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227 took a turn on the Scotch goods as promised and all looked well.

 

227-running-in.jpg

 

The train itself has evolved since the Southampton show and will look different.   I've built some container flats which will appear, but I've also, after a recommendation by Andy Sparkes on RMWeb, read a book called Mixed Traffic by R Barnard Way.  I may have mentioned this before.  Published in 1937, the author was a journalist who clearly had a strong interest in railways and persuaded them to allow him to ride on particular workings and then write up his experiences.   It's an interesting book and includes a trip with the 15:40 Scotch Goods.   The little nugget I gathered from it was that it was booked to stop at Sandy and collect fruit and vegetable traffic which was added to the head of the train.   All the pictures I've been working from were taken further south and have containers leading.  Henceforth there will be fruit traffic.

 

Grantham-scotch-goods-1.jpg

 

I also built a couple more 'foreign' vans, just to mix it up.   There's a MOGO somewhere as well, but it must have been put into a different box last time we packed up.   I reckoned these could plausibly have come north from Feltham for forwarding.    Some LMS ones would be an idea when I spot a likely kit.

 

Grantham-scotch-goods-2.jpg

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The clearly unfinished Stirling 174 and the 4-4-0 are more purist-upsetting pieces of plastic loco construction stuffed with lead. The 174 has a healthy dose of modified Kitmaster parts thrown in too, and will certainly be a one-off. The 4-4-0, still currently held together by double-sided tape and gravity is in separable chunks to ultimately permit copying as resin castings, not including the idiosyncratic four-coupled driving portion of the chassis which I'm sure won't suit everybody. The other quirk with these locos is that they are supposed to finish up so that either one is able to take an additional home-brewed tender drive mechanism currently under the 4-4-0's tender, the gear ratios and electrical connections being suitably matched all round.

 

Daft enough so far? 

 

The C, or J21 body and tender tank / bunker are modified / detailed / smoothed 3D prints which were produced (in limited numbers I believe) by a fellow LNER enthusiast, fitted as per the designer's intention to modified chassis units from Bachmann SECR C class.

 

Also sneaking in to the views are a GNR ballast brake built last winter from a vintage D&S kit, and some of Bill Bedford's "Mousa Models" 3D printed GNR six wheeled carriages. The latter came with one of the better 3D printed surface finishes that I've seen, but still benefitted in my view from some careful fine scraping to remove subtle ridges before "teaking".

Edited by gr.king
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  • 3 weeks later...

Leeds has been and gone and you can read all about it on the Grantham thread.   I was back at the bench today and fancied a wagon.   It's been a while.   The latest recruit to the Grantham operating team, Steve Pearce, kindly gave me a bag of wagon kits at the running weekend and one of them was the McGowan GN brake van kit.   It shows its age a bit but with a few replacement parts and a bit of detail it passes muster at normal viewing distance.  

 

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If I remember, I'll have this in the stock for Doncaster and Steve can see it in action.

 

The main build at the moment is still the J5 and now equipped with mandrels again I was able to remove excess material such that the chassis rolled without fouling anywhere.   I then made up the rods and for the first time I can ever remember I had a free rolling chassis with nothing more than cleaning up the holes.   Testament to the accuracy of the design and etching.  The rods are nice and chunky too - the ones on the J6 felt terribly delicate when I was putting it together.

 

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16 hours ago, jwealleans said:

Leeds has been and gone and you can read all about it on the Grantham thread.   I was back at the bench today and fancied a wagon.   It's been a while.   The latest recruit to the Grantham operating team, Steve Pearce, kindly gave me a bag of wagon kits at the running weekend and one of them was the McGowan GN brake van kit.   It shows its age a bit but with a few replacement parts and a bit of detail it passes muster at normal viewing distance.  

 

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If I remember, I'll have this in the stock for Doncaster and Steve can see it in action.

 

The main build at the moment is still the J5 and now equipped with mandrels again I was able to remove excess material such that the chassis rolled without fouling anywhere.   I then made up the rods and for the first time I can ever remember I had a free rolling chassis with nothing more than cleaning up the holes.   Testament to the accuracy of the design and etching.  The rods are nice and chunky too - the ones on the J6 felt terribly delicate when I was putting it together.

 

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Anything else in that bag of goodies? :wink_mini: It is Christmas soon …

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For the benefit of anyone else building this kit, this is the drivetrain I've chosen.  

