2mm Coal Tank test build

[65179]

Bad news about the BH Enterprises whistles, I've just used up the last of my 25+ year old stash.

 

Simon

[CF MRC]

On 29/03/2020 at 15:12, Nick Mitchell said:

Having taken time off to build a Fowler 2-6-4T (plus a few other distractions), the Coal Tank is now back on my workbench for finishing off the seemingly endless list of details. I have reached the milestone of having attached every usable part from the etches.

 

At the rear end, I've added the tool boxes. These are home made, with the basic shape filed form brass and the hinge straps added from strips of shim. You can see in the photos that part of the underside of the tool boxes has been filed away to give clearance for the stay alive capacitors in the bunker. They might look a bit skinny - I was struggling to find good photos or drawings for these, so resorted to measuring a Bachmann 4mm model. A good coal load will partially obscure them anyway...

 

 

The lamp irons were supplied on the etched fret, but I had to re-make the top one, filing it out of scrap etch. This iron stands proud of the bunker rear, with a second layer of etch across the bottom arm of the inverted T shape.

 

The bottom 3 irons were supplied as flat pieces of strip, which required bending all in the same place. I drilled small holes in the bunker rear to locate them, which was quite a delicate operation - the rear sheet didn't quite reach the bottom of the bunker when I originally assembled it, with the gap being filled with solder. Also, because the metal is only 4 thou thick, it is very easily distorted. I should really have put a reinforcing piece behind it, and marked/drilled the holes while it was still flat on the etch, but you live and learn! The irons were soldered in place from inside the bunker.

The rear vacuum brake pipe is a confection of copper wire.

 

 

I had originally bought some tool boxes form N Brass. As with the rest of their Coal Tank castings, these were grossly over-scale - even if they were meant to be N Gauge. I had started filing them down, but in the end decided it would be quicker and easier to start from scratch.

Here is one of the castings, slightly filed, for comparison!

 

 

I also had to re-make the tender filler. I haven't fitted it yet, but here is my turned version compared with the casting.

 

 

I'm still pondering how best to fix the roof on, but it will need detailing. Coal tank whistles are very small indeed. I've had a go at turning one on the end of a length of 0.6mm nickel silver rod. The major problem is getting the slit narrow enough. I've done this one with a piercing saw blade and made it as deep as I dared.

 

 

Some years ago (about 15) I got hold of a pair of really nice turned brass whistles from BH Enterprises. I recently acquired some more, but these were about double the size of the original pair. N Brass do a cast "Small LMS" whistle, which is similar in size to the original BHE ones. Turns out that for a Coal Tank, the whistle needs to be much smaller than any of these. By way of comparison, here is my current effort held next to one of the old BHE whistles, which is fitted to a 4F.

 

 

On the chassis, I've added the operating lever for the front damper, which passes diagonally across the bottom of the firebox and ash pan - just visible in the picture below. I've also fettled the front guard irons so they don't touch the brakes (and thereby short the body to the chassis), and fitted sand delivery pipes.

 

 

I've got some details to make and add around the cab area now, including the reverser and a tangle of pipes. Because the cab is fairly open, it will be worth trying to suggest some of the interior detail. Below is the start of the firebox back-head, sawn and filed from 1mm thick brass. The curved recess in the bottom edge will clear the top of the motor, which protrudes slightly into the cab.

 

I agree about the N Brass castings, Nick. They often look OK, but they’re nearly always oversized, I don’t really understand why. 
 

Tim
 

[Nick Mitchell]

I spent a few hours last weekend poring over drawings and photos, making measurements, and working out how best to give an impression of the top half of the Coal Tank's backhead. A few more hours last night and this evening, and I have something I'm happy with. It isn't 100% accurate, and there are plenty of pipes missing, but I hope it is sufficiently suggestive of the real thing.

 

I built it up on paper. A few pencil lines for guidance (mostly obliterated by this stage), then a layer of Pritt Stick to hold things down while soldering. In the picture below, it is almost ready for peeling off the paper.

