Castle Aching

[Edwardian]

3 hours ago, uax6 said:

May I suggest BMC Damask Red for Nellie? I have one painted like that and it does look very nice.

 

Ah, too late ...

 

 

Yes, I know, "Thomas", but I like the colour!   

 

However, I can use the Damask red, an excellent colour, for the Other Nellie, the donated project.  This act of spontaneous generosity may be laid at the door of this Parish's Old Gringo.  He had painted one side of the loco a wine red colour, and I think red it should stay.  

 

 

 

3 hours ago, uax6 said:

Also how about a bicycle on the footplate ahead of the tank, to help hide the boiler skirt?

 

Andy G

 

Yes, Regularity also mentioned this drawback.  Not a lot I can do about that, given the chassis I'm working with, and I've packed the body full of lead at that point. 

[Edwardian]

Raising Nellie's skirts!

 

Both Regularity and Andy G have commented unfavourably on Nellie's boiler 'skirts'.  They're right, of course.  Daylight under a boiler is preferable.  I had thought that Nellie was so irredeemably toy-like in her proportions that it hardly mattered in her case.  Now, I'm not so sure.  Perhaps it's creator's bias or the effect of so much time spent contemplating her ample lines, but Nellie, as Nell Gwyn, is starting to look almost as if she could be a real engine; a fairly unlikely one, granted, but just about within my capacity for suspension of disbelief.  What, after all, is freelance modelling without a touch of whimsy? The boiler skirts do let the girl down somewhat; my reluctant conclusion.

 

Taking a cautious approach to the issue, I thought I'd remove the skirting from my spare body.  What does this tell me, aside from the fact that there is some truth to the adage 'blue and green must never be seen'?

 

Well, these photographs from various angles demonstrate that one does not see daylight, but some circuit board thingy.  All part of the magic, no doubt, whatever it does.  To me it's just a "thingy" and it's in the way. 

 

 

Let's take a look at the thingy uncloaked.  Might it not be unscrewed and elevated to a position within the boiler?

 

I suppose I could create 4 taller columns for it to sit upon, which I don't think would be be very much seen from the outside.

 

 

[Hroth]

The "thingy" is the socket that allows the chassis to be DCCd, the bit with blobs of solder can be pulled off to insert a DCC chip, the lower part, with the screws, carries some anti-interference components and connects the motor to the track via the socket and whatever is plugged into it.

 

If it was not going to be DCCd, I would remove it entirely and connect the red and black wires from the motor to the red and black wires emerging from the chassis under the thingy. 

 

11 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

I suppose I could create 4 taller columns for it to sit upon, which I don't think would be be very much seen from the outside.

 

Given your legendary very high resistance to all things connected with electrickery, it might be best to unscrew the lot and hide it out of sight in the boiler! Creating taller columns/some kind of spacer to hold firmly in place would do....

 

[Northroader]

You’ve been in the Army, salute it, if it don’t salute back, sweep it up, if it’s fixed to the chassis and can’t be swept up, paint it. (In this case black, rather than the usual white)

Edited January 14, 2020 by Northroader

[Edwardian]

19 minutes ago, Hroth said:

The "thingy" is the socket that allows the chassis to be DCCd, the bit with blobs of solder can be pulled off to insert a DCC chip, the lower part, with the screws, carries some anti-interference components and connects the motor to the track via the socket and whatever is plugged into it.

 

If it was not going to be DCCd, I would remove it entirely and connect the red and black wires from the motor to the red and black wires emerging from the chassis under the thingy. 

 

 

No plans for DCC - I will have a number of 'live chassis' locos for one thing - but never say never, and Nell Gwyn will not be a CA locomotive, so who knows where she'll end up.

 

19 minutes ago, Hroth said:

Given your legendary very high resistance to all things connected with electrickery, it might be best to unscrew the lot and hide it out of sight in the boiler! Creating taller columns/some kind of spacer to hold firmly in place would do....

 

 

There is a pun in there somewhere.

 

Simplest is best, though it may be tricky attempting to represent the underside of the boiler. 

 

Take 2: Wingardium leviosa!

 

 

The white you can see in the picture below is a temporary card support holding the thingy up.