 

LRM-J5-3.jpg

 

It's a High Level Road Runner Plus with the smaller of the two coreless motors Chris offers attached.  Despite apparent appearance in the above picture it goes into the firebox vertically.  Here it is with its clothes back on.

 

LRM-J5-4.jpg

Edited by jwealleans
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6 hours ago, jwealleans said:

I've just brought you a box of goodies into the house, control yourself.

 

3 hours ago, gr.king said:

There's even something in that box that he doesn't yet know about. I bet he wishes he hadn't spent all that money on his motorbike now...

:o I’m not sure if I’m excited or scared….

 

Well it was only a small job, but seeing as it has a Harley Davidson badge on it, it cost an arm and a leg. It was only a battery terminal had melted “that’ll be $350 thanks”…. But I have a ride planned this weekend for two days. Both of your wallets will be considerably heavier next week. 

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10 hours ago, jwealleans said:

For the benefit of anyone else building this kit, this is the drivetrain I've chosen.  

 

LRM-J5-3.jpg

 

It's a High Level Road Runner Plus with the larger of the two coreless motors Chris offers attached.  Despite apparent appearance in the above picture it goes into the firebox vertically.  Here it is with its clothes back on.

 

LRM-J5-4.jpg

 

Rearward facing front guard irons? Have I missed something in earlier notes?

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1 hour ago, jwealleans said:

Construction all but over on the J5.  I found I was missing the piano front, so awaiting that before fitting the front vac upstand.  Boiler to fill with lead, boiler bands and handrails then tidying up.   The tender corners need filling.   Tender top is as speculative as all the others, though most of the pictures of these seem to show a huge pile of rubbish coal in the tender, so what detail I've added may be lost anyway.

 

LRM-J5-5.jpg

 

Frames have been washed and will now go in the airing cupboard to dry and warm before painting.

 

This has been a nice kit to put together.  You have to be on your toes - the instructions didn't mention everything, I had to use photographs as well - but all in all I've enjoyed making it up to this point.   Thanks to Paul for his advice behind the scenes.

I’m no expert, but I don’t think you can run wagons like that!!! 

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Waiting for bits for the RTO, I made a start on one of the acquired carriages this evening.   Although assembled, they need a bit of work doing - and undoing - before they can be finished.  This is the starting point (they're all built to pretty much the same point):

 

D23-unstarted.jpg

 

First - and absolutely no disrespect intended to Dave, who has built these well and entirely as they were intended to be built - why do people insist on producing carriages which have removable roofs instead of splitting at the solebar?  I'm sorry if you've read this before, but it baffles me.   It baffles me even more that the professionals do it when it makes it so much harder to finish them.  You'll see in the images below, the minimal space available to paint and finish the interiors or make the changes I want to make here as well as the roof join being much harder to conceal.  I was looking at an ECJS vehicle at ground level last week and it's quite apparent that they come apart at the solebar - you can see daylight clear across the thing under the body - so why not have the join where it is on the prototype instead of where it's more obvious and harder to conceal?  Dave, bless him, had at least made the roof bolt on rather than gluing it as a lot of builders do.   Look at the last picture in this post and imagine what an ordeal it's going to be getting the handrail along the corridor windows.  It's all so unnecessarily hard.   Don't even get me onto having to prise off a glued roof to replace some glazing which has fallen out, instead of unscrewing the body.

 

Right, rant over.   What do we need to do?  The corridor connectors need to come off.   They'd have had to be removed for painting anyway, but I've tried to use them before and when placed against another similarly fitted vehicle they're simply too bulky and stop them coupling easily and moving against each other.   All the door and commode handles also need to come back off.  I know Dave intended these to be finished in teak, but for me they'll make it impossible to mask for blood and custard.  I'm not sure how he'd have lined behind the commode handles anyway.  The roof needs vent and tank filler holes drilling and destination board holders as well as alarm gear and the rain deflectors.  Then there's the bogies and coupling provision.   I'll go into those in more detail.

 

These were built to EM and fitted with what I think Dave said are Mitchell-Pendleton bogies.

 

M-P-bogie-1.jpg

 

I've had a few carriages with these on from him and had just discarded them (after robbing the MJT sides off a few).  However I had been messing about with one one day and was struck by how freely it ran.  Given what I said yesterday about this being a heavy train for a (likely Hornby) 4-6-0, I decided to see whether they would regauge to OO.

 

As you can see above, the bogie has two pairs of wires above and below the frames.   These need to go between the wheelsets.  The top ones were not a problem, but viewed from underneath it was obvious that OO wheels would foul the retaining wires.  

