Fowler 150 hp diesel shunter

[Gordon A]

Funnily enough I wondered the same, but if two have done this probably not. I will take a picture of the underneath and post it here tomorrow.

 

Gordon

[Gordon A]

For the front spacer I cut a piece of nickel silver to fit between the frames but longer front to back. I overlaid this piece on the under side of Mike's spacer and soldered in place. I then ground (A bit crudely)  a recess in the front edge to give me easier access to the front screw.

 

For the back I shaped another piece of nickel silver in a similar manner but to give a representation of the gearbox bottom. This is b Because the jack shaft axle is a close fit to the Mike's back spacer. Again  I ground a recess for the screwdriver in both spacers.

 

Also for part 30 Hand Brake Linkage I could not find a hole on the right hand side for the shaft under the cab, so using Mike's drawing marked and drilled a hole to anchor the end under the cab.

 

I hope this is of some help.

Rocking axle and brakes next.

 

Gordon A

[Michael Edge]

15 hours ago, Ruston said:

Any chance of a photo of the underneath, Gordon? I've started one of these and have the frames assembled and the running plate with the piece that takes the bodywork now has the nuts soldered to it but access to the screws that fit in this, between the frames, is very difficult. The small frame spacers near the ends are getting in the way. I'm wondering if I have done something wrong.

You've probably not done anything wrong, sometimes the screws are really difficult to access. I usually hold them on the  end of a magnetised screwdriver. I do try to keep the screw heads accessible and still hold everything together adequately but sometimes it's just impossible - in our EE1 kit some of the screws eventually have to be left out (although they are useful while building it) because the sandboxes get in the way.

[Gordon A]

The current state of my model.

 

 

 

Unfortunately ME did not include the single foot steps which I have made from a scrap piece of etch.

Some more details to add before cleaning for priming.  I have managed to loose the radiator and fuel filler caps so will have to make those.

[Ruston]

You've got further than I, Gordon. I really struggled to get the shape on the engine covers. NS is a lot tougher than brass and I'm not used to it. I heated it up until it was red but it didn't anneal like brass does. I've since learned that you have to quench it.

 

I've also lost one of the valances that run the length of the running plate and will have to make one from scratch.

[Gordon A]

Sorry to hear that you have had a few problems.

I cold rolled the engine covers  with a bit of force and ignorance.

 

Gordon A

[Michael Edge]

3 hours ago, Ruston said:

You've got further than I, Gordon. I really struggled to get the shape on the engine covers. NS is a lot tougher than brass and I'm not used to it. I heated it up until it was red but it didn't anneal like brass does. I've since learned that you have to quench it.

 

I've also lost one of the valances that run the length of the running plate and will have to make one from scratch.

That's one of the reasons we mostly use brass, the Fowler is n/s because the rods were usually left bright. Annealing n/s shouldn't be any different to brass, I certainly don't quench it, just let it cool from red hot.

[Ruston]

I've got a rolling chassis now. Brakes next.

[Gordon A]

Looks good. Which version are you going for ie exhaust, air tanks, radiator and hand grabs?

 

Gordon A

[Ruston]

1 minute ago, Gordon A said:

Looks good. Which version are you going for ie exhaust, air tanks, radiator and hand grabs?

 

Gordon A

I'm building the original radiator version. It'll have the air tanks upright, next to the cab. I'll probably just put a stubby exhaust through the top of the engine casing.

[Daddyman]

I've just about got mine finished, and am ready to start putting castings on.

 

 

I experienced some problems when I first tried this in October and abandoned it, but I restarted it a couple of days ago and now have it almost finished. Below I'll detail some of the problems I had and how I solved them, in case they can be of use to others. 

 

The problems that led me to abandoning it were the same as Ruston's above. Mike, I love your kits to bits but this armour-plating you've used on this and the 2MT is horrible to work with! It's a right sod to bend when it's full thickness, and even worse when it's half etched - as on the steps here. I annealed the engine casing, but all that achieves is covering the parts in a black deposit which prevents solder adhering, and is very difficult to remove. Even annealed, this NS becomes work hardened after the slightest working. Like Ruston, I couldn't get a smooth curve on the engine casing top, but one advantage of the thickness of the metal is that  you can sand a smooth curve into it, which is what I had to resort to doing. Of course that means you lose all the rivets you've carefully put in, but again, the bodywork being so thick, it's hard to punch decent scale rivets anyway. I was using the 2mm-scale attachment on the GW press but still got overscale swollen lumps, and as said in a post above, they get in the way of the engine room doors. I ended up sanding off the ones that I'd done, and not attempting to punch rivets anywhere else on the loco, meaning that I'll have to do hundreds of them with Archer's - not a job I enjoy. I remember reading somewhere that JE pride themselves on not using overlays, but I'm not sure what the thinking is behind this. The ES1 had overlays for the sides and the rivets are beautiful; it didn't have them for the bonnet tops, and the 90-odd rivets I punched out are more or less invisible after fibre-glass brushing, priming, painting and weathering - and not just on mine. 

