Steve's Caledonian loco work bench

[Northroader]

The pump was normally placed with the steam cylinder at the top and the air cylinder underneath. There's a pipe from the driving cab which supplies steam through a valve in the cab into the top cylinder and a pipe leaving the cylinder on the opposite side which exhausts the steam into the smoke box, discharging up the chimney. Air intake on the lower cylinder is usually through a small can shaped filter placed nearby, and the compressed air is piped out on the side of the cylinder to be taken into a large reservoir to feed the braking system. This delivery was very hot after the air had been compressed, and there can be quite a long pipe run to help cool the air. American locos in particular have a long "grid" of pipes on the side for this.

[Londontram]

Most Caledonian locos had the air pump near to or on the side of the cab where the fireman could keep an eye on it but due to the cab design of the 104 class the pump was on the front of the tank and because of this there was a governor fitted to the top of the pump to stop it "running away"

[Sandy Harper]

Hi Steve

 

Thought you might like to see the tender of the '49 painted and lined. The parts are just balancing on each other as I have not yet secured them together. The loco is part way through the lining process but has a few weeks more work to complete it!

 

Regards

Sandy

 

[Londontram]

Outstanding work Sandy.

      My copy of Ian Rathbone's book has arrived so I'm just digesting that at the moment and will start practicing on a sprayed sheet of plasticard before I even think about touching the locos.

[Blandford1969]

Stunning work

[Londontram]

Well its taken some time and a lot of research but its done, at last a project finished.

       All that work looking at images getting the colour right touching in the detail I can now put the paint brush down and sit back knowing the job has been done to the best of my ability.

        Yes my friends and fellow forum followers here it is unveiled for the first time I give you........

 

                                       Angus

 

                   

 

Yes I know you all thought the day would never come but that day has dawned and I feel my whole modeling life has been fulfilled. Now this major project is done I just need to wrap up the 10 locos, the 30 coaches and a good 40 or so wagons most of which haven't even been started yet.

     So I better start thinking what I'm going to do next when that's all done still I guess something will come along.

                                                                                           Steve

 

[richard i]

Well its taken some time and a lot of research but its done, at last a project finished.

       All that work looking at images getting the colour right touching in the detail I can now put the paint brush down and sit back knowing the job has been done to the best of my ability.

        Yes my friends and fellow forum followers here it is unveiled for the first time I give you........

 

                                       Angus

 

                    Angus.jpg

 

Yes I know you all thought the day would never come but that day has dawned and I feel my whole modeling life has been fulfilled. Now this major project is done I just need to wrap up the 10 locos, the 30 coaches and a good 40 or so wagons most of which haven't even been started yet.

     So I better start thinking what I'm going to do next when that's all done still I guess something will come along.

                                                                                           Steve

I know how you feel, that is the necessity of pre grouping building everything.

Would angus benefit from a wash if black or brown to bring variation to his coat and highlight his hairiness?

[46256]

Look forward to ....digesting more of Angus in near future....keep up the good work steve

[Sandy Harper]

Hi Steve 

I hope you're enjoying Ian's book. It is very detailed. I have found that the two most important things, well three actually, are the shape and quality of your bow pen, the correct thickness of paint and practice, practice, practice. You can get drawing sets on ebay quite cheaply but it is hit and miss if you will get a good enough quality pen with them. I bought about three sets before I realized that if you want to draw fine lines with any consistency you need to buy a Haff. I got mine direct from Haff in Germany and they were not as expensive as you would think. Just over £30 each. I bought both a single pen and the instrument for drawing circles. As an offset pen, I use it almost exclusively for loco lining and only use the single pen for coaches. I do use Fox transfers as well  for long straight lines, like the tender tank sides, and boiler bands.

I also use Linseed oil as a paint thinner, if needed, rather than ordinary white spirit or enamel thinners.

 

The other thing you will find with Ians method is that you spend more time removing paint that putting it on! This is where you need the Winsor and Newton 00 pure sable brush to get your lines nice and clean.

 

On the photo you will see that I have done the white lines for the cab sides and cleaned them up. All was completed using the offset pen with just a few additions using the brush where I couldn't get the pen in around the handrail.

