PhilMortimer

My parrot can! - She'd make a marine blush!

And to be fair, it was mentioned by Dapol some time Back (in the mists of time) that the model was being retooled. At the end of the day, they want to sell models and are not holding things up for the hell of it. It's sometimes hard to go back and redo things, but if it results in a better product (and a product that sells and keeps on selling), we are all the better for it. I respect the decision that was taken, as I'm sure it was a hard one. Dapol will have a lot of money tied up in the development of this model and the greater the development time, the longer it is before that money can be realized in sales. So I'm sure they want it out the door and bringing in cash. But one can just imagine the howling that would result if the model was released with known faults. Yes, communication could be better at times, but the world is not going to end if its delayed.

Look, you made a mistake. it happens. But don't blame the manufacturer. They are first and foremost a supplier of complete loco's, not components. Whilst they may have some spare components to hand for various reasons that they MAY be able to supply, it has been explained why they don't keep full bodies on hand. As has been explained by others above, yes, Bachmann may be able to supply bodies (at a significant cost), but most manufacturers don't. Some manufacturers may have some bodies available as a result of cannibalizing returned spares, but most don't or won't because it cost extra to produce and stock them. Keeping banging on about it does not make them a bad manufacturer, it is just their particular business model. Harking on about it, especially in the face of overwhelming alternative wisdom, just makes you sound petulant and annoying and uses up any goodwill that may have been there.

Actually 1953 in Washington. A couple of days before Eisenhower's inaugurations. Loco 4873 I believe - went through the bumper and ended up in the basement - later retrieved in bits and put back together again. It is now preserved at the B&O museum in Baltimore, though in rough condition.

Interesting! I now live about 5 miles form the new store. It used to be a great place to go and I did some exhibitions of my kit build stock there. (Kit building of loco's and stock being rare in North America). Unfortunately, it went mainly online and the showroom dissapeared and i haven't been there since before covid.

As noted above, it was reported last week on these pages that the 2nd batch had just been received at the warehouse, but that shipping would not be commencing until early this week due to travel / show commitments that had already been made before the shipment was released / arrived. And that stock would need to be counted in and checked.

I would be considering if placing the tender on teh track is somehow causing a short circuit or partial short (i.e. a short with a high resiststance) to develop, hence why things are not working as well when the tender wheels are in contact with the track. First thing I would do would be to contact Accurascale Warranty dept, giving all the information (and video if you have it) - they will be in the best place to help you. But for self investigation, I believe (and would have to check) that the tender has pickups. Therefore I would look to see if ther is an obvious short somewhere or if there is some wiring or solder assembly that isn't quite right in the tender, allowing a short to develop when tender wheels are connected to the track. PM

Ooooo!! Living dangerously!

Think of the size (and weight) of the box containing a model of one of those - that would get the delivery guy or gal puffing as they lug it up the path - no lobbing that over the garden gate!

I use household tin foil (or Aluminium foil) instead of fag paper. Solder doesn't stick well to tin / ally foil. Same principle otherwise though, just doesn't go soggy with flux. You can easily pre-pierce the foil for the pin without it tearing. (OK, you can do the same with paper, but I find it doesn't work as well). Along with use of grease / vaseline and / or marker pin, should keep those parts that should not be soldered from becoming so.

I have one of those exact same tool cases here at home in the US. Very useful for organizing tools and sturdy enough to pick up and lug around if needed. Just make sure the catches are fully closed before lifting the thing. Ask me how I know. Stored all my modeling tools nicely and easily find what I’m looking for. But then I acquired more tools so I now have two more of the same type - now I need to look through each cabinet to fine the appropriate required tool. Oh well……

Very Nice! As I remember them when I was growing up! PM

Love walking my parents dogs down on the water meadows down there. Often see the trains go by. Can hear them coming down the valley long before you can see them from Amberley or from Arundel in the other direction. Also, up on the top of the ridge at Burpham

I’d be interested in doing it if no one else will. Only problem is that I’m in North America and you may not want to subject it to a trans-Atlantic round trip (though I will be in UK for the next few weeks.). PM if interested.

