jazz

She will, in fact, look more like this one when painted. Not the green with yellow lining as the previous image.

Hi Mike. Yes I love the unusual & quirky locos & rolling stock. Those beer vans are so full of charactor. Moving onto the Adams radial. I now have all the main build completed and is now ready for all those lovely brass castings. It's such a shame I have to paint the dome and chimnet, they the best brass castings I have ever seen. Ready for detailing.

Nah, it will be in the Col Stephens livery as on the EKR. Just like this:-

On with the Adams Radial. The body is not causing any problems and the etches are fitting together OK. There are no half etched location lines or slot and tabs (The cab front is the only one and you have to use that as a datum for the entire upper bodywork. The footplate curves took a lot of time to get them right and perfectly equal on both sides. A lot of teaking and set square work involved. The only problem encountered so far, the tank top beading was too short. So I made replacements for the front halves, using a cutting disk to half etch them to match the rear halves. I also added the drilled ventilation holes inner the cab front & rear. Also I made inner duplicate skins for the cab front & rear to sandwich the glazing to give a really neat finnish. This also allows the window beading to be added seperately for a neater finnish. The backhead will be attached to the inner skin and then detailed and painter before final fitting. This is it so far toaday.

It is Pete. Even after building close to 500 locos over the past few decades I still have a big buzz opening the next kit. I love the challenges each one presents. My biggest problem is packing up to go the bed.

A very busy weekend, hardly had time to sit at the WB due to the Victorian Extravagnaza & Transport Festival here in Llandudno. (I have to say the Extravagnza has evolved into just one big back to back fairground along the main street, the Transport Festival on the fields was still superb.) Back to the WB, I have put the Midland 1F to one side as i have taken delivery of my Laurie Griffin 4-4-2 Adams Radial Tank (ex Shedmaster). I could not wait to start on this baby. As Laurie states, this kit needs to be treated as an aid to scratch building only. Some of the construction is left to the builder to figure out how to build it and make the necessary parts to do that. The castings are superb. I love the cast coupling & connecting rodsand cast tapered handrails fort he cab and tank fronts. I did dispense with the cast front & rear cylinder covers to make my own riveted type as on the prototype I am copying. I decided to build this as an unsprung chassis and use the front bogie for additional pickups. (As she is four coupled this would not matter on my layout with eight wheel pickups anyway.) I made the bogie as a radial unit as on the prototype. With the trailing wheels, plus it being a longish wheel base, I decided to cutout square holes in the frames to allow making and fitting a swinging axle with limited swing to prevent the wheels touching the frames. The kit was designed to have axle bushes set into the frames as on the driving wheels. I thought that as the axle woulds have to be sprung it could easily ride over the rails on curves being such a long wheel base. I also teaked the rear end of the frames inwards 1.5mm to allow a little extra swing. The chassis will now easily negotiate just under 6' radius and Peco points. The photo will show this swinging axle and a lot of lead to weight it which also is the limiter for the swing. This works very well for traversing the crossovers on the track. The front bogie has some hefty castings, those plus lead weights means that also does not need springs. The chassi runs smoothly through the crossovers with the need to add side springs to the bogie and has very little over throw that could have caused buffer locking. Not that is a problem with the Dingham couplings I use anyway. Here are the photos of the completed chassis.

Here are the photos of the A2 ready for delivery.

Morining all. Yesterdays work on my Midland 01F progresses, also managed to complete the A2 as well. The 01 is assembling quite nicely but I am making replacement tank/bunker top beading as I feel the etched ones are way too narrow. Also adding the 'wood' reinforcement behind the buffer beam that is not addressed in the kit. Here is the work so far.

As I wrote in the post Pete, ex Oldbuy now sold by Meteor.

Hi all. Just returned from a very nice week in Scarborough. Spent a full day at the NRM too. So it's back to the bench today and primed the A2 Peppercorn. So should have the final photos on here Tuesday. Also made a start on my Midland 1F 0-6-0T. This is the ex Oldbury model now in the Meteor range. Got the chassis up and running today. This is a very simple chassis, went tgether with no problemas at all. As usual I sprung the centre axle. I used Slater's plastic brake shoes bolted to the hangers. This has allowed the shoes to be very close to wheels. I drilled out the coupling rod holes on the pillar drill and were a perfect fit first time. I wish that happened evert time! The completed chassis.

Geoff has asked the build to be in late period and the photo he sent for the build shows the BR totem in 1966, so I guess that is how she will be painted.

Thanks Pete. The build is finished, at last. The balance weights will be added when I paint the chassis. It took a number of days but there in the end. I will not be priming it for a few days, I have a small tank loco I want to build first. Here she is in all her glory. Not an Eastern fan but I am impressed with this prototype.

Ha! i've not been putting in the hours at the WB I usually do. To many distractions, garden, new camcorder, noew large TV and sat set up, all taking time to learn and sort. Anyway a good says work today. Almost there and ready for the usual good clean up of unwanted solder ect. It's gone together vey well. Very little fettling to get parts to sit right. Here she so far.

A good days work on the A2 today. A fair bit of time spent getting the boiler/smokebox units to sit abssolutely square. The firebox/boiler/smoke box are all bolt together, a nice strog unit results. The frames are quite flimsy between the firebox and smokebox. adding the cast brass sandbox fillers soon make the whole unit nice and solid. Now at the stage of detailing it all. That will be a time consuming job. This is here so far.

Back at the bench after a couple of days gallavanting celebrating my wifes birthday. (A very nice sunny day spent on Angelsey yesterday) Anyway cracking on with the body on the A2. Going together extremely well. A huge help is the location slot & tabs, alignment etchings abound. No guess work for anything. Close of the day photo.

Not in the least Pete. If you use the centre driver it means cutting into the boiler and on a lot of models that means you see an ugly motor/gearbox. The trick is, like in boat building, use lead weight to perfectly balance the model over the centre drivers. It is rare that you can use the centre drivers for the motor except on tank locos and even then it's mostly best to use the rear axle to have the motor in the firebox.

Back again. Had to break offt o paint the garden fencing uuurrrggghhhh!! The chassis is as far as I can go untiol painted. The valve gear assembled with little problem, just a bit fiddly really. I did my usual springing on the centre driver. The motor will mount on the rear driver and face to the rear. Here it is so far.

Hi Hope y'all had a great Easter. Grabbed a few hours at the WB building the A2 chassis. All going very nicely so far. Now for the cylinders & valve gear. That should keep me quiet for an hour or two B)

All but finished. Just the axle box castings & buffers to fit and shorten the guard irons. Then a complete clean & polish in prep for priming. This was quite a time consuming tender, two and a half days and just not quite finished. I some don't think the business end of this loco will be done in the same time B)

:icon_thumbsup2: right on Jonathan. Love to see the L1 as it progresses. Ken

Quite a lot of hidden work to get to this stage, lots of laminations and supports that were quite time consuming.

Not all Rob. Very nice painting, your wife is very talented.

My ONLY experience of Ace Kits is the J52. That was a lovely kit to build.

LNER man & don't fancy a one of the pacifics??????????? Tell what Jonathan, I wish I had an excuse his his rebuilt merchant navy class, that is one impressive machine. (Maybe one day for the mantle piece :icon_drool: )