PAD Posted December 29, 2016 Share Posted December 29, 2016 It’s been a while since I last posted on here, but since I completed my last build (Scorpio large prairie) I have been busy with its little brother the 45XX from Warren Shephard. This will be more of a review than a blow by blow account of the build. Currently the model is completed with the chassis painted in black etch primer apart from the cylinders which have been over sprayed with Halfords gloss black. The loco body is in Halfords grey etch primer awaiting the top coat of gloss BR green and gloss black. Later it will be lined with a 45XX Fox lining set, then lacquered and weathered to a similar condition to the large prairie. Here’s the box which will hold the completed model with some suitable packing added. Here are the castings (brass and nickel silver), pressings, nuts/ bolts/handrail knobs, Premier milled rods, plastic Slaters brake shoes and a CD with photographs of the construction, plus instructions and prototype photos. There are also photos of the etched sheets and the castings to assist identifying the parts. And 6 sheets of etchings – all brass Here are the coupling rods jigged up in one of the frames to check the spacing which was found to be spot on. There are two sets of instructions one with isometric drawings, and one with text and photographs of the model under construction, although there are no pictures of the fully completed model. The big negative for me is the lack of half etch rivet detail on the tank sides and bunker. Rivet detail has to be applied with a punch of some sort (or fancy rivet tool if available) into the “virgin metal”, using a photo copied template to show the rivet positions. More about this later. I started by constructing the frames which are quite straight forward. There is provision of half etch lines to remove the axle bush holes to facilitate the use of working horn blocks, but these are not provided. Personally, I have always achieved excellent running with the middle axle provided with some vertical movement, and the front and rear ones rigid so this is how I built it. There is no rivet detail on the frames and lacking a drawing to show this, I did not attempt to add any. More importantly, the etched slots for the spacers to fix the front and rear pony trucks are set too high, so the tabs on the spacers need removing to allow them to be lowered to the correct height. I did not bother to fill the slots as these are hidden by later additions. Here are the frames erected with the wheels and brake gear fitted . The incorrectly placed slots can be seen above the front brake hangs and behind the rear driving wheel. It seemed impossible to me to fit the Slaters plastic brake blocks into the cast hangers and achieve anything like adequate clearance for good running, so I ditched them. These were replaced with suitable brass section which is more robust, gives running clearance and looks the part. The four bolt brake hanger brackets are not provided so these were also knocked up from scratch. There are no holes in the frames for the 0.9 mm rod needed to mount the hangers, so the position for these needs to be marked before drilling. Here they are completed. The cross beams for the hangers are provided but there are no pull rods and no indications as to their layout. At the time of construction I had no information on the pull rod detail, so I opted to copy that on the large prairie. Having looked under the 55XX at Didcot ( which I think is more likely to have the same layout as the 45XX), I believe I have got it wrong. The 55XX only has one pull rod in the centre between the cross beams, and one rod running back to the brake cylinder. By the time I found this out, the build was too far advance to start pulling it to bits and re-doing, so I decided I could live with it. In any case, from normal viewing angles it’s not noticeable. Looking at the comparison of the large and small prairie, it seems to me that Warren has compromised with the casting for the brake cranks at the rear on the 45XX, which I believe is for the 51XX/61XX. Would have been nice to have a note in the instructions though. Or maybe I should have done more research before cracking on! Next up the cylinders. These are just a front and back plate with a wrapper and quite straight forward. The slide bars are castings (again for the large prairie) and need shortening. I did not realise this for some time so they may appear over long in some of the posted photos. The valve chest cover and cylinder front covers provided in the kit are brass turnings, but there are no relief valves, slide bar lubricator pots or valve rod linkages. I used the cylinder front covers but replaced the valve chest covers with castings from PR Components and also sourced the valve rod links and slide bar lubricators from him. The cylinder relief valves I go from Hobbyhorse. The vacuum cylinder is a nice brass casting but comes without a hole for the piston rod running from the bracket at the back of the right hand cross head. To facilitate easy removal I cut a slot on the underside of the cylinder with a slitting disc and mounted it on a detachable bracket. The next picture shows the layout and also the rear sand boxes. No holes are present in the frames for attaching the sandboxes and these have to be marked out and drilled by the builder. Personally I think the holes should be pre etched, as should the holes for the rodding for mounting the brake hangers. This shot from the side shows the relationship between the cylinders and the vacuum cylinder and also the valve rod linkage from PRC. By this time the cylinder drain cocks, sand pipes and balance weights had all been fitted. Here is the linkage from the brake rigging to the brake standard in the cab. These are the parts for one of the bogies laid out after fettling. And soldered up. And from the underside. And the completed chassis with the wheels and rods removed. This shows the method of preventing the middle axle bush from rotating in the filed “slot” which allows some vertical movement. There is a flat filed on the flange of the bush and a piece