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TFW’s workshop


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After the summer recess, I’m now back up in the garret working away; also thought a new thread would keep things together. I have just made the steps for Lord President, as can be seen below:

 

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Quite a simple job, making up a length of appropriately dimensioned n/s strip with the supporting bracket pre-bent into place. The edge protector to stop boots going the wrong way was then bent up, having filed a nick into the bracket strip. Not quite accurate, but good enough for government work. They are surprisingly large steps on an LNER eight wheel tender (or maybe we have become used to commercial models where the frames are too far apart and the steps are then narrowed).

 

Lord President did a bit of running on CF at our last exhibition in Peterborough. This youtube video, shows it storming up through Belle Islewith 20 coaches on the back.

 

https://youtu.be/xFdeBPPzO6k

 

Tim

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I am now more holy than righteous (or at least Lord President will be). I have started marking up and drilling LP for handrail knobs, the ejector pipe, lamp brackets, washout plugs and mud hole doors.

 

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Trusty calipers being used in the way they’re supposed not to.

 

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The holes are centre marked with another trusty tool, a gramophone needle with the point ground to a pyramidal shape to cut a small countersink. The ejector pipe is made from 0.4mm pivot steel. The handrails will be 0.3mm, but I have currently run out and I’m awaiting stock from Cousins.

 

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The wholes were drilled by hand/or drill press in the white metal. These were far harder to do accurately than I expected and quite a bit of solder filling and re-shaping of the front end was required.

 

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Part of this required re-marking the lines for the cods mouth doors. The originals that I had scribed weren’t quite the correct shape. A piece of insulating tape was used as a scribing guide.

 

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Now all I have to do is make a few lamp irons and handrail stanchions / knobs....

 

Tim

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Well, forty 0.5mm holes later, Lord President is ready for a load of fittings.

 

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The handrail stanchions will be epoxied into place on the boiler, as it is solid gun metal. The four washout plugs at the top of the boiler are simply dimples, whilst the three mud hole doors in the Wooten firebox are drilled depressions and then carved to make the oval shape with a scalpel. These are slightly small, compared to full size and do not have any raised detail. They are to be lined out with a white and black line, whence they will be the correct size. Lining out is monstrously difficult to do around raised details. In 2mm scale it is better to simplify details to aid painting. Less is more...

 

Tim

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Lamp irons are little beasts that are always vulnerable and need to be well attached. I normally drill a 0.5 mm hole to locate the irons.

 

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They are made from 0.5 mm wide nickel silver strip.

 

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The strip is bent back on itself leaving a small piece visible, which will be the future lamp support base.

 

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The long arm of the strip is then bent at ninety degrees to make the upright lamp support.

 

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This is then tinned and soldered where the material is double thickness and then the long arm cut to length for the upright.

 

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A few strokes with a file and the lamp iron can be put in the hole and with a bit of flux and a fairly dry iron sweated into place.

 

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Final trimming (the lamp base is a touch too long) and fettling can be done when all four are in place, to ensure consistency.

 

Tim

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Lamp irons crossed off the list now.

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The front end of a Gresley streamliner is a very subtle collection of shapes. I am pretty well content that Lord President is about right. Whilst LP started off as a Phil Kerr white metal casting, there is absolutely nothing left of the original shape.

 

All the front end needs to be complete now is a whistle which will, of course, be made of a non-tarnishing alloy.

 

Tim

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Indeed Rich, Silver Fox often gets that acclamation when running on CF. Lord President’s unoffficial epithet is currently ‘AK47 round’, but that won’t be so obvious once painted.

 

Tim

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Indeed Rich, Silver Fox often gets that acclamation when running on CF. Lord President’s unoffficial epithet is currently ‘AK47 round’, but that won’t be so obvious once painted.

Tim

Tim,

Before you paint it, you will have to decide whether it is Armour-Piercing, Tracer or Ball.

Happy New Year

John

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There is quite a lot going on in the front truck of a P2; but one of their weak links (pun intended). The pony has been modelled with the bearing splashers and stretchers: very characteristic of a Gresley engine. Not sure how long the small guard irons will last in the hurly burly of an exhibition layout.

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The cylinder drain cock pipes will need to be made. These will probably be made of phosphor bronze wire, silver soldered together at the front where they run together and then soft soldered to the main guard irons and plugged in to the cylinders, which have both been made electrically live to the relevant chassis side to avoid any electrical shorts. The real thing is attached to the front guard irons, with massive side clearance allowed for the swing of the pony truck. I have built in potential for a side control spring for the pony, which may be helpful. It currently relies on significant weight for road holding as it is made of solid copper tungsten alloy, gapped electrically for spilt frames with epoxy resin. Not sure where the drains for the centre cylinder exited (A4s have three pipes at the front), but I won’t loose too much sleep over that one.

