On Tim L's P4 Workbench - progress with locos

[Coal Tank]

Ver y impressive models 

John 

[RThompson]

Good to see you've been doing some modelling Tim unlike myself as you could probably tell when I've parked up opposite your house blocking the sunlight out!

 

I'm hoping to get time to do some modelling after Christmas.

[jwealleans]

Bill Bedford has threatened to do the 17T hoppers, but I haven't seen mine as yet.   As you say, a much more common vehicle than you'd know from looking at layouts.

[Tim Lewis]

A few more J25 pictures for micklner.  I don't remember too much about the construction as it was a long time ago now, though I do remember it was quite hard work, with very little help in locating things and some tabs and slots not lining up properly etc.  I think this just reflects the age of the kit, which must have been designed in the late 70s or so I reckon.

 

Anyway, here's a view of the underside of the tender - there is a lot of lead partly because the springs are relatively heavy gauge wire and need a bit of weighting down (maybe I'll change to a lighter gauge at some point, but it runs well now so I'm not in an hurry to change it).  I had to cut some of the tender floor away to make space for the motor and the chip :

 

 

and the underside of the loco body:

 

 

Mick has mentioned the absence of the sloping bit of the coal space in the kit - this may well be true, but I don't remember it as it was always the intention to run with a full coal load to hide the motor in the tender, and the motor sits where the sloping bit would be:

 

An example of the poor fit of tabs and slots is the join between firebox and footplate, however, I think the prototype has a piece of metal along this join (possibly the top of the frames?) which I've not put on yet, and which should help to disguise it a bit:

 

 

I used the smokebox door casting and etched straps from the kit and initially used a smokebox door dart from (I think) Crownline:

 

 

 

Later on, I replaced the smokebox dart with a homemade version using two Gibson shoulderless handrail knobs, squeezed a bit to make them flatter, which i think was an improvement:

 

 

I don't have any more pictures, but hope these are of some use.

 

Cheers.