East Barnet Joint Stock - a workbench

[Daddyman]

5 hours ago, Chas Levin said:

it was definitely the right thing to do [...] there is now only 0.05 mm difference [...] Which pleases me .

Oh, dear! Have I created a monster? 

[Chas Levin]

8 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Presumably they'd done the inward bound ECS so were on hand...

Ohh - I hadn't thought of that! I assumed manna was thinking that they might have been particularly suited to the task or the route, perhaps something to do with the uphill tunnel runs out of Kings X, or tight curves at the carriage depot...

[Chas Levin]

4 hours ago, Daddyman said:

Oh, dear! Have I created a monster? 

Ha - no, but you've probably helped liberate - or resuscitate - one .

[manna]

G'Day Folks

 

Beautiful here in SA, 27c, sunny with a bit of cloud and a cooling breeze.

 

No, the A6's never worked anywhere KX, they worked mainly the coastal line 'Robin Hoods bay', during summer, in winter, there was very little work for them, Starbeck shed had to find odd jobs for them. They were very powerful loco's, small wheels big boiler ( To my mind, a ideal loco to 'Try' on the heavy sleeper ECS out of the Cross) the only loco's to be used ( Successfully ) on these trains was the R1 0-8-2T's which had a reputation of being very sure footed on the Bounds Green flyover, the last of these being retired in the mid 30's. 

 

manna

Edited March 21, 2021 by manna

[Chas Levin]

37 minutes ago, manna said:

G'Day Folks

 

Beautiful here in SA, 27c, sunny with a bit of cloud and a cooling breeze.

 

No, the A6's never worked anywhere KX, they worked mainly the coastal line 'Robin Hoods bay', during summer, in winter, there was very little work for them, Starbeck shed had to find odd jobs for them. They were very powerful loco's, small wheels big boiler ( To my mind, a ideal loco to 'Try' on the heavy sleeper ECS out of the Cross) the only loco's to be used ( Successfully ) on these trains was the R1 0-8-2T's which had a reputation of being very sure footed on the Bounds Green flyover, the last of these being retired in the mid 30's. 

 

manna

Thanks manna, very interesting and your reasoning makes perfect sense.

 

Have to envy your 27c - we're not quite there yet...

[Chas Levin]

A brief break this morning from plumbing to do the steps - it's all sounding a bit 'DIY', isn't it? I'd left these off in case their presence interfered with the pipework installation and I realised after installing them that I may yet have been a little keen, as the rear ones might get in the way of forthcoming work on the cosmetic frame end pieces. However, it felt like the right time to do them and they're on, they're straight and they're level . I'd also anticipated nervousness over their vulnerability, but compared to some of the things now crowded round the front of the loco, these steps look - and feel - pretty solid:

 

This was also a very satisfactory trial of what David Brandreth calls 'stepped soldering' (as we were discussing, David A), whereby the horizontal steps had been done using 188 and didn't turn a hair while I soldered each assembly to the body with 145 solder, even during quite substantial reinforcement of the bases for strength. Of course, the fact that the earlier soldering was done quite a while ago (weeks, rather than days I believe) might also have helped...

Edited May 15, 2022 by Chas Levin

[Daddyman]

49 minutes ago, Chas Levin said:

the horizontal steps had been done using 188 and didn't turn a hair while I soldered each assembly to the body with 145 solder. 

I've taken the liberty of adding some clarification there, Chas, for anyone not familiar with the concept.   

[Compound2632]

20 hours ago, Chas Levin said:

Ohh - I hadn't thought of that! I assumed manna was thinking that they might have been particularly suited to the task or the route, perhaps something to do with the uphill tunnel runs out of Kings X, or tight curves at the carriage depot...

 

Sorry, I think possibly you missed the deliberate daftness of my reasoning. I might just as well of said that they were ideal for the inbound ECS as having worked the outbound ECS they were on hand. Chicken and egg.

[Chas Levin]

1 hour ago, Daddyman said:

I've taken the liberty of adding some clarification there, Chas, for anyone not familiar with the concept.   

A nice point, thank you David, I've edited my own post to include those words .

[Chas Levin]

50 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Sorry, I think possibly you missed the deliberate daftness of my reasoning. I might just as well of said that they were ideal for the inbound ECS as having worked the outbound ECS they were on hand. Chicken and egg.

Ahhh, yes I did miss that! That's the thing with emails / texts / short posts, especially from people you may not know well or meet in person: tone, humour and intent can all get lost in the shuffle.

No harm done though, and thank you for clarifying .