of flat brass section soldered vertically mates with the flat and prevents the bush rotating. Normally I would have added a spring to bear on the bushes, but the ABC gearbox and motor is mounted on this axle and the weight of the unit serves to keep the wheels down on the track, but lift if there are any high spots. Very simple and effective. This oblique view from the rear shows the mounting spigot for the sandbox and the scratch built bracket on top. Also visible is the scratch built mounting for the AWS (or is it ATC on the Western?) and the contact shoe from Hobbyhorse. This and the water gauge in the cab are the only two white metal items on the model. And an oblique view from the front showing the steam pipe is mounted on the “buffer beam” on chassis and not on the actual buffer beam on the main body. The rear one is mounted on the actual rear buffer beam. Here is the chassis with the motor and electrical pick-ups in place. The latter are phosphor bronze soldered to copper clad, picking up on the tops of the driving wheels. And a view of the completed and painted chassis from the side. The front coupling rod bushes are the ones supplied, modified with flats to allow tightening and fitted back to front to give maximum clearance with the crosshead. I made a simple box spanner from brass tube to aid fitting and tightening these. The retaining nuts on the middle and rear drivers are cast nickel silver from JLTRT. I also have a double ended box spanner for these made from two different diameter lengths of brass tube soldered together. The larger end suits the middle nut and the smaller end the rear. I think I posted a picture of this on my large prairie thread. In conclusion, I found the chassis went together without too much hassle. The incorrectly placed spacer slots, lack of etched holes for fitting the rods for the brake hangers and lack of rivet detail on the frames is disappointing, as is the the lack of castings for the relief valves, slide bar lubricators and Valve rod linages. However, on the plus side, the supplied castings are excellent particularly the pony trucks. From a running point of view, the milled rods are a perfect match to the axle holes in the frames, and I found the chassis ran very sweetly first time without any need for adjustment or running in. Earlier this week I ran it on the test track (with the body on) at the Keighley club open day, and it ran perfectly. When I get time I will write up the construction of the body, but that’s all for now. Cheers, Peter Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
3 link Posted December 30, 2016 Share Posted December 30, 2016 Hi Peter, Thank you for such an in depth build topic, I think it is helpful to many on the forum who are looking for tips and different build methods. All these rtr models are fine and a great boost for 7mm but there are plenty of us who still enjoy the challenge of building a working loco, be it steam or diesel. Great to see you back, All the best, Martyn. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold Brinkly Posted December 30, 2016 RMweb Gold Share Posted December 30, 2016 Thanks Peter, Very comprehensive review, with excellent photography to accompany it. It certainly looks like a 4575 chassis! Kind regards, Nick. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Johng Posted January 7, 2017 Share Posted January 7, 2017 Hi Peter, This will brighten up the New Year and will be as interesting as ever no doubt. Best regards, John. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
N15class Posted January 7, 2017 Share Posted January 7, 2017 Glad to see you back and building. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
PAD Posted January 8, 2017 Author Share Posted January 8, 2017 Glad to see you back and building. Hi Peter, Thanks to you and John for the kind words. Yes it's been a while since I was on here but I have been building. I just don't have the time to write up the build on a regular basis, so thought I'd try a different "format ". The down side is that you don't get the heads up on here when other people spot errors you have overlooked. I'm progressing well with the painting, having got the green on and am now masking up in preparation for the black. The boiler is detachable so have already got the black on the smokebox using a rattle can. The running plate will need a little more finesse in getting into all the nooks and crannies, so it will be back to the airbrush for that. Cheers, Peter Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
PAD Posted January 10, 2017 Author Share Posted January 10, 2017 Thanks Peter, Very comprehensive review, with excellent photography to accompany it. It certainly looks like a 4575 chassis! Kind regards, Nick. Hi Nick, The kit is for the 4500 variant and will not build the sloping tanks 4575 version. It will be numbered 4567 when finished. Cheers, Peter Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
PAD Posted January 18, 2017 Author Share Posted January 18, 2017 So on with the loco body. As mentioned earlier, there is no half etch rivet detail on the tank sides or bunker to aid punching out. The rivets have to be punched into virgin metal using a paper template pasted on the reverse side to show their position. All well and good (not good really), but the height of the template outline does not match the etchings, being too short. It matches lengthwise but not vertically. This meant that vertically, the rivets would be spaced too close. I found that by scanning the template and printing it with the “fit picture to frame option”, the height then matched. The front of the template overlapped the front of the etching but I simply cut that back to match and went ahead and punched out the rivets. A cunning plan but massively flawed as some of you will have already realised. The highlighted rivets are additional ones that I added. Here’s the sides and the running plate. Yes you’ve got it – the horizontal spacing is also increased, so the vertical lines of rivets are spaced out too widely! It was quite a while before I realised this, by which time I had tack soldered the