 

This is why it takes so long to line a loco of this size and complexity (for me at least!) The cab lining took me about 30 minutes this morning plus another 30mins to tidy up. But I can't touch the model now until tomorrow! Of course a professional painter will have a number of jobs on the go at the same time and will just move from one model to the next. The cab sides will take at least 4 days to allow for drying time.

 

Regards

Sandy

 

[Sandy Harper]

Hi STeve

 

I hope this finds you well, as we have not heard from you for some time.

 

Kind regards

Sandy

[Londontram]

Sorry Sandy with the warmer weather I've been tied up catching up with jobs round the house like decorating etc. plus I'm all spent up with buying the wife a new cooker and various other things so any modeling maters have had to take a back seat for a couple of weeks or at least being only of the arm chair variety.

 

     That's the trouble with modeling - life has an annoying habit of getting in the way from time to time.

 

  Hopefully in the next few days I'm going to try and get a coat of black on my 782 tank and when I do that I'll spray a sheet of plasticard as well so I can have a practice at using the pens and trying the lining.

 

   The other thing which Andy uax6 (What does that mean by the way) can vouch for is I'm having a bit of a battle setting up my new Silhouette cutter and getting it to except my extensive files of Inkscape drawings so I can get back to cutting out and doing some more carriage building as well but at the moment its fighting me at every step but I'm lucky that as well as Andy fellow forum member Jason forum tag JCL has been helping me a lot and we've just about cracked it I hope. So as you can see there's been lots going on back stage so to speak.

                         Steve

[Buhar]

Andy uax6 (What does that mean by the way) 

I think it's something to do with telephone exchanges.  Andy does appear to have some eclectic interests, wasn't it he who cut a gasket for an old car on the silhouette?

[uax6]

I would like to think I'm a bit of an old school English eccentric really.... The uax bit is after the name given to small telephone exchanges by the GPO, as at one time I had the largest collection of the differing types in the country. Now, after getting married I'm down to just having 2....

Yes I did cut diff and half shaft gaskets for my moggy ( which reminds me that I need to cut some more).

But I also have pulse clocks and a master clock around the house, and beam above the Rayburn in the kitchen with various types of insulators on them.

There's also the searchlight signal, dod and ground frame in the garden, a library of books, bardics used as door stops (I just need a mod version to compleat the set).

 

The golden rule I was told many years ago was this:

Don't ever be a bore on one subject, if you can, show enough interest in many subjects so that you can bore in all of them.

 

Anyway we're going a bit of here aren't we?

 

Andy g

[Corbs]

Just caught up on this thread Steve (following on from your link on the other thread), superb stuff! Glad to see a spot of colour on Angus as well

[Mad McCann]

Well, once I've got my ceiling plastered and the stove in, I've got a couple of corner shelves which will accommodate my three (one marked LNER) cordeaux standard insulators and my 1949 Belgian telephone!

 

Dave.

[Londontram]

What is it with the British and collecting, before my accident I had a collection of over two hundred of the 1960/70s Action man figures all complete with full uniforms and equipment. I made the local papers and was even interviewed on Radio Norfolk, but things change and one has to move on and the collection was sold to a collector in America for an undisclosed but very exceptable sum.

[46256]

I had an action man deserter ( empty box) for one Christmas....

[Londontram]

Oh how we laughed - you cant beat an old one can you

[46256]

Sorry Steve...of course my sister had it better she received a divorced Barbie....came complete with kens house....yacht....sports car...best wishes for the coming festive season...looking forward to seeing more of your models in the new year...best wishes brian

[JCL]

Would you believe my neighbours are called Barbie and Ken?

 

Steve, I'm looking forward to seeing what else you are going to do with yous Silhouette now you have the bug.

 

I hope 2017 is good to you.

 

cheers

 

Jason

[Londontram]

Well after almost a year of no loco building (though there's been an awful lot of other stuff going on mainly wagon drawing and building) I've got the loco mojo again and feel ready to start another little project. In the mean time as well as wagons I've been doing some commission work and have I think finalized the concept for my own layout to which I'm now buying material as fund permit. Some of you might have seen the idea and concept for Lochaven and in coming up with that idea has meant I could revise my loco and stock needs and found that just about everything I had either built or being built would more than fill my needs some projects like the Cardean 4-6-0 build and Grampian coaches would actually be mothballed as it would be to large for the new layout.

