 60s so I didn't have any holes to worry about. The photo below shows all of the roof detail temporarily in place on the model. I will fix it properly later on when it is less likely to get damaged.

I really must find a taller driver Cabbing it A few weeks ago I decided to try to do something about the void that is the interior of the cabs. Normally, once the bodyshell is attached with the glazing, not much is visible, but I think that some resemblance of the bulkheads would be good to have. Then whilst browsing a well know auction site one evening I found a photograph of some 7mm Deltic cab detailing components for sale… and this formed the basis for my idea. I de-bodied one of my earlier deltics (55008) which with the 21-pin chassis and lights has a rear cab bulkhead… and whilst the accuracy of this is somewhat questionable, I knew that it fitted well, so the shape could be a template. I cut a similar shape from thin plasticard, and added a second layer to give more strength as a laminate. I then cut out and attached a thicker centre section to represent the cabinet section… onto which representations of the cabinet doors were added, plus a few other details all in plasticard. The doors into the engine room were etched into the plastic and holes drilled to represent the windows. Short sections of tube were added and filed/drilled to represent the window surrounds. The base of this was shaped to sit over the bogie spigot housing and flat sections fitted into the bottom upon which the bulkhead would stand. Small chamfered sections reinforce the attachment. Forward bulkhead sections were crafted in the same way and attached to the front of the flat sections… and finally the representation of a folded curtain added to the bulkhead behind the driver… made from a plasticard strip scored and cut and bent to represent the curtain folds… it’ll do! It’ll need a little trimming to ensure a good fit and allow the body to sit properly on the chassis, but my intent is to leave these a tight-ish fit so that they can be lifted out when the body is removed, to allow better access to the bogie spigot screws in case these need to come off again. Picking my bogies’ details I then started on the bogies. The first challenge was to source some better brake cylinders. Much has been mentioned of the moulded offerings on these and the class 37 bogies and they really could be better. The option I plumped for was to source some Hornby class 50 bogies (Abbiegails) and use the cylinders off those. These are easily removed, just carefully prised away from their bogie sides with a sharp blade and put away for safety. Unfortunately, I found that I’d need three class 50 bogies to cover two class 55 bogies (!) The front cylinder on the class 50 is buried inside the bogie step and therefore not useable; now my Illustrious needs some more cylinders! To remove those on the class 55 bogie takes a steady hand and very sharp blade. I didn’t enjoy this task as the plastic is quite soft and doesn’t take to being sanded very well… the sharp blade won through in the end though. I then also drilled out the brake actuator lever slot… which is quite shallow on the Bachmann bogie: Drilled out with a 0.6mm drill and carefully filed with the point of a needle file to shape. Eventually these were back filled with a slither of plasticard attached to the back face. To fit the cylinders, realising that glue may not hold to this plastic well, I drilled a 0.65mm hole to accept the front spigot of the brake cylinder (having cut the other one off)… enabling a tight fit that the glue would secure well. I attacked the front of the bogie, removing the moulded nudge bars and re-profiling the front of the cast frame to allow the fitting of the etched towing brackets. Finally, the class 50 bogies relinquished their nudge bars and these were slightly reshaped and glued into the front slots on the bogie face. I’d almost be persuaded to consider some steel T section to bend into shape and attach for these… but the difficulty I had plasticising this on a bit of flat steel led me to decide that this may be too tricky to try with my limited skills… and whilst I thank those that offered their advice, I opted for the easier route and used the plastic ones… which are (at least) far better in positioning than the Bachmann moulded offerings… although they won’t be as robust so some care will be needed. Chris Pendleton’s sprung class 55 bogies (MRJ##) are excellent… but this is several steps away from what my meagre skills will be able to emulate. Still, there’s always weathering to distract the viewer and thereby hide various imperfections ;-) To finish off the brake cylinders, the hydraulic pipework needs to be represented. For this I drilled a 0.35mm hole into the front face of each cylinder… near the inside edge, and inserted some 0.25mm steel wire. Once the cylinders were installed, these wires were bent to shape and secured on the inside face of the bogies with glue… once painted, I think that these will look ok. Finally, 0.4mm holes were drilled inside the web pieces to accept a bit of bent (hook shaped) wire to represent the bogie attachment hooks. These were shaped as for the body hooks and glued in place from behind as before. More body surgery After a little constructive criticism was levied (thanks DMH… honest!) I set about removing the moulded cab handrails with a thin sharp blade (Swann Morton No.11)… sanding the final mouldings off and replacing these with 0.4mm wire secured into 0.4mm holes drilled into the cab sides. This latter part was quite tricky, and whilst the results may look ok once painted, it wasn’t as easy as I’d expected; perhaps I was tired! Thanks to Brian Hanson’s fotopic pages, some new images identified the windscreen washer jets, which aren’t always obvious in most photos. These were made from short lengths of 0.6mm brass wire with the ends filed to a slight angle… glued into 0.6mm holes drilled in the rear of the bonnet tops. I’d considered making these from short tube sections (as they are in real life)... but in 4mm this was a bit of an ask, maybe in 7mm it could be done. One day, maybe…. No Jon don’t even consider it! The wife will not be impressed!!! I then dropped the bogie height a little more… removing a little more material on the top of the tower pieces… shaving a little off the top of the securing crews as well… This is as low as they’re going to go now… so it’ll have to do. Finally, the brake levers were fitted into the pre-drilled holes and I fabricated the bogie steps, adding plasticard brackets to attach them to the bogies (something to add Brian?) The kickplate for the speedo-fitted bogie was made from plasticard, and steel section was used for the brackets. The speedo pickup and cabling still needs to be fabricated and the mileage recorder… I also need to contemplate the sanding pipes. First thoughts were to hollow out a 0.8mm diameter rod, progressively up to a final clearance with a 0.6mm drill, to accept the elastic (thanks to James H) that will represent the pipe. The plastic rod (about 5mm length) will be attached to the brake hangers, using a short piece of plastic strip to angle it down towards the wheel/rail interface. That’s the plan, we’ll see how that goes and photos will follow. I’ll then move on to the fuel tanks – do not be alarmed…. be afraid, be very afraid! Let’s see how brave I’m feeling! P4 musings On a separate note, I recently browsed and printed off some of the “getting started†pages on the Scalefour website (www.scalefour.org), and then found time to sit and read these whilst eldest was having his swimming lesson. I’d made the decision some months ago for this Deltic to be P4… and have equipped it with some fine ultrascale wheels… but that’s as far as I’d got. I will get some C&L bullhead sleepers… to fit the rails I originally bought as complete OO track that went on my photoplank…. I had two lengths spare, so I may as well reuse these… or just get some more complete track. However, whilst that’ll do to sit the loco on… it will have no real operational use; it’ll be for display only. The idea of constructing my own turnouts was causing me some sole searching… yes it was the right thing to do for realism… but was it really something I could achieve? I have to admit that the article in Model rail this month did little to allay my concerns… but then I read the Scalefour stuff and whilst this might have simplified the process… I was left with the feeling of “of that’s all right then†and the impression that it’s possibly not as bad as I thought. Therefore, to the authors of these papers I am grateful for the explanations and to scalefour for providing this information on their website. I need to work out which turnouts I’d want to use (the alpha numeric designations are something I think I understand… but I just need a common reference to work from)… I’ll be looking to shunt some long CO-CO diesels, so I’d want to avoid the short turnouts, but don’t need the long turnouts for main lines… my locos will be restricted in the degree of bogie rotation due to the brake levers and bogie attachment links, but I expect that there should still be something to suit. I suspect that I should look to join scalefour and possibly seek-out my local AG for some sane advice… but I’d be grateful for any comments in the meantime. Thanks for reading… that’s all from this Deltic fan for now… just now looking forward to savouring the howl of 800 miles of twin Napier Haulage in three weeks time on the ECML!