sides in place on the footplate. So, three options as I saw it. One, live with the error. Two, dump the etches and make from scratch. Three, punch back/flatten the rivets and re punch in the correct position. I went for option three which involved making a new template using the original as a basis. Here’s the sides after removing the rivets. I left the ones on the bunker as they seemed OK. As can be seen from the picture of the template, you also have to do the same for the bunker rear, the front of the running plate and the drop plate. I don’t recall how much jiggery pokery that involved but I got there in the end. The sides were more or less acceptable after re punching, and I know the error was mine in getting them so wrong, but this really is a very poor method of representing rivets in an etched kit. Here’s the method of producing the curve corners on the bunker. I filled the gaps with low melt solder later on when the back and beading were in place. The inner cab sides and footplate. And sides and bunker rear in place. The smokebox saddle is fabricated from 6 etchings and plus 16 BA nuts and bolts. The instructions say use 12 BA but they would be far too big. The front boiler ring and smokebox door are pressings as is the rear boiler ring. The firebox is front is also a pressing with the wrapper formed around it. There are half etch lines on the wrapper to mark the areas to fold, but no mention of these in the instructions. I assumed these would be on the inside and folded appropriately. Wrong! As can be seen in the next photo, this puts the wash out plugs in the wrong position – on both sides. Again it was some time before I realised, but fortunately I was able to remove, fill the holes and refit in the correct position. The coned part of the boiler is represented only by the part which shows above the tanks. Note the etched hole for the top feed is too far forward. There was no need to fill it as it is covered by the safety valve casing. And with the boiler fitted. The boiler is held by a bolt into a captive nut in the smokebox, and slots into the coned part, so is removable for painting. The joint is hidden by the boiler band. Next, the rear cab plate which needed some correcting. The lower etched holes for the guard irons on the look outs are too close to the edge. There are also wrongly spaced, being too close to the outer edge. First I covered the holes with some thin shim and remarked the position of the holes lower down and re drilled. To keep things simple, I decided to add an extra iron to the inner edge so that I would not have to reposition the top holes. From what I can see in period photos, some of them appear to have had 6 and it looks OK. I also added the cross rails. And with the rails in. After that it was mostly plain sailing adding the footsteps, cab shutters, coal fender, handrails and the various castings. The re positioned washout plugs on the firebox can be seen in this shot. However, another error in the design I noticed was the cab cut out extending right up under the eaves of the roof. To improve that I removed the shutters, cut through the beading about half way down the front edge, unsoldered and pealed it away but leaving it fixed at the rear. I added a packing piece into the gap and re fixed the beading lower down. I had to snip off a mm or so to allow it to butt up against the lower part of the beading and filled the gaps at the top corners with solder and cleaned up. I could have done with lowering it more but that would have been more difficult to fill. Finally the cab details. The kit comes with a very nice cast brass back plate plus brass castings for the fittings, and it looks very nice when assembled. All the other cab fittings are brass castings apart from the tool boxes which have to be made up from etchings. The only item in the kit that I replaced was the water gauge which sits on top of the left hand tank in the cab. This bore no resemblance to the real thing so I obtained a white metal one from Hobbyhorse. Here’s a couple of shots inside the cab with the roof off. Cab dials were not supplied but I had three turned brass ones that suited and fitted these later. The cylinder on top of the right hand tank which passes through the cab front plate was not included and was made from scratch. Apart from the cab roof which had no rivet detail, the addition of the rest of the castings was quite straight forward. I added the rivet detail to the roof based on photographs and a drawing by Ian Beattie from Railway Modeller. Here’s the tank top detail. I drilled a hole just behind the tank fillers to represent the drain on the tank top which allowed over spill from filling the tanks to drain away. Here’s a couple of shots on my brother’s railway before stripping it down for painting. Next up, painting and decorating. Cheers, Peter Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jon Fitness Posted January 18, 2017 Share Posted January 18, 2017 What an excellent result from what sounds less like a kit and more like a hindrance to scratch building! Strangely the rivet work on the side tanks looks to have given a more authentic look of riveted plate work. Lovely stuff! JF Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
PAD Posted January 19, 2017 Author Share Posted January 19, 2017 Hi Jon, Many thanks. Yes it's a shame that so much "scratch building" is required as it spoils what would otherwise be a very good kit. The etchings (apart from the rivet issues) fit very well and the castings are superb. The vertical rivets which were redone have turned out OK. In the first picture on my brother's railway, the first line look to be skewed near the bottom but that is just due to reflection. For the bottom line, there is a half etched groove on the back which helps keep the line straight, but the top has to be done free hand again, and that could have been better. As a post script on the chassis, one further omission, is the large hole in the frames just behind the rear driving wheels. I could have drilled this out but would then have needed to move/modify the spacer for mounting the rear pony truck. Mostly the hole (half of it, as it is obscured by the wheel) can only been seen in broadside views, so I decided to take the pragmatic view and pass on it. As they say, "you can see it, but I know it's not there". It's all painted and lined now awaiting the plates to arrive, and then I will varnish and lightly weather it as I did on my Scorpio large prairie. So far I'm very pleased with the results and in my opinion, it compares very well to the two ready to run models currently available. Cheers, Peter Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