[Chas Levin]

Here's a trick I've found very helpful - hope others will too.

Have you ever had difficulty getting a small nut started on a captive bolt, for instance a bolt soldered to a chassis and intended to hold a bogie? It's fine if you can get your fingers round the nut to start it on the thread and then use a nut driver - or tweezers - to continue the process, but what about if there isn't room to do that? Nut drivers all seem to be drilled with quite a deep hole so that the nut disappears into it and gets tipped sideways, while my attempts to use tweezers always seems to dislodge the nut and knock it off the top of the bolt.

So... I balance the nut on the top of the bolt... and then reach for a pencil with a rubber on the end and

 

place the rubber end of the pencil gently but firmly on the nut, at which point I can feel, by adjusting the angle of the pencil, when the nut is level and beginning to engage the bolt thread. I can then turn the pencil round carefully between my fingers, screwing the nut down onto the thread, the rubber gripping the top face of the nut sufficiently to turn it!

 

Apologies if this is a well-known technique but I haven't seen it anywhere else .

Edited May 15, 2022 by Chas Levin

[Chas Levin]

And so to the rear of the loco, where there are two issues to deal with: one is the termination of both pipe runs in such a way as to allow the rear coupling to be used and the other is to disguise where the rear ends of the frames have been narrowed to allow the radial truck greater movement: it wasn't until fairly recently, when I was examining the rear of various C12 prototype photos that I realised that in the process of narrowing the frames I'd also brought the rear guard irons far too close together.

 

In comparing the arrangements at the back with those at the front, where the end parts of the frames - which also carry the front guard irons - are not part of the chassis but are permanently fixed to the underside of the footplate, I found myself wishing something similar had been done at the back... whereupon it dawned on me that I could do exactly that at the back for myself !

 

The first thing was to make two replica end pieces for the frames, with quarter-circular cut-outs for the trailing wheels. These would then have the guard irons and buffer gussets attached to them (after removing those parts from the chassis). The buffer gussets were secured through slots cut in the newly made pieces, and I put a U-shaped 0.45 mm wire pin through two of the half-etched rivets in the tops of the guard irons to secure them to the new pieces too - here are three stages in the construction of the assemblies:

 

And here are the two assemblies in place, with the chassis sitting between them:

 

I might add an inward facing lip or flange to each of those curved edges to help hide the gap between them and the chassis sides, but the above picture is of course a view you wouldn't normally see and there are many kit-built and RTR locos whose undersides look distinctly unprototypical, so I don't think it's a deal-breaker.

 

Much more important I think is how it looks from the sides:

 

With the radial truck and its wheels in place, the transition between the actual frames and the new pieces is rendered far less noticeable and overall, I think this will be quite effective. I also took off the rear lower corners of the chassis frames to below the drag beam - otherwise there'd have been two pairs of frame ends visible from the back!

 

It's a compromise, but one that I think works. As well as allowing a more correct spacing for the guard irons, it'll mean I can now terminate the pipe runs into holes in what appear to be the frames, but are in fact those new cosmetic pieces and they and the pipes will then be permanently fixed to the body underside, leaving the chassis free to lift out .

 

As far as I have been able to tell from studying quite a few prototype photos, the valance pipe runs do eventually go into holes in the lower rear frame sections, in exactly the same way as those N2 photos you posted on here a while back, David. It's a difficult feature to see on any of the photos - no-one at the time was interested enough to take such detailed photos of the underframe plumbing as those that you took of the N2! Eventually however, I managed to find a fairly straight-on profile photo in one of O.S. Nock's GNR books where you can just see what happens:

 

Edited May 15, 2022 by Chas Levin

[Chas Levin]

Both piping runs are now terminated into the new frame end-pieces that are fixed to the body - some tidying up still to do but pleased with the results so far:

 

Comparing this last photo to the prototype photo in my previous post, I think it's not too far off. The short downward section of piping at the end of the valance is further away from my valance end than the example in that photo, but this seems to have varied considerably between individual locos: some were hard up against the ends, some had a small gap - and occasional ones had a curved section of piping at each end instead of right-angled joints!

Edited May 15, 2022 by Chas Levin

[Daddyman]

Superb!

 

And this is your first etched kit?! 

[Chas Levin]

3 hours ago, Daddyman said:

Superb!

 

And this is your first etched kit?! 

Thanks David .

It's my first etched loco: I'd built one WM loco before this, four etched coaches and half a dozen etched vans or wagons (plus about the same numbers of both again, in plastic and WM). But yes, my first etched loco - and the first kit of any kind where I've tried adding detail more ambitious than a wagon works plate.