 

Tim

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Took a bit of a diversion today from the front end to the rear end of LP. I have now acquired the 0.3mm pivot steel for the handrails so started making the knobs for the tender. The technique I use is the split pin method, as it will generally produce a nearer scale representation than a turning in 2mm scale. I think the originator of this particular ruse for making them was the great Pete Wright. The starting point was some 8thou by 0.3mm nickel silver strip which was bent into a hook. The ‘jig’ was simply a piece of steel about 3mm thick with a 0.5mm hole drilled in it whilst the knob was formed around some 0.25mm stainless steel syringe needle (actually a dental syringe needle - the white nylon hub is visible in the picture).

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The two ends of the n/s strip were threaded through the plate and the loop pulled on to the syringe needle by a pair of plyers below the steel plate: rather like garrotting it.

 

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The plyers were used to nip up the loop around the stainless steel syringe.

 

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The split pin was then tinned with a generous amount of solder. It could not, of course, stick to the stainless steel.

 

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The same needle was used to locate the stanchions in the 0.5mm diameter holes already drilled in the body work. These were then sweated into place with plenty of liquid flux (a little bit too generous with the solder here!).

 

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After cleaning up the pivot steel can be slipped into the holes, which being formed around a fractionally smaller rod give a firm grip on the definitive handrail. The advantage of this is that it is black, dead straight and can be put in place after painting, which makes lining out a lot easier. The photos are a little blurred, but I think quite an amazing testimony to a phone camera held single handed!

 

Tim

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Cab doors and fall plates help to make a tender engine look ‘joined-up’. In theory that should pivot, but that isn’t going to happen anytime soon in 2mm scale. Some sheets in the correct place do help however. On the big Gresley engines the cab doors are in two pieces, but just one will suffice. The doors and the fall plate were simply soldered to the cab and backhead/interior casting. Hopefully, with careful trimming, they should clear the tender on our 600 mm radius curves, although engines do funny things on layouts....

 

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The cab details are significantly simplified, but they are nigh on invisible, especially with the weather tarpaulin in place. Suppose I’ll need to get a suitable crew sooner or later.

 

Tim

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Cab doors and fall plates help to make a tender engine look ‘joined-up’. In theory that should pivot, but that isn’t going to happen anytime soon in 2mm scale. Some sheets in the correct place do help however. On the big Gresley engines the cab doors are in two pieces, but just one will suffice. The doors and the fall plate were simply soldered to the cab and backhead/interior casting. Hopefully, with careful trimming, they should clear the tender on our 600 mm radius curves, although engines do funny things on layouts....2viqnmu.jpg

The cab details are significantly simplified, but they are nigh on invisible, especially with the weather tarpaulin in place. Suppose I’ll need to get a suitable crew sooner or later.

Tim

Tim,

Lovely stuff. I often fix the fall plate to the tender and adjust it to bear on to the cab footplate floor, particularly useful to transfer a bit of traction weight to the back end of 4-4-0s. Of course, traction weight is not going to be an issue with LP.

BTW, Farish have included a hinged fall plate on their recent Castle.

Keep it coming,

John

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Lord President had a little saunter on Jerry’s test track at the CMRA St Evenage show today. I managed to find some tender axle box castings on the B&H stand that will be acceptable (after working on at work!), so that will save some time. Tony W also took some photos, so I’ll look forward to seeing them.

 

Tim

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A successful evening making two massive components for LP: the atomiser valve for the cylinder oil feed and a couple of wick feed oilers.

 

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The atomiser was made from some fine brass tube for the unions either end of the body, which was represented by a piece of nickel silver strip wrapped around it and also acted as a peg into the boiler cladding. The globe valve handle was represented by some phosphor bronze wire, which passed through the tube to also make the pipe feed. The twist drill is 0.3mm; used to make the locating hole in the cladding.

 

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The wick feed oilers are quite conspicuous. The sand box covers may be represented by some transfer film at the painting stage: difficult to represent them to scale, otherwise.

 

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The oil reservoirs were represented by a bit of brass bar filed in the middle to visually separate the two oilers.

 

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Tim

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Lord President’s tender is now complete, except the brakes. The pull rods were made from quite thick nickel silver sheet, filed down to represent the bearings for the cross members that tie both sides together in between the wheels. These rods are quite substantial and conspicuous on the real thing, but often modelled over scale. The rods for LP also incorporated three rebated lips across their top edge to solder to the tender frames: they are otherwise quite vulnerable to handling.

 

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Rear view shows the vacuum and heating pipes also in place.

 

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Side and 3/4 front view (bit cruel) shows the fork joint represented for the front hanger of the brakes pull rod and the cross arm pivot representation. They would look a bit bland otherwise.

 

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Not sure whether to model the tender brakes. They are well hidden behind the frames, so will probably only act as fluff catchers. However, the engine now needs the brake blocks making: I’ll probably turn these with a large flange that can be filed to make the hangers. The brake pivots were fitted to the chassis long ago.

 

Tim

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