 

Once I'd got over the casing problems, everything went swimmingly, as evinced by the fact I've built it virtually from zero in 2 days. I made jigs for bending the handrails out of pcb with the copper coating removed and sanded down to about 0.6 thickness, to space the handrails a realistic distance from the bodywork. For the smaller bonnet-side doors I made the pcb strip 1.4mm wide, and for the cab-door handle 2.3mm. I'm afraid I didn't keep measurements for the grab handle on the rear of the cab. Speaking of measurements, I found that the cab "doorstep" needed reducing in width to 1.85mm if lined up with the footplate edge. Perhaps with this information others can avoid having to file it down in situ as I had to...

 

The only other problem so far has been the cab roof. Mike, you trust the modeller to bend engine room sides and tops in one piece, why not do the same for cab sides and cab roofs? - that is, make them a-one piece etching which the modeller folds up. Most of the JE kits I've made - this one, the 06, the NB 2700s, the 2MT - have the roof to side joint in a really awkward place, with too little metal to get hold of to make the bend, and a joint where you least want one. On the 06 I ended up replacing the cab sides and roof with a one-piece component which I cut out from sheet brass. I think I may need to do the same on the NB shunter, and certainly on the 2MT. (The problem of the roof needing to look 5 thou is got around by chamfering its 10 thou edges.) On this kit there's the same problem of a joint one can't fill or sand to shape as there is a line of rivets right on the joint. 

 

Looking at built versions of the kit, I felt that the radius of the cab roof below the rain strip was too sharp, and in fact I couldn't get the cab roof to fit if I kept that radius, so I ended up filing a larger radii on top corners of the cab front and rear . 

 

Another thing to be aware of is the steps. As said, this armour-plating is even worse when it's half-etched, become springy and uncooperative. I would say to other builders don't rely on the etched-in dotted lines to help in bending. I scored along those dots with a triangular mouse-tail file, having first scored along with a scrawker (thicker than a Stanley knife, so gives a better groove to trap the file in line). 

 

A couple of parts have the fold lines etched on the wrong side. One is, unfortunately, the spacer with the "Judith Edge" logo on it, which means the logo faces into the chassis. More important is part 42, the buffer beam gussets, which, if bent with the lines inwards, end up with one flange above and one below the gusset. Too late for me, but it may help someone.  

  

Regarding the chassis, I didn't use the two smallest spacers at all, and I put the spacer with the knife edge on it in last, and without solder in case I had to adjust the height of the knife edge (I didn't - it was perfect). But I left it in there unsoldered, just snapped into place.

 

Right, some questions. First, there are two nicely etched unnumbered circles near part 4 on the fret; they look like fillers for the bonnet tops, but there is only one shown on the diagram. Second, how do the coupling boxes work - are they built up from layers? Third, what does part 30 look like?! Where is it on the etch? Last, what happens with the air reservoirs? It seems to me locos either have them horizontally below the footplate at the rear, or vertically in front of the cab - assuming that those are air reservoirs and not the exhaust - on Mike's model it looks like one of them is the exhaust. Could a loco have the two vertical reservoirs and the gas conditioner exhaust? Would experts say that the loco below has a GC exhaust? I'd say if it's visible from that angle then it's an exhaust, not a reservoir (which would be hidden by the cab), but what do people think? Thanks! 

 

 

Mike, I hope you'll take the points I've made here in the spirit intended - as constructive criticism.  

Edited April 17, 2020 by Daddyman

[Michael Edge]

That's quite a lot of comments, first of all I know the n/s is harder to form - that\s why we usually use brass but these Fowlers normally had bright coupling and con rods. Keeping everything on one sheet is one of the ways we keep prices down. Annealing is more or less essential with this material, should be heated red hot and left to cool - if it work hardens, do it again.