 

 

I started with the vertical pipes (0.25mm n/s). deliberately made over-long so the ends could be stuck to the paper with Pritt to hold them in place, and soldered them to the main part of the backhead.

 

Next, the upstand for the manifold (or whistle stand) was fixed to the top of the backhead centrally. On reflection, i think it ended up a bit too tall.

The brass pipe (0.4mm) which trails off to the right came next, bent forward where it is soldered to the upstand - the forward protrusion being for the long handle pointing left. The handle is the driver's brake application handle. This was made from more 0.25mm n/s, wrapped round the brass a couple of times to represent the valve body. The valve in question controls the steam supply down the brass "pipe" to the vacuum ejector, which sits on top of the tank inside the cab on the fireman's side.

 

2 little curls of 0.2mm p/b make the valve bodies and handles sticking out below the manifold. In reality, these are the steam supply valves for the injectors - as they would have been in the latter part of the loco's life. The system of injectors and brakes were altered more than once.

 

The manifold body itself is a 2.5mm length of 0.8mm brass tube. Probably a bit chunky. The reverse side was filed flat to sit on top of the vertical wires. It was lined up along the top of the upstand and the injector steam valves.

 

A hole was drilled in the centre of the manifold body to take a length of 0.4mm wire sticking forward. A 1mm length of the 0.8mm tube was threaded over this, and then the handwheel. This wheel controls the steam heat I think. There should be another (thiner) pipe emerging from under that wheel, that curves down behind the ejector pipe, but sanity prevailed and I left that one off.

 

Another bit of 0.4mm wire was soldered into the left had end of the manifold tube, and the tiny control wheel fixed over it.

 

Last came the regulator. The regulator handle is a spare bit of old wagon chassis etch (actually a vacuum brake crank) mounted on a stub of wire, with a washer behind.

 

After peeling the backhead off, the paper was left in a rather sorry state!

 

 

After cleaning up (without breaking off any of the bits!!!), it doesn't look too shabby. The vertical wire on the left has been left long for now (to use as a handle). In reality, it takes steam up to the whistle.

 

 

From an angle, it is pleasingly 3-dimensional. The brake and injector steam valves all operate by pulling/pushing. There is a little stem from the brake handle which operates the valve on the front of the cab to let air into the brake pipe. Unlike a GWR engine where you have separate handles to create and destroy vacuum, this lever does both depending which way you move it. I would say it was clever, but the bakes on coal tanks were notoriously rubbish! 

 

 

With the wires further trimmed, I have tried it for size in the cab. It is held in place temporarily with blu-tack. Eventually it will be epoxied, but there are some more soldering jobs to do in the cab first - pipes etc. along the tank tops.

You can see how it fits above the rear end of the motor.

 

 

With the roof loosely held in place, you can't really see much inside the cab. You'll see even less when the driver is in the way!

 

 

This is the first time I've bothered with any backhead detail. I was convinced I ought to try and put something there, however, after taking the photo below last summer. I'd lit up Jessie (an 18" Hunslet) about 3 hours earlier at Embsay, and had just finished polishing her. I don't think a coal tank in 1950 would have the same shine...

 

[Nick Mitchell]

A bit more work and the Coal Tank is now structurally complete and ready for painting.

 

As well as gluing in the backhead, I've added the reversing wheel and brake pipes either side, along with a suggestion of the ejector and steam heat pipe on the fireman's side. The lumps on tank tops would have sprouted little wheels once upon a time. They operated the water valves for the injectors, but by late LMS days had been blanked when the controls were relocated.

 

 

A lot of the detail does turn out to be invisible in the gloom with the "lid" on... Maybe it will stand out a bit more when painted?

 

 

For locating the roof, in the end I soldered strips of 0.5mm square brass wire to the underside, to fit against the inside of the wires which strengthen the top edges of the cab side sheets. This seems to have worked out OK. Once painted inside and out, I will epoxy the roof in place.

 

 

The brake pipe on the front of the cab and that on the inside (on the driver's side) are the same piece 0.4mm copper wire, bent to shape then threaded through a hole in the cab front before soldering in place. The valve is suggested by a turned brass handrail knob. I've used 5 of them on this model, but none as handrail knobs.