 

M-P-bogie-2.jpg

 

These bogies have two sets of springing: the carriage rests and swivels on the top pair of wires, while each wheel has a sprung bearing which slides up and down in slots in the bogie frame.  The bottom wires simply retain the wheelsets, so repositioning them wouldn't have any unforeseen effects on the mechanics of the bogie.   I removed the wires from the holes in the bolster and added two short pieces of tube inboard where the shape of the etch nicely located them.   Pleasingly, this assembly works and they're beautifully free running.  You can see the amended bogie below.

 

M-P-bogie-3.jpg

 

Bogies dealt with, it was time to consider couplings.   There was a slot in the buffer beam of each vehicle, presumably for whatever system Dave intended to employ.   I use Bill Bedford's etched couplings for carriages (formerly available from Eileen's, but no longer supplied) which requires an 8BA nut soldered to the floor just behind the end of the carriage.   Two issues with that:

 

D23-underside.jpg

 

From underneath, a second thickness of brass has been added to the floor where I want to drill through for the nut (the brass hex is the mount for the bogie).

 

D23-internal-end.jpg

 

From above you can see how awkward it is to get the iron in and the complete impossibility of going right round the nut with it.   In the end I drilled then enlarged the hole and tinned round it first, then positioned the nut and melted it into place.  I managed not to melt the end casting or hit any of the whitemetal vent hoods with the iron, but I have two more to do so there's still time.

 

Incidentally, I now gather that these bogies are still available from Dave Bradwell.  I'm tempted to use them again, but we'll see how this set runs once complete.

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Hi Jonathan,

 

With regard to the mounting point for the Bill Bedford couplings, why not simply sweat a further layer of metal from below and then drill/tap the hole?

 

I nearly always split the roof from the body and the body from the underframe, it makes the painting of each so much easier.  The exception is for Gresleys as I find that you really need the roof attached to the body at the ends otherwise you get yawning gaps where the profile sweeps down.

 

I do, however, find it essential to secure all of the elements together firmly with bolts that keep them in tension/contact with each other.  Nothing looks less real than big cracks between components.  This is how I do it when I design from scratch:

 

https://highlandmiscellany.com/2018/10/27/midland-six-wheeled-full-brakes-part-1/

 

 

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  • RMweb Gold

What is the best method of attaching a MJT aluminium roof (with whitemetal ends for vestibuled coaches) to brass bodies?

 

I've tried a couple of times to get things like gorilla glue to adhere to the aluminium but failed :(

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Hi Mark,

 

Using captive nuts is a habit, I suppose - it's just what I've always done.   I agree about Gresley roofs and as I usually use MJT ones (these are Kirk, I think) which are in three parts, you can't really get away without attaching the whole thing to the body.   These are a decent fit, no complaints about the workmanship there.   Mine are never this good, which is probably why I abandoned the idea very quickly.

 

These are MJT kits, which are in 3 half-etched layers for the lower panelling (I assume that's what you meant).   RDEB kits follow the same approach.

 

Richard, I use epoxy and stick the roof section and ends on all at the same time after some preparatory filing.   Like Dave here, I put some scrap etch or strip along the top of each side to give the glue some 'land' to adhere to.  Up to now it's always been secure enough to stand up to the filling and filing which then followd to try to hide the joins.

Edited by jwealleans
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Multiple packages arrived this week so we were able to progress on multiple fronts.

 

LRM-J5-6.jpg]

 

J5 now all but done and ready for final filling and fettling before paint.  The balance weights are to add and I need to make a handbrake upstand for the tender.   Tonight I reassembled the frames ready for pickups to be fitted and there'll be a few days of test running now i have the facility.  The mech has had a few hours on the rolling road this evening.

 

BB-GE-RTO.jpg

 

I fitted the corridor connectors to the RTO and added the little gallows brackets which are visible in the photo I have.  Incidentally, does anyone know why this still had gas cylinders even after conversion to electric light?  There was no pantry, so was it a supplementary supply to the kitchen car?

 

D23-primed.jpg

 

The first D23 also detailed and primed.  I've added roof vents and fillers, rain deflectors, buffers, the vac pipe along the solebar, jumper cables and bogie steps.  This will be ready for paint soon, so I'll have to see what spray cans I have which still work.   What are people using for BR cream these days?  I gather Vauxhall Gazelle Beige is not easily available.

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