 

As well as drawing wagons I've been drawing and building some much older coaching stock going back to the 1870s but found most of my present projects at 1890s to 1910 designs being to modern to pull a rake like this plus if modeling cir 1905 you would need locos older than 15 years anyway.

 

so I was looking at a loco that might have been a top link loco that's seeing out its last days on say local trains and going through the books came up with this.

Which is a Caledonian railway Conner class 1 a 2-4-0 secondary express loco built between 1869 and 1871

As stated they were built for secondary express duties having 6ft 2in wheels where top express locos had 7ft or even 8ft wheels. They came in the pre Drummond era who's designs would sweep away most of these older designs and this class had all gone by 1910

 

This project has only been made possible with the help made available by fellow member Jim Watt aka Caley Jim who posts on here with his wonderful 2mm fine scale Caledonian modeling. Jim supplied me with several sets of plans showing the locos at different stages of there lives.

 

Well that's the general outline I'll flesh it out more in the next post along with some pictures of progress so far

   Steve

Edited July 26, 2017 by Londontram

[Londontram]

The Conner has quite a lot of intricate detail on the body mainly in the outside frames and splashers so I decided to build in plasticard using the Silhouette cutter to assist cutting out these detailed parts

 

Here is some plans of the loco provided by Caley Jim showing the loco at different stages and builders the loco being buit by Dubs and Co and Neilson and at this stage I'm going for a Neilson built example as seen in the first picture with the "GWR" style safety valve bonnet.

The plan is to build the inner chassis along conventional lines in brass with a mitsumi motor driving through a high level gearbox to Markits 6ft 2in wheels the front wheel and tender wheels will be standards Markits 14 mm tender wheels the front wheel will have a degree of side to side movement to help in points and corners. the motion will be from brass and fixed to this structure.

 

The outer frames will be like the rest of the loco made from plastic and I've already started to do the first basic drafts on Inkscape and here's a few pictures

Here is a general view of the work done so far the red chassis section is a template to the inner brass chassis.

A close up look at the outer side frame.

finally a look at the forward splasher with the sand box, I've draw this as a full circle as it will be easier to cut to fit rather than try and predict the fit by pre cutting. I'm still thinking about the tender tank and might go with cutting down a GBL T9 one I have in stock which will save time and give me the ready made flare at the top. Purists will notice the chassis is unsprung...... hmm still thinking about that but when done I intend having pickups on both the loco main wheels and the tender wheels. so there we are so far I'd love to here your views on what I've out lined.

 

Heres a last look at the loco close up

Edited July 26, 2017 by Londontram

[Northroader]

Great news, Steve, best wishes for this project, lovely loco to pick, although the splashers would be enough to put me off. Where's your thoughts on the Lochavon layout, and how's the NBR 040 fit in?

[BlueLightning]

Steve,

 

Good to see you back building locos. She is beautiful!! I am really gonna look forward to seeing this one progress, I think the choice of a GBL T9 tender is perfect. I cut one down to use for my LBSCR B1 and with a bit more cut out the body would be a perfect start for the one you need.

 

Gary

[Londontram]

Here's the link to Lochaven I wont go into detail as my thoughts are well covered there but suffice to say its a small fictional coastal terminus on the Callander and Oban line hence the reason locos like Cardean and the Grampian coaches wont be viable.

 

http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/122717-lochaven-a-caledonian-coastal-branchline/

 

The NBR 040 was a commission project initially just to draw and cut the parts but the more I do the more it looks like I'll end up doing most of it

 

Yes I know what you mean about the splashers but learning more about the Silhouette has convinced me that I'm now at a stage where I can do them, the rest of the loco is once you strip it back to its bones fairly conventional the only concerns I have is around the valve gear/front wheel getting that all to work in such a confined space though the first thing I'll do is go back and have a look at Graham Tipple and his Oban Bogie build which if I recall right has a similar valve gear layout with the double frames