 

[webbcompound]

Much better, but of course now you need to stick a bit of boiler to the dcc socket legs as your boiler is too skinny

Edited January 14, 2020 by webbcompound

[Regularity]

8 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

Quote

Given your legendary very high resistance to all things connected with electrickery, it might be best to unscrew the lot and hide it out of sight in the boiler! Creating taller columns/some kind of spacer to hold firmly in place would do....

 

 

There is a pun in there somewhere.

 

Or possibly, certainly more whimsically,

[CKPR]

Is it just me or did Hornby re-use the cab and bunker from 'Nellie' when they produced the J83 in the mid-1970s ?  I've just been sawing up a J83 body to see if I can bodge a FR 0-6-0T out of it but have now, wisely I think, placed the various bits in a box in the back of a cupboard to await rediscover at a later date.

[Nearholmer]

The amount of daylight that will ever be visible under that boiler, given the position of the toolbox, will amount to a chink, possibly none at all when viewed from a typically high angle.

 

I think that the Stones probably had it right on this one.

[Regularity]

26 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

I think that the Stones probably had it right on this one.

Brown sugar?

You advocating use of hard drugs as an antidote to the angst of the hobby?

 

[Donw]

Wat it does need is something to continue the curve of the boiler. Taking it away was right, the boiler wouldn't run straight down it curves under.The problem then is it makes removing the body hard if it is part of the body.  So what you do is have a curved piece of plastic card  painted to match the boiler underneath the gubbins forming part of the chassis. If that curved plastic and the boiler itself  don't look right at the join I would add an unspecified pipe ( feeding the sandbox? ) each side. Could be an operating rod which doesn't actually operate anything but looks as thoug it does.

 

Don 

[Hroth]

2 hours ago, Edwardian said:

Take 2: Wingardium leviosa!

 

Is that some sort of Tonic Wine?

 

 

[Hroth]

20 minutes ago, Regularity said:

Brown sugar?

 

So long as he doesn't end up with sticky fingers....

 

[uax6]

And now that you have started cutting this body up, you can shorten that smokebox too....

 

Hat, coat engine running..

 

Andy G

[Regularity]

6 minutes ago, uax6 said:

And now that you have started cutting this body up, you can shorten that smokebox too....

A friend once thought of doing a cut and shut to create an accurate model of the (supposed) prototype.

 

He was very good at this technique, and if anyone was going to succeed, it would have been him, but he looked at what was required if he didn't plan to redo the boiler bands, dome, etc, and stopped thinking about it...

[Edwardian]

16 minutes ago, uax6 said:

And now that you have started cutting this body up, you can shorten that smokebox too....

 

Hat, coat engine running..

 

Andy G

 

Haven't you caused enough trouble?!?

 

No. (i) for the reasons Simon gave, (ii) because the self-imposed brief was to retain as much of Nellie's original character as possible (though I accept this is a flexible category where such features are concerned); and, (iii) because the longer smokebox is actually a boon when cutting away the boiler skirts and hiding the thingy.

 

You can have your cake, but you can't eat it!

[Compound2632]

3 hours ago, CKPR said:

Is it just me or did Hornby re-use the cab and bunker from 'Nellie' when they produced the J83 in the mid-1970s ?  

 

 

The family likeness of four of the old Triang-Hornby locomotives is something I am playing on for the (presently unseen) locomotive fleet of the Debyshire and Staffordshire Junction Railway, whose locomotive engineer, Zebedee Drummond (youngest brother of Dugald and Peter), favoured the family style on his removal from the drawing office at Neilson's to Chestefield in 1889:

• Class A 4-2-2 - an enlarged (lengthened) version of the one-off single he had worked on at Nielsons under the direction of Edward Snowball, intended for the Chesterfield-Stoke expresses via the Cat & Fiddle...
• Class B 0-4-4T - prefiguring his eldest brother's large suburban tank engine, intended for ordinary passenger and fast goods work.
• Class C 0-6-0T - another large engine for the period, for heavy mineral and general goods work.
• Class D 0-4-0T - a typical Ayrshireman's "wee puggie" for shunting, several class members also hired out to collieries, quarries, and biscuit factories on the company's system.

Edited January 14, 2020 by Compound2632
Neilson, Reid & Co. - i before e except in Glasgow!

[uax6]

There's always more trouble I can cause....

 

I did much the same thing on my epic cut and shut of Nellies big sister here:

  Its worth considering as you will gain much more than you loose, and you are more than capable of doing it.