 

 

The rest of the boiler furniture has finally been glued in place with epoxy resin, and an electra coupling dropper soldered to the front buffer plank. The rear coupling is attached to the rear chassis spacer, but wasn't fitted when I took these photos.

 

 

[garethashenden]

At the opposite end of things from Nick, I have finally started work on mine! 

Edited April 10, 2020 by garethashenden

[Ian Smith]

I don't think I've seen the 0-4-2 version before 

[garethashenden]

6 hours ago, Ian Smith said:

I don't think I've seen the 0-4-2 version before 

Waiting on a gear from Shop 3...

[garethashenden]

Bit more progress, little bit every day. I tried to make sandboxes, and I’m not too happy with them, so I’ll try again. 

The boiler and smokebox have been made, one from 9mm tube, the other from 0.005” brass. The reverse curve want nearly as hard to form as I imagined it would be.

 

This has now been attached to the footplate and it’s starting to look like a Coal Tank!

 

The cab sides have suffered a bit and need reenforcing. I’d also like some advice on how to turn the smokebox door. What do I start with and how do I hold it? 

Edited April 22, 2020 by garethashenden

[Ian Smith]

Gareth, I’ve only made 3 smokebox doors (but I’ve employed the same method for all). I start off with a bit of brass bar smaller than the smokebox door, face it off then solder a piece of 0.028” nickel silver sheet to the end of the bar. To get rid of all the corners on the sheet I have used a parting off tool parallel to the lathe bed to get an over-sized disc (my father and brother being toolmaker engineers would despair but it worked for me - but it did squeal a bit. I think I did the last one with a hand graver). Normal tools or hand gravers are used to shape and thin the disc from then on and when complete the smokebox door is unsoldered from the brass bar.

Ian

[garethashenden]

Still picking away at this. The smokebox door went pretty well. The chimney, not so much. The first one was good, but I forgot to allow material for the bottom flare. The second one was much better, but the top has an incorrect dimension. The inner lip is 0.5mm too small, and I forgot the taper, so it’s a bit too stout looking. The flare is too thick, but obviously that can be fixed. Think I’ll just make a third.

 

[Nick Mitchell]

My airbrush has been out, and I've given my coal tank a coat of Precision 2-pack etching primer (using Ian Rathbone's recipe of 1part paint, 2 parts activated thinners and 1 part cellulose thinners). This was followed by gloss black enamel (Humbrol 21) thinned 50:50 with white spirit.

The spraying process felt less stressful this time, following a weekend pre-lockdown with Ian at Missenden, and I was more in control of things. For the gloss, I was using lower air pressure, less paint, and moving more slowly. The results are below. The surface is not as smooth as Mr Rathbone himself would achieve, but I'm pleased with it.

 

 

The roof is loosely placed in position in these pictures, hence the daylight showing.

 

 

The stress returned with the application of the transfers.

Well, actually, it was not so much the application, but what came next...

 

I'm using un-shaded straw coloured transfers, as that's what most Coal Tanks seemed to display round about the time I am interested in.

The Fox transfer sheet has 14" letters and 10" or 12" numerals.

This restricted me to a 5-digit numbered engine (as some of them became when a particular number series needed to be vacated in the 1930s) because they mainly received 12" numerals, whereas the locos retaining 4 digit numbers tended to have 14" numerals.

 

I wanted to portray an engine without push-pull gear, that would have seen around north Manchester around the time of nationalisation. 27619 (originally 273, then 7619) fitted the bill, calling Plodder Lane home as 1948 dawned. It was to have become 58890 under BR, but did not last long enough to receive its BR number or livery, being withdrawn from Speke at the end of '49.

 

The Fireman's side turned out OK: The 6 looks to be leaning back, but sometimes they did on the real thing.

 

 

When it came to the Driver's side, some bits of the transfers started flaking away.

Part of the serif at the bottom right of the M went, and some chunks of the 7 disappeared too. I can only think that perhaps the paint and the varnish were not in perfect registration on the transfer sheet.