Very nice Peter. Whoever ends up as the new owner will be a very lucky person. Regards, PM

I have to say that since I delivered the Red Garratt and returned back home, my mojo has been distinctly lacking. Maybe the final push to get the red Garratt finished for delivery was more stressful than I realised, or maybe visiting family and then getting back to work took it out of me, or maybe the thought of weathering the thing was not something I relished. Probably a combination of all of the above. However, I've been lacksadaisical about getting on with finishing my own Blue Garratt. Maybe I just needed a break from the darned thing!. Anyhow, over the past couple of weeks I've come back to it and progress is starting to be made again. First, it was time to seal the boiler and glue the smokebox door in place. This gives the loco its distinctive face. The loco was secured with the boiler in the vertical position and the smokebox door glued into position with 5 min epoxy. You have to take care when doing this as the aperture in the smokebox front is just fractionally smaller than the smokebox door and so careful positioning is required. The loco was left like this for 24 hrs for the epoxy to fully cure. I then started to weather the boiler unit, using the same technique as used on the Red Garratt. This is the technique described by Giles Flavel when painting and weathering his own loco as described in his own build thread and his thread on weathering locos. He also describes it in his article describing the build in NG&IRM Review issue 103. Anyhow, in brief, it involves rubbing down all the paintwork to get a really smooth surface. I use a combination of 2000 grit wet and dry, used wet, followed by polishing and buffing with ordinary kitchen towel. The loco paintwork is then brushed with small amounts of water soluble lamp black oil paint along cracks, panel lines, rivet lines, etc, immediately followed by wiping off most of the paint with a damp kitchen towel in the vertical direction. This stains the base paint and leaves residual black paint around raised detail, in the same way that washes do. It usually takes me a number of repeated applications and wipe downs to build up a convincing effect. The whole process can be quite time consuming to do (hence my reluctance to get started on it!) and for the boiler unit it required one complete evenings work to rub down the paint work to smoothness, followed by two or three evenings work applying the actual weathering. However, the result is that the oil paint darkens and "ages " the base colour. I can't claim any credit for the technique - I just followed the directions given in Giles's articles, but it does look very convincing. Because this loco was painted with a darker satin paint (unlike the Red Garratt, which was painted with a brighter gloss paint), I did first experiment on a couple of test articles painted in the same manner as the Blue loco, to ensure that the weathering would work without screwing up the paint job. The satin paint requires a bit more preparation, but with patience does yield a similar result to that seen on the first loco, though it is not quite as obvious due to the darker tone of the base paint colour. I still need to weather the frames and the footplating (for which I will also add in some burnt umber in the same manner), but I want to let the staining already applied to the blue paint fully dry and harden for a couple of weeks before I tackle that in order to reduce the likelihood of any staining being rubbed off by handling during the process. In the meantime, the tank and bunker are up for the rubbing down and staining treatment this week. Its difficult to see the difference between the weathered boiler unit and the untouched bunker and tanks in the above photo, since the effect is subtle and the dark blue base colour hides the effect more. However, since the sun finally came out tonight, I took the loco out into the garden to get some "in progress" portrait pictures. These are seen below and the difference between the the weathered and non weathered parts is more apparent. In the meantime, I've ordered some parts for the next loco to be built and I'm enjoying some time with the "hot stick" working on some of my part completed OO9 locos to give me a break from painting and weathering (I prefer building!) To be continued...........

Well, I lied. I had to add two more details to the red garratt before it was finished. The cab glazing and a small handle for the top of the reverser lubricator. These are show below. (Not great Pictures) The loco then undertook one final test using its nearly completed sister as a dead load. Before being posed with its sister prior to shipment to the UK. This is the last time these two loco's will likely be together and it has been a long journey for the pair of them. The loco was then dismantled into its components and prepared for shipment to the UK. I had to go back to the UK for a visit for family reasons and elected to hand carry the loco with me and hand deliver it to the customer during the trip. I decided to strip it down to its major components and reassemble in the UK to avoid stressing the pivots. Fortunately, it was not damaged in transit apart from one lamp iron on the rear bunker being knocked off. Nor was it taken away from me and destroyed at security, though it did elucidate some nice responses from the TSA security X-Ray guys at Dulles airport! ("Nice Choo Choo!") Upon arrival in the UK, the loco was reassembled and then transported to south Staffordshire for hand over. Here it is with John, who was very pleased with it. He remembers seeing the real thing going past his bedroom window as a boy. A Happy owner! And I got a Steak and kidney pie out of it after delivery! I'm very pleased with the way this one turned out. It was a struggle, but I think its one I can be proud off. As an aside, whilst delivering the loco, I looked out of John's railway room window and remarked on an unusual feature of the countryside. John tells me its the Fauld Crater - the legacy of an underground explosion at the RAF Fauld underground ammunition store, where between 3500 and 4000 tons of munitions stored underground in the gypsum mine blew up in 1944. Apparently it was one of the biggest non-nuclear explosions to have occurred and the biggest explosion to have occurred on UK soil. At least 70 people died (possibly more) and there is still un-exploded munitions down there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAF_Fauld_explosion On the blue loco, one thing that came to light when dissasembling and reassembling the delivered loco was that the wires on the boiler unit that link the front and rear units together electrically were shorter than optimal. So on my own loco, I removed the ones previously installed and replaced them with longer ones. This will make assembling the completed loco easier. Picture shown below during installation. Now I'm back home, time to carry on with my own loco and get this one finished, as I want to move on to other things!