 

Andy G

[Edwardian]

28 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

The family likeness of four of the old Triang-Hornby locomotives is something I am playing on for the (presently unseen) locomotive fleet of the Debyshire and Staffordshire Junction Railway, whose locomotive engineer, Zebedee Drummond (youngest brother of Dugald and Peter), favoured the family style on his removal from the drawing office at Nielson's to Chestefield in 1889:

• Class A 4-2-2 - an enlarged (lengthened) version of the one-off single he had worked on at Nielsons under the direction of Edward Snowball, intended for the Chesterfield-Stoke expresses via the Cat & Fiddle...
• Class B 0-4-4T - prefiguring his eldest brother's large suburban tank engine, intended for ordinary passenger and fast goods work.
• Class C 0-6-0T - another large engine for the period, for heavy mineral and general goods work.
• Class D 0-4-0T - a typical Ayrshireman's "wee puggie" for shunting, several class members also hired out to collieries, quarries, and biscuit factories on the company's system.

 

Excellent.

 

I have a less ambitious Nellie-suite, comprising:

 

- 2-4-0 (as seen)

- 0-4-2 (same chassis, different axle replaced!)

- 0-6-0 (there has to be something you can do with all those old Dapol/Hornby Terriers!)

- Front portion as the locomotive part of a steam railmotor.

 

I have no plans to do any of these once Nell Gwyn is complete!

 

 

 

 

Edited January 14, 2020 by Edwardian

[Nearholmer]

As briefly related in my own thread, I had a go at a proper cut-and-shut on Nellie c1973. Now, I was a lot less experienced then, and used a junior hacksaw, not having a razor saw until a bit later, and the whole thing turned-out a tad gluey, but even with better tools and more experience I’m not sure I’d want to do it again.

 

It needs a lot of cuts (six I think), and the shell becomes progressively less rigid as cuts are made, so even using packing pieces, it gets really difficult to keep the cuts square.

 

What it really needs is a bacon-slicer, or one of those fearsome multi-bladed motorised knives that are used in bakeries to cut loaves.

 

 

 

 

[Edwardian]

22 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

As briefly related in my own thread, I had a go at a proper cut-and-shut on Nellie c1973. Now, I was a lot less experienced then, and used a junior hacksaw, not having a razor saw until a bit later, and the whole thing turned-out a tad gluey, but even with better tools and more experience I’m not sure I’d want to do it again.

 

It needs a lot of cuts (six I think), and the shell becomes progressively less rigid as cuts are made, so even using packing pieces, it gets really difficult to keep the cuts square.

 

What it really needs is a bacon-slicer, or one of those fearsome multi-bladed motorised knives that are used in bakeries to cut loaves.

 

 

 

 

 

Yes, you can add (iv) structural integrity; and, (v) the fact that I've filled the smokebox full of lead, as further reasons why Andy G is flogging a dead hobby horse!!!!!

[uax6]

To shorten the smokebox you require the following cuts:

 

Cut down the smokebox to remove the section you want to shorten it by, so that's two cuts.

Cut down the boiler just behind the smokebox ring.

Then a cut on each side at footplate level to remove the two slices.

 

Then stick all back together adding a bit of plasticard to lengthen the boiler, refill your smokebox with lead, adding a bit more in the side tanks.

 

All very basic, and she won't get too jelly-like doing it..

 

Dead horse flogging? Moi? I love it!

 

Andy G

[Nearholmer]

I thought the three slices = six cuts were: smoke box; boiler before tanks; and, bunker.

[Edwardian]

30 minutes ago, uax6 said:

To shorten the smokebox you require the following cuts:

 

Cut down the smokebox to remove the section you want to shorten it by, so that's two cuts.

Cut down the boiler just behind the smokebox ring.

Then a cut on each side at footplate level to remove the two slices.

 

Then stick all back together adding a bit of plasticard to lengthen the boiler, refill your smokebox with lead, adding a bit more in the side tanks.

 

All very basic, and she won't get too jelly-like doing it..

 

Dead horse flogging? Moi? I love it!

 

Andy G

 

 

[robmcg]

I modified my Nellie with editing, a lot less messy, and got this;

 

Only takes a mo...

 

 

edit; you have to choose the sellotape patch for the cab window with care though. Only experienced modelers should try this.

 

Edited January 14, 2020 by robmcg