The 7 was bad, so I replaced it with another one. This also had some bits that disappeared, although they were not as large.

In the end I decided I couldn't live with the 7 the way it was, so decided to make a 3rd attempt. I had left the decision too long, as it had already stuck, and when I removed it the paint underneath came away too:

 

 

Unfortunately, my tale of disaster didn't stop there.

In the above picture, you may be able to notice that the cab rear handrail has come adrift at the top end. I don't know how many times it got soldered back on during construction, but superglue is the only option now. I fully expect it to be a regular source of frustration!

 

Also, I had attempted to brush a thin wash of cream on the inside of the cab. Capillary action had drawn the thinned paint through some cracks in the cab front sheet and out onto the front of the engine. 

I applied this cream paint the top half of the cab rear as well. Photographs show plenty of LMS liveried coal tanks with what looks like plain black cab rears, but a few are definitely a lighter shade. I figured that since I had put so much effort into the cab interior, having it paler would help reflect a bit of light in there and make the interior slightly less invisible.

Obviously, the gloss black helped this to creep into more unwanted places, like down the edge of the cab rear and along the bottom of the tank trunks.

 

I thought I could remove this stray paint by soaking it up into a brush dampened with white spirit.

That worked, but alas a bit too efficiently, and I managed to remove some of the black paint from a couple of places along with the cream.

 

Some of the black paint had rubbed off the footplate edge under the cab too (also visible in the above picture) and I decided I needed to re-spray a few places.

 

Not wanting to go through the experience of aligning and replacing transfers again, I decided to try and mask off those already in place and spray only the bits that needed re-covering. The photo below should illustrate where I was aiming for, with the bunker being an extreme case of optimism that I wouldn't end up with ridges against the masking and the edges of the existing paint.

 

 

Well, I did end up with some ridges. I thought I might soften them a little with white spirit blown on with the airbrush... (will he never learn?) but didn't have much success other than at creating extra ripples.

 

It was now 50:50 whether I was going to need to rub down the entire bunker panel and start again. 

I had a go at very gently rubbing the edges of the ridges and ripples with 1500 grit paper, and applied a new transfer 7 to see how bad it looks.

 

In the picture below, I had recently applied decal setting solution  (Micro Sol) which is why the surface round the 7 looks a bit crinkly. This will shrink down flat in a little while to match the others.

 

 

Have I got away with it? I think that once this panel is varnished an d weathered, it will probably look OK.

 

To end on a more positive note, I bought some Citadel "dry" paint by mistake last year. I wanted some gold paint, and didn't understand what I was buying. When I opened it, it was more like golden jelly than paint, and I thought it had gone off. A few minutes later and YouTube had set me straight about this paint which is specially made ready to dry brush. It is intended for highlighting the details of goblin armour and the like, but I though I'd give it a go in the cab of my coal tank. I'm quite pleased with how it has picked out the controls. Maybe I should have a couple of goblins in there shovelling coal...

 

 

 

Now I need to paint the chassis, and then weather the two halves as one complete unit.

 

[Sithlord75]

This looks very, very good Nick.  I haven't started any of mine.  I got 4 etches - 3 to hopefully produce working locos from and one for spares/learning (aka mistakes).  Not sure when I shall summon the courage to begin having a go - a few too many wagons need finishing first before starting yet another project!

[Coal Tank]

A little bit of work on the Coal tank 

[Nick Mitchell]

Like many projects that are nearly complete, my coal tank spent many months sitting in a cabinet, looking on enviously as I worked on other other things.

Unless I have some external motivation (like an exhibition or competition deadline) I struggle to to get them over the line.

It is at this stage that the last little jobs take forever, and I seem to spend as much time making repairs as I do making forward progress.

Starting a nice new kit that I haven't get got stuck with is the perfect antidote to the frustrations of finishing something off.

Unfortunately, the Hunslet saddle tank that distracted me from finishing the coal tank (which distracted me from finishing the Jubilee (which distracted me from finishing the Princess (which distracted me from finishing the Class 11))) is now at the same "almost finished" stage as the rest of them. This time I am going to complete one of them at least!