PAD Posted January 22, 2017 Author Share Posted January 22, 2017 Here we go with the painting and lining. As always the model needs stripping down to its various components and given a good clean before any paint goes on. Up to now, after removing any excess solder my favoured option was to scrub everything with shiny sinks or hob bright. Both do an excellent job but can leave a residue which clings to solder in the joints and takes a lot of rinsing to remove. I’d heard good things about Viakal lime scale remover being good for cleaning models before painting, so I decided to give it a go. It does an excellent job and does not leave a residue. Painting the chassis was mentioned earlier so I’ll concentrate on the body. Halford’s own brand acid etch grey primer was used as the base coat. It goes on very easily giving a very smooth finish. The bracket applied to the smoke box door is for mounting the number plate. It has a round pin through the centre fixed into the door for strength. An idea I got from MRJ after reading an article by Malcolm Mitchell. The little piece of shim on the bottom edge of the buffer beam, covers the original position that I fixed the steam pipe. It was too far to the right. There’s a little gap that I filled before the top coating. And a shot of the tank top detail. Top coating was Halfords Ford Laurel Green diluted 1:1 with cellulose thinners and applied with the airbrush. This shows how the boiler can be removed. It makes the painting and lining a whole lot easier. And masked up for application of the Black. Again Halfords gloss black diluted 1:1 with cellulose thinners and airbrushed. The smokebox had already been done previously. And after spraying and removal of the masking tape. Inside the cab after fitting the finished back plate and glazing. And assembled. Here’s the tank and bunker with the masking tape applied ready for lining. The dividers are used to determine the position of the transfer from the edge, and mark the masking tape (Tamiya) for cutting. I have to say, I always approach this part with trepidation, but in this case I had no real difficulty or problems. I must be getting better. The panels need to be cut up and in each case the corners are applied first, and then the gaps infilled with the remaining straight bits. The curved lines at the bunker extension were also applied separately. For the larger panels, I cut the longer lines in half as well, as the shorter lengths are easier to apply. For straightening the lines against the masking tape I found it easier to use a wide flat brush. In this case I used a half inch, but next time I’ll try a wider one. And some shots after completion, with the route code and later small BR emblem also added. The route code discs are off center, but this position is correct for 4576. The plates arrived yesterday so once they are applied, I’ll be lacquering and weathering as per my big prairie. Note, that the valve rocker cover and boiler support bracket, were hand painted afterwards in green using Railmatch post 1928 GWR green. It's not as glossy as the Halfords car paint but a close match colour wise. Lacquering and weathering will hide that. I will post some shots when that gets done. Cheers, Peter Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold Brinkly Posted January 22, 2017 RMweb Gold Share Posted January 22, 2017 Lovely work Peter, really lovely. Kind regards, Nick. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
PAD Posted January 23, 2017 Author Share Posted January 23, 2017 Got the plates on tonight but will be travelling on business until Friday,so won't be able to do the lacquering and weathering until next week. Cheers, Peter Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
KalKat Posted January 23, 2017 Share Posted January 23, 2017 I have a question about the paint. You mention that the paint was diluted 1:1 with celly thinners - do Halfords do Laurel green in a can, or did you thin (further) paint from an aerosol? Many thanks - Emma Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
PAD Posted January 24, 2017 Author Share Posted January 24, 2017 Hi Emma, They do it in a rattle can. If you decant it for use in an airbrush then it does not need diluting. Decanting is of course a pain. Halfords will mix up any car colour if you know the ref number. This is what I refer to and this needs diluting. I'm travelling most of the week but will check the number when I get home and let you know. Cheers, Peter Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
steve fay Posted February 9, 2017 Share Posted February 9, 2017 Great job Peter, I'm a bit late to this thread but top quality work again Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
PAD Posted February 10, 2017 Author Share Posted February 10, 2017 Thanks Steve, Overall it's not a bad kit. The castings are all brass and excellent, but the etchings have their faults as mentioned in the build. That said they fit well and it does make a nice model. I still have to lacquer and weather it, but have been distracted with the Gladiator L1. I'll get to it soon and post some pics when it's done. Cheers, Peter Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
PAD Posted April 18, 2017 Author Share Posted April 18, 2017 This one has been on the bag burner for a while but I finally got the lacquer on to tone down the finish. I gave is a light weathering with the airbrush but it needs a bit more plus some dry brushing. Cheers, Peter Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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