It’s been there for about 3 weeks now. They’re just commencing unloading the containers to lighten the ship.

Thank You. Yes, but I am building two of them. Which means four working chassis, each complete with a full set of Walschaerts above gear and motion. And there was a lot of kit modifications. Usually I am much faster at kit building, but these have been a real grind to do! Also, to be honest, I find the painting takes longer than the building (assuming the kit goes together well), as I don't have good painting facilities. (I haven't ever really mastered acrylic paints and my wife is very susceptible to enamel fumes). So I have to spray out doors, which means that the weather and large seasonal temperature variations limit the amount of time I have available to paint models.

I think I’m going to call time on the first loco - it is done. I could keep tinkering with it for ever, but it is time to pull stumps and get it out the door to its owner. Below are some pictures of the completed painted and weathered Sneyd garratt for your enjoyment. Please note that the roof is still loose in these pictures at the request of the owner. It has been by no means an easy build, but something of a challenge, which has made for a very long build. Not helped by making two of the blasted things simultaneously! However in the end I think the final completed loco is a good model. I will be in two minds when it leaves. Certainly, I will be sad to see it go as I have invested a lot of myself in it, but I will be glad to get it off the bench and move on to something else. I now need to investigate a means of packing it up so that I can get it to the UK safely without it being destroyed in transit. One final thing. I have really appreciated the work that others did before me, in particular Giles Flavell and Phil Parker, along with all the useful pictures that Phil P has posted on the web of the surviving extant loco. Building a model of a loco that is half a world away is not easy and without access to the documented work of those who came before me, the treasure trove of pictures of the real thing, and the encouragement of others (in particular Simon Dobson and the late David L O Smith), this model would not have come out as well as it has. So Thank You to all who commented, encouraged and critiqued this build. It was extremely beneficial. And so to the pictures! And I make no apologies that there are a few of them! Right, now to finish up the blue one! PM Edit - I just remembered that I still need to build the extra tool box that was added to the front power unit at some stage in the loco's life. I agreed with the owner that this will be made, painted and despatched later. I need to study some photo's and draw up the plans before cutting brass. But at least I can test fit it against my own loco during the build.