 

So yesterday I set myself the "simple" task of soldering the Electra coupling dropper to the rear frame spacer.

There had been one there some time ago, but it had long since detached with repeated handling.

To get the soldering iron in easily, I had to take out the radial truck, which had had its springs adjusted and was running nicely. Also this would involve bending the keeper wires out of the way, and risk snapping them (which amazingly didn't happen this time).

Coupling fitted, it took ages to re-fit the truck, and by the time it was in, I had somehow prised the new coupling off again.

Back to square one, except that all the handling was rubbing the paint off the chassis that I had touched up a few days earlier...

I finally managed to solder the coupling in place securely without having to take the radial truck out again, but not before the spacer I was soldering it to had detached itself from the frames and had to be refitted.

It is so easy for a 20 minute job to take a few hours!

 

On the body front, I have fitted some paper gaskets to the underside of the footplate and rear buffer plank to isolate the chassis from the body. I have also fitted lead sheet to the side tanks and bunker, and filled the front and top of the boiler with "liquid gravity" (which is steel shot) secured with cyano. Total weight now is a whopping 36g. With the extra weight, the loco runs smoothly and quietly in reverse, but sounds like a coffee grinder when going forwards (why do all my locos run so much better in reverse?). It is quite coggy at low speeds, and I am hoping a tweaking of the decoder settings will mitigate this.

 

The photos below show the current state of play. I think I am just about ready to start the final touching up and weathering:

 

Chassis (re) painted precision "dirty black". Body in need of dusting after storage.

 

A shot of the radial truck after temporary removal. Two lengths of uncoiled Farish coupling spring need to be threaded trough the tiny holes on the top of the truck to provide side control and some down force.

 

The coal space now has a platform for the real coal to (eventually) sit on - humped to make room for the stay alive capacitors that will lie beneath. This has been epoxied to the remnants of the original flat platform.

 

Visible from underneath the body are the paper insulation gaskets, lead sheet hiding in the tanks and bunker, and steel shot in the boiler.

 

 

[Caley Jim]

I'm glad I'm not the only one who sets out to do 'a little adjustment/repair' and ends up having to repair damage I've done/bits that have come apart in the process!  As you say, Nick, a 5 minute job ends up taking hours/days!

 

Jim

[Nick Mitchell]

Update: I got to the bottom of the "cogging while going forwards" issue - a tiny sliver of Kapton tape had found its way into the worm. It was easily removed, and normal service would  have been resumed had not the wire to the Stay Alive detached as I was re-fitting the body... it must have been under strain while wriggling the stay alive block into position. Originally the capacitors were epoxied to the frames, but I'd needed to detach them to gain access to the radial truck springs form above. Leaving the capacitor block dangling on a tiny soldered joint was always asking for trouble I suppose.

[Nick Mitchell]

My sorry saga continues. Re-fixing the wire to the capacitor block in-situ proved rather challenging.

I got there in the end, but not without breaking the coupling off again!!!

I actually thought for a while I'd killed the decoder, as the loco was completely unresponsive on the track.

I managed to "read" the CVs with a SPROG and laptop, which showed there was some life in it, and was able to effect a factory reset. (You can do this on CT decoders by setting the short address, CV0, to 0)

Despondency quickly turned to elation at the fact that I was only back to square on again, and not several steps further behind that!

 

I have had success in another direction. While shopping on-line for something else, I discovered Antex do really tiny bits for my soldering iron.

I got one with a tip diameter of 0.12mm, and have been testing it out.

In the picture below, the white speck in the centre is a surface mount orange LED. The package size is 0402 which is 1.0 x 0.5mm.

Attached to the LED is a 1.5k resistor in a similar package. The wires are the smallest I had in stock, and are thinner than the CT decoder wires.

 

 

Looking at the Coal Tank, I had a crazy notion that I could glue one of these to the end cap of the motor, to give a fire-glow effect.

 

This is the sort of thing I'm after (taken from the multi-storey car park at Manchester Victoria one January evening in 2016)

 

 

I've embedded most of the LED/resistor comb in epoxy so there is no chance of it shorting against the floor - or the wires becoming detached (I'm slowly learning from previous disasters..) with the LED at the approximate height of the firehole door.