 

The two pipe joints (front and rear) on the SH piping were done using small sections of 1.5 mm od, 0.7 mm id tubing, but the small 'bulge' section on the rear horizontal run of the SH pipe - between the elbow and that joint - was a happy accident: I went to add a little solder where a gap was visible between the elbow and the horizontal section joining to it and it formed into that bulge, which to my eye resembles a similar feature I've seen on this type of piping. I decided to leave it there, as it adds another detail.

[Chas Levin]

Quick detour early this morning from plumbing to correct an error: the other day, I posted a picture very like the one below on Tony Wright's thread, one taken a little while ago and showing the hinged spectacles as I'd originally mounted them, on the outside of the spectacle plate. Tony kindly pointed out my error (I say 'kindly' because he mentioned having made the same mistake himself once on a D2, which is a nice way to do it ) and it's now been corrected:

 

I took another look at the Isinglass drawings and realised where I'd gone wrong: there are several drawings of the front and back views of the loco, some showing the cab contents via a cutaway, some the outer areas, some rear views, some front. For someone as inexperienced as I am in working with these types of drawings, it needs a little care to be sure of exactly what you're looking at, inside or outside, back or front! I'd confused a cutaway view of the cab interior as seen from the rear with the same view seen from the front and therefore thought the hinges were supposed to be visible on the exterior. I'd also seen the spectacle hinges visible on the exterior of a couple of others' models (which I had thought indicated a high level of detail!) and I'd assumed they weren't visible in prototype photos because of the accumulation of dirt.

So, the moral of the story might be, to paraphrase a well-known saying, check twice, solder once .

Edited May 15, 2022 by Chas Levin

[Chas Levin]

Time spent today round the back: first, a NEM pocket mount - after a little fettling, drilling and height adjustment - now sits between the rear ends of the frames:

 

Then, the rear vac standpipe, installed and connected to the piping from the front:

 

This is an occasion for a bit of a compromise - the connection to the standpipe has to be angled up and filed back in that way in order not to obstruct the NEM pocket. And in addition, I suspect I'm going to have to leave off the rear SH hose.

While that's a great pity, it's a an undeniable fact that the tension lock will disfigure the prototypical look of the rear to such an extent that a missing SH hose is, I think, akin to Titanic deck-chair territory.

And to forestall the obvious suggestion, I'm afraid I'm too wedded to the world of tension locks to abandon them .

 

Edited May 15, 2022 by Chas Levin

[Daddyman]

12 hours ago, Chas Levin said:

And to forestall the obvious suggestion, I'm afraid I'm too wedded to the world of tension locks to abandon them .

 

No need to abandon them - at least not on other models. But if you rig up some sort of neat (to your usual standard) goalpost, other stock will couple up, and you get the best of both worlds. 

[Chas Levin]

52 minutes ago, Daddyman said:

No need to abandon them - at least not on other models. But if you rig up some sort of neat (to your usual standard) goalpost, other stock will couple up, and you get the best of both worlds. 

Hmmm...

[Chas Levin]

Today, cab doors, courtesy of a handy little Mainly Trains detailing etch from Wizard Models:

 

One to be modelled closed and one open, so bending the hinges on one using small round-nosed pliers is the first job:

 

And then, after soldering and some cleaning up:

 

I was initially worried about the height of these doors, but after checking various prototype photos, it appears they were almost exactly this height in GNR days and were only extended in height to meet the tank and bunker sides in later years, which suits the period I'm modelling on this occasion .

Edited May 15, 2022 by Chas Levin

[Chas Levin]

Back to the chassis today; 0.7 mm id tubing having arrived a while back while I was busy with plumbing, I was able to resume work on the brake rigging. I now know that 0.7 mm id tube is a good working fit on 0.7 mm wire! Probably sounds very obvious to anyone who's been using such materials for a while, but I'd only ever used far larger tubing where a mm or two of clearance is useful, so I'd assumed you'd need 0.8 mm id tubing to fit on 0.7 mm wire...