Finally! I think we are getting to the point where we are done with the first of these locos! Over the past few weeks, the loco has been weathered. I’ve done it to represent it being in a used, but well maintained state. It is certainly not as filthy as the real thing is seen in many pictures, but if you wish to take it further, it will form a nice base to improve on. The weathering was done using Giles Falvells’ technique where the paint was rubbed down with fine wet-and-dry (applied wet) to smooth off the paint, then over pained with water soluble oil paint (sooty black and burnt umber), which was then wiped off with damp paper towel, in the vertical direction. This leaves a streaking effect and stains the red paint, aging it. Hopefully it will be seen to full effect in the final portrait shots. This weathering took a while, but I’m happy with the way it come out. Following that, the final details have been added. The picture below shows the safety valves and mechanical lubricators being painted. To do that I temporarily stuck these to some brass strip using UHU glue, and then brush painted them black after spray priming them. After painting, the castings were knocked off the brass backing strip ready for fitting, The whitemetal castings for the lubricators needed some tidying up on the mill to get nice crisp surfaces. Also show are the lubricator hand wheels that were fitted once the lubricators were installed. These were made with some random castings that I had around to which I soldered nickle silver rods. The handwheels will be blackened after fitting. The safety vales were painted a gunmetal colour and have been glued into place. The next three pictures show the cab steam pressure gauge. Only one casting was supplied for these (I need two, as I have two locos to build!), so I used the supplied casting on the first loco (to finish it quicker!) and fabricated one for mine (on the right), which i think looks better. In the cab, no one will really notice them, but I know they are there. The dial face is a piece of card punched out of a business card with a leather punch and the needle and graduations are just pencil marks on the dial face. The dial faces were glued into the casting and some clear glue dropped over the top to seal the dial face and form the glass dial front. The second and third pictures show the steam pressure gauge in position on the cab front sheet – I think it quite effective. Also seen in the last picture on the extreme left is the hand brake handle. The handbrake mechanism has now been fitted and actually rotates, but is a bit fragile so I would be wary of working it too much! There is a very prominent steam valve on the RHS of the boiler. This can be seen in pictures of the real loco and also on the photos of the surviving loco of the class, “William Francis”, as seen in this photo from Phil Parkers photostream shown here. I believe it is the shutoff valve for the steam supply to the power reverser mechanism. No casting is present in the kit, so I ended up making one from scratch. The valve and associated piping is shown temporarily in position in the first picture (minus the valve handle) and with the valve handle in the second one. The valve was fabricated from some brass rod, wire and small diameter brass balls and the flange is a steel washer from Alan Gibson that was lying around. The third and fourth pictures show the valve and piping painted up (again in gunmetal) and glued into position on the boiler. It was a small, but prominent addition and worth making. Couplings! This is always the last bit of the build for me. The kit supplied some steel coupling links, but they just didn’t look right – they looked exactly what they were – thin bent steel wire. Coupling links are quite beefy bits of kit – they have the whole train hanging off them! So they need to be and look robust, which the supplied ones did not. This started me down a rabbit hole of looking at 3 link coupling dimensions and eventually I found sufficient information to make my own. the first two pictures below show the first steps in making the couplings. This was to fit two metal pins into a block of wood, at a sufficient spacing to give a scale 10 inch separation. 1mm copper wire was then wound round the posts to form a number of coils, and the coil stack manipulated with pliers to give the correct basic shape. After removing from the “jig”, the coils were cut and separated using a very fine jewelers piercing saw. The individual coils were then interlinked to form a three link chain, as shown in the third picture. This was taken before the gaps in the individual links were filled with solder and then smoothed off to make each link continuous. Following cleaning and degreasing, the 3 links were chemically blackened and then fitted to the coupling hooks. I think they are quite effective and much better (i.e. look much more robust) than the supplied couplings. The final pictures show the blackened and fitted coupling links. Finally, the cab roof! This is seen in the last picture. I have rolled this to shape to match the profile of the cab end sheets. Some 1/16” angle was rolled to the same profile to form the sliding ventilator hatch runners and soldered into place, as was the roof edging. (I did not like the supplied etching for the ventilator hatch and runners – it looked crude!). The whole has been primed and sprayed black. It just needs some light weathering and the roof hatch glued into the open position to be finished. I’m just waiting for the weather to warm up enough to do that!. The roof will be left loose to be glued into position after the addition of crew. For the roof on my own loco, I amended this slightly and used the 1/16" angle to create sliding runners. I will show this in another post. The loco is now fully assembled and through wired. It has been tested and essentially is now awaiting dispatch. I will try and take some final portrait pictures this week, assuming I can get some time to set up the photo booth. Cheers, PM

Nice Clydesdale! My wife tried that with my quarter horse last week. He wasn’t impressed and shook them off so fast she wasn’t able to get a photo of him with them!

Supposed to be the power output of the main generator when being used as an exciter. Source :- http://www.class47.co.uk/c47_numbers.php?s_loco=47155 "Whilst in use at the power station the route code was set to '1240' indicating (presumably) the hp output from the 47's main generator" Loco is still with us as 47815 with ROG

You would be better moving tnhis topic to the DCC control section, rather than this model engineering section. You are more likely to get a greater response there.

I'm afraid that my mojo has been lacking on this project for the past few weeks. Probably due to having lots to do outside whilst the weather is still reasonable, as well as lots of work both for my employer and up at the farm. All in all, its been rather tiring recently and I have not been able to focus onthis project. Anyhow, I will be back on the project soon. But for the moment, here are a few pictures and videos I took recently when we want away for a few days for our anniversary and and visited the N&W J class 4-8-4 loco running at the Strasburg railroad in Pennsylvania. Also running was Strasburg #90, a branchline 2-10-0. A couple of pictures from the adjacent Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania are also included and I do have some more if anyone is interested. Enjoy. I will say that the crew of the J class seemed to be deliberately smoking it up as they ran past the location where I was filming and taking photos. I hope no-one had their laundry out to dry that day.......