To change to 2mm FS would be a major leap for you - and probably require a complete change in philosophy. It seems to me that very few people in 2FS have built a substantial number of locos - and those that have will be mainly conversions of N gauge items. Conversion wheelsets are available for Farish diesels and DMUs, but not yet for steam locos, so even a steam loco conversion is quite a challenge. There are a few etched chassis kits and a small number of complete kits available, but these by no means cover the range of locos most people would want. If you want to scratchbuild locos, then remember that 2mm components are not cheap. By the time you have paid for wheels, gears, motor and other accessories you are fast approaching the cost of some of the N gauge RTR locos. Add to that the time and cost of all the other things you will need like track jigs, rail, easitrack sleepers, replacement wheels for your rolling stock etc. plus all the extra time involved - and the decision of moving to 2mm scale becomes a very serious issue. You also need to consider that 2mm layouts generally run on much wider radius curves than N gauge, so you may get far less in the same space. Do at least seriously consider the alternatives. If an N gauge loco has the right wheels for your scratchbuilt locos, buying the loco for its wheel, gears and motor might well end up cheaper and quicker than going over to 2mm scale ( especially when all the other costs and conversions are taken into account). As an alternative, I have heard of one or two people using 2mm FS wheels on N gauge track by adding a thin washer to the backs of the wheels to bring the flanges up to the same thickness as on Farish wheels. When done properly, a 2mm FS layout and stock will look nicer than an N gauge layout - especially when looked at closely. In theory, having all the components available means that you can build pretty well anything you want. The extra work involved and cost are a major issue though. To my knowledge, (though I would be happy to be corrected if I am wrong), very few individual 2mm modellers have ever produced more than a very small number of scratch-built or converted steam locos - and I suspect all but a few do little more than convert RTR diesels and rolling stock, if anything at all. There are few large, complex 2mm FS layouts - and those that have been built are almost all group efforts. If you do convert to 2mm FS you will almost certainly end up drastically limiting your ambitions. A fairly small fleet of locos and a relatively unambitious layout are the very most that you are ever likely to achieve - at least unless your determination and energy is exceptionally high. Another alternative would be to completely separate your scratchbuilding activity from your layout. If you want to scratchbuild a loco, then why not try a larger scale? There are many more components available in 4mm scale, for example.