Anyway, to business: first thing was to add 1.5mm lengths of tubing to the upper ends of the brake shoes, and two pieces of 0.45 mm id tubing to the pull rod ends:

 

The other ends of the brake shoes are then hooked onto the cross shafts, the unsoldered assembly positioned on the upturned chassis so that the shoe angles can be set and the shoes soldered to the shafts. Then, the brake cross shaft, short and long cross shaft levers and the 0.45 mm wire to connect the short levers and pull rod ends are added to the chassis - you can also see in this photo how the pull rods fit into the two pieces of 0.45 mm tube soldered to the pull rod ends. The short levers aren't soldered to the cross shaft, so that the whole rigging assembly can pivot down once the shoes are unhooked:

 

And here's the finished result - though without any trimming of surplus rod or cleaning up, shown with the shoes unhooked from their wire hangers so that the rigging pivots down on the cross shaft:

 

And here's the rigging completely detached, by simply pulling the pull rods out of the tubing on the pull rod ends:

 

Lots of trimming and cleaning to do of course; that'll necessitate stripping down the chassis completely, so I'll take the opportunity to make new pickups - 0.3 mm PB wire may work well if the pickups are very short, but it's a little to flexible here and keeps dislodging - and I'll paint the chassis, before re-assembling and setting up and running in the drive properly.

 

I found a solution to one problem that had concerned me about the wire-in-tube system of hooking the shoes on while reading Will L's Buckjumper thread on the S4 forum: I'd been worried about the amount of deformation that would be caused to the rigging by slipping the tubing on and off the projecting hanger wires, but Will noted that those wire hangers can of course be trimmed back to just what's needed to secure the tubing, because the tubing itself provides the correct shoe-to-chassis spacing: simple, but brilliant!

Edited May 15, 2022 by Chas Levin

[Chas Levin]

Right, that's better: some meatier pickups installed:

 

I've also gone back to ordinary heatshrink instead of the Mercontrol sheathing, whose slippery texture made adjusting the pickups more difficult.

This is now 0.5 mm PB wire instead of the previous 0.35 (which I wrongly described earlier as 0.3). It's surprising how much difference 0.15 mm makes to its rigidity. It'll be more difficult to bend to shape but it should now stay where it's put...

Edited May 15, 2022 by Chas Levin

[Chas Levin]

Buffer housings made up and fitted last night, a procedure not enhanced by discovering, after securely soldering on the third housing - the first on to go the front, that it was 0.6 mm longer than the other three!

These were in a sealed Alan Gibson pack supplied with the kit and it hadn't occurred to me to check their uniformity before using them. The first two on the back matched and I only saw the discrepancy once I'd moved to working on the front, when I offered up the final one - the back and front of the loco are sufficiently far apart that comparisons don't leap to the eye :

 

No matter, these things happen and it was easily filed back:

 

Another lesson learned then: best check these things before wielding the hot iron. I should have thought of it though, from a similar lesson learned with electrical components: buying ten mass-produced and machine-packed capacitors you'd expect them all to be the same value (to within the manufacturer's tolerance) but that's not always the case...

 

Otherwise, very pleased! I've not used Gibson sprung buffers before - I've always simply gone with what's in the kit - but these do look considerably better even than high quality turned brass, so I'll be using them from now on.

 

Probably measure them in future, though...

Edited May 15, 2022 by Chas Levin

[Chas Levin]

One steam dome, priming, for the prevention of:

 

I'm in two minds as to whether to put a more visible lip back in round the base. Looking at prototype photos there are plenty of both mounting styles visible; lipped edges seem more common - roughly two thirds of the C2/C12 photos I've collected - but a completely smooth join seems more usual for the GNR period, so I'll probably leave it as it is. In fact this photo is a little deceptive, as there is a very slight lip visible for the lower quarter on each side.

Edited May 15, 2022 by Chas Levin

[Chas Levin]

The steam dome has some company:

 

They're soldered on, using 70 degree between 145-tinned boiler and fitting undersides, with the spigots of the dome and safety valves reinforced with plenty of 70 degree inside the boiler; the chimney spigot will be similarly reinforced with araldite (as I can't get in there with the iron) once all the soldering's finished (and the appearance of chimney lean in the second picture is phone lens distortion btw).

And a hearty vote of appreciation for this little gadget (thanks for the recommendation David!):

 

(http://www.poppyswoodtech.co.uk/tools.html)

 

Deceptively simple, effectively accurate (usual disclaimer). Next will be the smokebox door (which needs a handrail adding) and the missing boiler band that goes (or must look as if it goes) under the dome, which will be done with insulating tape. Pretty much there on the body after those things are done - and the chassis too, aside from one or two minor details - the lower part of the handbrake column to be added to the chassis in such a way that it looks right from the side, though it'll stop short beneath the body underside.

I'm looking forward to re-assembling the chass after painting and getting it running nicely

Edited May 15, 2022 by Chas Levin