For the same reason everything is either 0.015" thick or half of that so there are compromises here and there, the steps could have been either - I went for half etch. I agree about the bend lines on these components but I think for most builders they have to be marked in some way, I usually run a skrawker along the line as well.

Using .015" material does result in robust models, flat where they should be, I've built plenty of other kits which could easily be dented by finger pressure just by picking them up.

One piece cab side and roof is just not the way I want to go, no full size loco was ever made like this and it would make the bends more difficult in most cases. Some builders do still prefer a separate roof anyway, at least this gives them the choice. I put joins in the best place I can, preferably where they can be disguised with rainstrips etc. but I agree that sometimes bending them is a bit difficult (once again, easier in brass).

There are all sorts of variations in these locos, including air reservoirs and exhausts - you should have had four moulded air reservoirs and the large gas conditioner exhaust.

The handbrake linkage (30), I think this got left out because it's completely hidden behind the step. Your mysterious circular parts are headlights, fitted on the locos with the large radiator casing which you haven't used - there is a similar headlight on the other end of these locos as well.

Coupler pockets are etched in two shapes with different number of layers, these vary quite a lot, build them up as appropriate for your loco. It's not very clear whether the loco in your picture has the gas conditioner exhaust but I think it does.

I think you have misunderstood the buffer beam gussets (perhaps I didn't explain it well enough though). This kit has provision for three different frame widths, the gussets bend up in the obvious way for 00 gauge, with flanges on the same side. The other two lines are not fold lines but places to crack off for EM and P4 gauges, in these two cases the flange with press out rivets is to be cracked off and fitted separately.

I do know about the spacer with the name on but if it gets hidden - too bad, it still works.

Thanks for all your comments, all very clearly put. I'll have a look at the instructions and see if I can make some things a bit clearer.

[Daddyman]

Many thanks for the comprehensive answer, Mike. Thanks too for clarification on the coupler pockets and b.beam gussets - which Gordon A's post a page or so back clarifies; he also provides a good method for fixing them. He's right, too, that they have to be attached to the b.beam rather than the frames, as there is a rod brace between them and the footplate.   

 

I wish you'd reconsider the one-piece cab side and roof idea. The prototype has nowt to do with it - they're not trying to grip a millimeter of metal so as to bend it, or butt-joint wavy 5 thou to 10 thou. Here's my 06 with replacement one-piece sides and roof (stalled at the moment until I can find information on the radii for the bonnet front - seems to me the curve goes all the way to the radiator edge, a radius of 2mm or so, which would require some square reinforcing rods behind the joints on the kit, but I can't find photos to confirm absolutely): 

 

 

But if you don't want to do that, what about giving us a bit more metal to grip on (either on the roof or the cab sides) - say, a couple of mm added on to the top of the cab sides or the sides of the roof, which is removed once the curve has been bent. That still wouldn't solve the problem of butt-jointing 5 thou and 10 thou, but would be a help. 

 

Another thing occurred to me if you tweak the instructions: the RH frame (and probably only the RH frame) needs to be drilled out for the 1.6mm brake cross shaft before the frames are assembled, as the witness mark is on the inside, making it difficult to sight for where to put the drill once the frames are assembled. 

 

Here's a picture of the scoring of the steps in case it can be of use to anyone: 

 

 

Edited April 17, 2020 by Daddyman

[Ruston]

@Daddyman You've made a much neater job of your kit than I have with mine. I dont have a rivet press so I used a dressmaker's pin, with the point ever so slightly filed, and a small hammer. But before that I drilled each and every indentation so that I wasn't putting the rivets through such thick material and the rivets (Actually screw heads on the bodywork) seem to be more to scale.

 

I also had great difficultly in getting the roof formed and whilst it fitted perfectly at one side (I view the loco from this side on the layout!), there was a gap at the other, which had to be filled with low-melt solder. This ended up with a sag in it but I left it as if it's a dent where the loco has been hit by a crane in the scrapyard.

 

 

[Daddyman]

48 minutes ago, Ruston said:

@Daddyman You've made a much neater job of your kit than I have with mine. I dont have a rivet press so I used a dressmaker's pin, with the point ever so slightly filed, and a small hammer. But before that I drilled each and every indentation so that I wasn't putting the rivets through such thick material and the rivets (Actually screw heads on the bodywork) seem to be more to scale.