The decoder is positioned in such a way that it was easy (relatively speaking!) to get at one of the function output connector pads to connect the negative lead. The other lead is soldered to one of the frames.

 

 

The photo below was taken with flash to give the idea of where the LED sits in relation to the cab floor (which needs painting in something less shiny and reflective).

 

 

Without flash in low light, the effect is quite atmospheric.

By soldering the positive lead to the frame rather than the common positive (blue) on the decoder, the stay alive is by-passed, giving a nice flicker of the fire on dirty track(!) The other side-effect of connecting to the frame is that the power supply is effectively half-wave, dimming the LED's output. I have also dimmed the output 50% in the decoder settings. It might need dimming a bit more.

 

 

 

[richbrummitt]

I see Nick has got the second stage rocket boosters onto that bar now; raising it up again. Once the working lamps (with connectors integrated into the lamp irons so the headcode can be changed) geostationary orbit of aforementioned bar will have been accomplished. 

[queensquare]

These barking mad antics are way beyond me but I love it, just wonderful.

 

Jerry

[Nick Mitchell]

I've had my airbrush out this afternoon and made a first pass at weathering, in an attempt to unify the body and chassis.

I had tried "underpainting" bits of rust on areas like the brake blocks, but most of it seems to have been obliterated.

There is a photo in Locomotives Illustrated of a coal tank in this livery, where the cleaner's rag has been applied sparingly to the L M S and number, and I have made an attempt to replicate this.

There are still a few details to touch in, but this isn't too bad a start.

 

 

[Nick Mitchell]

I'm going to call my coal tank complete now, save for a protective waft of Testor's Dullcote (which I will to do outside when the weather improves).

Since the last update I've added coal, crew, fire irons, and I have done a bit more weathering.

It has taken me getting on towards 5 years (albeit intermittently) to get to this point, which is good going for me!

It has been a lot of work, but well worth it. Many thanks to David @Branwell for arranging production and distribution of the etches, and to those who have given encouragement as I have chronicled my labours.

 

Here are some photos of the completed model on my workbench:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finally one shot on a bit of track with the glow of the firebox glinting off the fireman's cap as he bends to his task:

 

[Sithlord75]

Thanks for the chronical.  I decided at the ZAG meeting last night to actually make a start on mine in the next week or so - so have ordered some of the outstanding parts and will have a look at the etch along with a reread from the start.  As the train is "finished" (see the work bench thread) I figured I better start on the loco!

[queensquare]

Superb, very natural grotty finish Nick,

 

Jerry

[Sithlord75]

On 31/08/2016 at 09:14, Nick Mitchell said:

 

While useful background, I found that most of the 4mm instructions didn't apply at the "ground level" in 2mm, so I started writing up my own construction notes as a set of "alternative" instructions for the body.

 

They only go as far as I've got with my build, but I have attached a copy of my working draft, in case anyone wants to follow exactly what I've done.

 

I will update them once I've got the chassis built and know how to finish off the body.

 

Coal Tank 2mm construction notes NPM.pdf 448.43 kB · 132 downloads

Did you ever get around to updating these Nick?  No hurry.........

[Nick Mitchell]

5 hours ago, Sithlord75 said:

Did you ever get around to updating these Nick?  No hurry.........

Hi Kevin - not as such... but I started posting descriptions and photos of what I did to complete the model in this thread as I went along instead.

 

My original plan had been to utilise the Chris Higgs chassis kit to complement the LRM body, but in the end I followed a more experimental route. The radial truck I used isn't available as a part for people to buy, and I wouldn't feel comfortable recommending some of the unorthodox things I did to the LRM chassis as "instructions" for people to copy.

 

One of the "unknowable" aspects of construction is working out how much of the cab front and floor to remove in order to accommodate the motor. This needs to be as little as possible, but depends on the size and location of motor you're using.

 

Has anyone built one of Chris' chassis? I'd like to hear how the 3D printed radial truck worked out in practice.