Go for it...give it a try and if it's not for you, at least you will have explored another option to get the rolling stock you are after.

Hi Martin, Tanks are starting to look good... Will have to point Rodders to the thread. Tank Walkways..... To make them more secure to the tank I add an extended leg to each of the tank supports. This is then fitted into holes drilled into the tank to make the whole thing a lot more 'Exhibition Proof'. Once you get the filler into the hole with the brass and smooth it off - you cannot see that this has been done. Then the paint job covers it as well! Thanks

Fitting the Cabs To recap from the previous installment... I think that the cab sides need to taper slightly inwards from the doors to the nose, but the kit seems to assume that this doesn't happen. I took some dividers and marked 0.5mm in from the widest part of the nose ends. I filed down to these marks and then continued the filing down to the buffer beam level, checking with a square that the edge was truly vertical. The photo below shows a modified end compared with the original still on the fret. I cleaned out the handrail/location holes with a 0.3mm drill and put some fine steel wire into place. I then added three of the four backing pieces. I had other ideas for number 4 but in the end leaving it off seems to have been the right thing to do. I then filed down the three backing pieces to match the reduced with of the nose end and cleaned up any etching cusps on the top. This is also a good time to file the curve on the top of the nose end. Here is a handy photo as a rough guide to the correct radius. http://www.flickr.co...N02/2366710181/ Next I bent the cab sides inwards slightly, checking against a ruler laid against the main sides to ensure that I bent both by the same amount. Ideally the cab sides should just grip the reduced width nose end. Having done this it was time to solder the nose end into place - after very carefully aligning it with the sides and checking to ensure that no twist is creeping in. Once the nose end was attached and thoroughly checked for position, I soldered on a couple of pieces of plain rail (or 20 by 40 thou strip if you prefer) to reinforce the inside of the corners given that I was about to attack the outside of the joint with a file. The next step was to file the radius on the vertical joint between the nose and cab sides. I haven't quite decided whether this radius is the same as that along the top of the nose or whether it was larger. Mine has roughly the same radius, perhaps a little more. Throughout the previous steps I had been wondering what effect my changes would have on the fit of the cab windscreen surrounds. I reckon that these were intended to fit between the sides but I tried matching mine up to the ends of the sides after first forming them into a shallow (about 2mm) vee shape. Fitting them this way partly compensates for the reduction in width but I was expecting to get some overlap and possibly need to cut a piece out of the lower edge of the frames. In the end the alignment turned out a lot better than I had dared to hope. Given the choice of having a 10 thou edge showing at the front of the cab or ahead of the side windows I would go for the latter anyway (I guess I could have bevelled them if I was really being fussy). At this stage I also formed the cab roof to shape and tried it in place. All was not well because the windscreen surrounds were sitting atop the side sheets of the nose and pushing the roof up resulting in a 0.5mm gap between the roof and the top of the side windows. My solution was to take the windscreen surrounds and carefully file away some of the bottom corner. Measuring using the calipers from inside the windscreen to outside the corner I got 1.5mm before attacking them. I think I reduced this to about half of its previous width. I then tried everything in place again and was amazed to see that the cab roof fitted really well and that the windscreens appeared to 'sit' nice and low on top of the nose - just like the prototype. Next I soldered the windscreen surrounds into position followed by the roof. I also found that the centre pillar of the windscreens was just touching the number 3 backing piece of the nose - so I was glad that I left out number 4 and soldered the two things together where they touched. Of course there is still a gap between most of the windscreen surround and the number 3 backing piece which will need to be filled (another day). I then soldered the cab roof into place. After this there was a step of about 0.5mm down from the main roof to the cab roof which is not prototypical. I will tidy this up with Milliput once the soldering is all done. The big task that I now had was blending the cab roof into the windscreen surrounds. To start with I had a pretty big gap between the two (see photo below) and the roof was overhanging the cab front slightly. I started by filing the front edge of the roof until the overhang was gone. Then I soldered a suitable size of fuse wire on the inside of the joint to fill the worst of the gap. A few extra touches with the soldering iron plus plenty of solder and green label flux eliminated the remaining gaps. It was then just a matter of filing down the roof and various fillers until I achieved what appeared to be the correct transition between the roof and front. It's difficult to describe this in words, but it might help to say that the transition ends at the top of the windscreen surround etching. Basically you need to look at lots of photos and get a feel for the three dimensional curves yourself. The final filing job is probably the trickiest - the top of the nose ends in quite a sharp corner where it joins the sides. This is not prototypical and needs to be blended in, requiring quite a lot of metal to be removed. I used a flat file with a safe edge (i.e. an edge with no teeth) against the windscreen surround to do most of this work, keeping the file parallel to the angle of the windscreen. Blending all of the curves around the edges of the nose together is the final step in the shaping process. The photo below shows this job in progress - the corner on the right has been done but the one on the left has not yet been touched. To finish off, I went back over some of the etched lines with a sharp knife and scraper to remove any surplus solder that had crept in to spoil Mr Doherty's hard work. In the next installment I will start on the roof... where again I've departed from the kit in a pretty major way.