 

I also had great difficultly in getting the roof formed and whilst it fitted perfectly at one side (I view the loco from this side on the layout!), there was a gap at the other, which had to be filled with low-melt solder. This ended up with a sag in it but I left it as if it's a dent where the loco has been hit by a crane in the scrapyard.

That looks very nice. I hope I make as neat a job of the wasp stripes as you have! Thanks for the tip re rivets/screw heads. I formed the rivets in the JE 06 in much the same way as you describe, and I was just marvelling at how small and neat they are this morning - when pressed in 10 thou brass.  

[Michael Edge]

Some answers to these points.

As part of the construction sequence a lot of the interior of our cabs has to be done from the top, even though finished access will be from below.

I take your point about adding extra material to make the bending easier - I'll look into this with the next design which comes up against this problem.

i have to build another one of these soon for our exhibition display, I'll check just how hard it is.

I was also going to point out how straight and square your model is - using thicker material does make this easier.

If your are pressing out rivets with a pin, the key is using the right surface to support the etch on. I do this sometimes with rivets which are too closely spaced for any of my riveting tools, I hold a hard steel pin with forceps and drop a hammer on the top, underneath is a piece of aluminium angle held in the vice. If you do this on too soft a surface the metal distorts around the rivet, too hard and you don't get of an impression.

[Daddyman]

Thanks, Mike. Glad the extra material idea sounds like it might work. You're right about the rigid construction that results from this, but flimsiness was not something I'd noticed in your other kits. If the 15 thou ones are more rigid, then to me that extra ridigity comes at too great a cost. But I'll try your rivet method, thank you. 

 

Some photos of today's progress. I broke one of parts 45 (the thin, fragile part of the lamp hood), so I made a one-piece replacement for parts 45 and 46, as I reasoned this would add extras rigidity: here's the replacement part in the raw (the T-shaped thing); the hole is for a wire pin which will give a firmer fitting to the body: 

 

 

Here it is after being scored and bent up: 

 

 

This photo shows it attached to the "hood" - part 44 - and fitted to the radiator on a wire pin: 

 

 

And here's the loco as it stands at afternoon tea time (complete with upside-down gussets; I realised after I'd done two and I was ggered if I was redoing them...): 

 

 

I initially tried to do the strapping on the air tanks using the resin ones supplied, but I couldn't get the straps to stay stuck while I bent and filed them, so I knocked up some new tanks with soldered-on straps. I replaced the exhaust on the GC unit with a piece of 2mm brass tube to make it more robust, just in case my dad ever comes near the loco... 

 

Still not happy with the fit of the roof at this nearest corner... 

Edited April 17, 2020 by Daddyman

[Michael Edge]

All our 4mm kits are etched in.015", brass or n/s.

Those lamp covers were very fragile, looking through photos many of them are battered, bent, broken or just missing.

[Gordon A]

Not as clean as every one else's are.

The radiator mesh is cut out from from Shawplan's etched English Electric radiator grills with Mikes resin radiator inside the cowl.

Vertical air tanks to add when I can get some epoxy resin, and a small housing behind the radiator cowl on the right hand side.

The roof still needs tweaking.  How did you do yours Mike?

 

[Michael Edge]

I don't recall having any real difficulty with the roof but as i said I'm building another one so I'll check then.

[Daddyman]

4 hours ago, Gordon A said:

Not as clean as every one else's are.

The radiator mesh is cut out from from Shawplan's etched English Electric radiator grills with Mikes resin radiator inside the cowl.

Vertical air tanks to add when I can get some epoxy resin, and a small housing behind the radiator cowl on the right hand side.

The roof still needs tweaking.  How did you do yours Mike?

 

 

I notice you've added a step on the bonnet side, and extra handrails - and also a stand for the vertical air tank to sit on. Nice! 

[montyburns56]

LMS 0-4-0 diesel ED4 at Derby Works 1964

 

 

[Wagonmaster]

15 hours ago, montyburns56 said:

LMS 0-4-0 diesel ED4 at Derby Works 1964

 

 

 

A  nice and useful picture of ED4. This is the shorter version of the Fowler not covered by Mike's kit. With a bit of luck, Mike will produce one in due course.

[Holby Railway]

does anybody do one of these in 4mm / 00 please, im wanting to replicate No.17 The Highflyer which lived at the SVR for years until she was cut up for scrap

[Gordon A]

This thread  refers to a kit produced by Mike Edge (Judith Edge kits). I am not aware of a ready to run model being available.

 

Gordon A