Exhill Works and other adventures in 7/8ths

[John Besley]

Just like the real thing, one of my sections is a tight fit and needs wrigging to get it out...

[John Besley]

The Iain Rice book on Chassis construction is now in the office... interesting reading

 

[John Besley]

Remade some cardboard boxes and dumped one in the loco shed on the seat and one in The Long Shop with a brass casting inside packed in straw..

 

 

 

[John Besley]

Back in April 2020 I bought a Smallbrook Studios Tinkerbell kit with a view to building this as per the instructions... and using the chassis they supplied which came for a Hornby Caley tank...

 

 

well after 6 months of on off work I shelved this while I got on with building Exhill Works.

 

In October 2021 I found a Branchlines Quarry Hunslet chassis kit for sale on eBay - brought it and put it in storage.

 

 

Having now got the two existing locos running perfectly thought I'd dig out the Tinkerbell and pick up from where I left off

 

For those not in the know Tinkerbell was a very successful 7.1/4" loco (and still is) that Roger March created back in 1968.

 

I ran the etch of the chassis through the photo copier once printed out glued these to some 60thou plasticard so I could make up a mock of the frames to see how they might work...

 

 

Today I knocked up the frames to play around with

 

 

and once happy set about with a vengeance - removed the cylinders and buffer planks from the footplate and milled off the front section of the footplate casting leaving a clean base to work on, cut out and folded up the chassis and dry fitted this to the footplate to check for clearances... all looking good so far

 

[John Besley]

Soldered up the chassis and test fitted to footplate, modified the flat plate from the quarry Hunslet kit to provide a smaller frame stretcher in what will be the foot well, then soldered an off cut of nickel silver to this so as to fill in the gap making the rest of the frame stretcher up in thickness and strength.

 

 

 

 

 

Then folded up and fitted the front axle compensation pivot and fitted the cross member for the pick up mount.

 

Next part assembled the gearbox to see what the space was going to be like for another frame stretcher

 

 

… might change the motor and gearbox to a high-level gears set up as used on the other locos I have

 

[John Besley]

Bit the bullet and just ordered a HLK Road Runner Plus and 1230C Coreless motor as I know these run almost silently and Sooo slowly... what I didn't want to do was having built the chassis and valve gear found that there was a problem with the Romford motor and gear box that came with the chassis kit, necessitating a complete strip down of the Works - not an option I know the HLK kit will deliver the goods so going to stick with that.

 

 

Edited November 20, 2022 by John Besley

[John Besley]

I’ve had the High level Gears roadrunner plus gear box and motor now for a couple of weeks and having cleared up a traction engine rebuild for a customer set to and assembled the gearbox and the cylinders as the next stage of this build.

 

 

On checking the cast resign footplate found there is a slight twist in this so pondering cutting out a new one from sheet brass and staring again... quite what direction this build will go is an open ended question.

 

For ease of assembly the cylinders are bolted through the chassis with 8BA bolts and nuts – getting the cylinder guides fitted correctly was a time consuming task as they have a keyway on the face of the cylinder cover that the piston guide fits into, but once done are well worth the time to get these right. 

 

 

Found a sheet of brass and some 16mm checker plate for the footwell floor, ready to mark out and cut to size

 

[John Besley]

Marked out and cut a section of brass footplate to size, after some thought silver soldered up a rear frame stretcher out of brass angle so this slots between the chassis where it steps down so as to brace up this end before I cut the back section off...

 

 

This was then cleaned up and polished to remove the burn marks from silver soldering and drilled in the centre for the rear fixing bolt.

 

 

The black marked lines are the location of the footwell this will be cut out next and the footwell itself made once the loco is on its wheels so I can check the clearance from track etc. (once I’ve worked out how to make up this box section of the frames)

 

[John Besley]

Just ordered the Iain Rice book on building etched brass loco kits... I've a funny feeling I will end up scratch building much of this loco as opposed to using the resin kit... but we will see how it goes...

[John Besley]

Set up and soldered the rear frame stretcher in place then carefully cut off the rear portion of the frames...

 

 

Bit daunting but its done now

 

 

[gwrrob]

Nice to see your layout in the latest BRM John.😉

[John Besley]

Many thanks, I haven't seen my copy yet, is that February 2023...?

Edited December 24, 2022 by John Besley

[Fishplate]

On 24/12/2022 at 10:38, John Besley said:

Many thanks, I haven't seen my copy yet, is that February 2023...?

Edited Saturday at 17:45 by John Besley

 

Yes it is . Just popped by to congratulate you on your article in BRM which arrived today.

Edited December 30, 2022 by Fishplate

[John Besley]

26 minutes ago, Fishplate said:

 

Yes it is . Just popped by to congratulate you on your article in BRM which arrived today.

 

Thanks very much look forward to seeing the finished article

[Graham T]

As a Gold member of the forum, should I be able to see BRM online?  (Asking because I can't, and think I probably should...)

 

[gwrrob]

23 minutes ago, Graham T said:

As a Gold member of the forum, should I be able to see BRM online?  (Asking because I can't, and think I probably should...)

 

 

You need to go to the World of railways website and sign in, then you can access it through the archive tab.

[Graham T]

Thanks Robin, have been trying that but the linked pages won't load for me.  I'm using Chrome but have also tried Opera, with the same result...

 

[gwrrob]

7 minutes ago, Graham T said:

Thanks Robin, have been trying that but the linked pages won't load for me.  I'm using Chrome but have also tried Opera, with the same result...

 

 

You might need to link your accounts but I can't remember how, maybe @AY Mod can do it.

[AY Mod]

24 minutes ago, Graham T said:

Thanks Robin, have been trying that but the linked pages won't load for me.  I'm using Chrome but have also tried Opera, with the same result...

 

 

If you are using the Gold theme (select at the bottom of any page) you should see a More, Browse More or RMweb Gold  link in the top menu which will take you here https://www.world-of-railways.co.uk/account/login?ref=%2Fmy-account%2Fmy-membership%2F once logged in there you should get access to the mags.

[Graham T]

49 minutes ago, AY Mod said:

 

If you are using the Gold theme (select at the bottom of any page) you should see a More, Browse More or RMweb Gold  link in the top menu which will take you here https://www.world-of-railways.co.uk/account/login?ref=%2Fmy-account%2Fmy-membership%2F once logged in there you should get access to the mags.

 

Thanks Andy, that did the trick.  There goes the rest of my evening 🍻

 

 

[John Besley]

11 hours ago, Graham T said:

 

Thanks Andy, that did the trick.  There goes the rest of my evening 🍻

 

Does the same apply if you are a premium member here?

[AY Mod]

1 hour ago, John Besley said:

 

Does the same apply if you are a premium member here?

 

Premium gives Google ad free access plus Classifieds etc. Gold gives access to the magazine back catalogues in addition to that.

[John Besley]

In other news...

 

A 4" Burrell Road locomotive that has had a rebuild is loaded up ready to head off to the waiting flat bed trailer for delivery to a happy customer

 

 

 

This started off life as an old Matchbox Models of Yesteryear Showman's engine wayyy back in the 60's that suffered a catastrophic accident to its canopy when I was a small boy, i rebuilt it in its road locomotive form back in the late 70's and found it again the other week...

 

Going to have a look at what is around nowadays and do a better job on a new one - 4mm equates to about 1/4 full size 

[John Besley]

The other ongoing job has been creating more junk including a stack of bricks to fill out a corner of the yard, the bricks are made form DAS modelling clay with where required the frog scribed in once they had dried, I was quite pleased that some of the bricks crumbled on the ends as this looked like frost damage, the dead ivy behind on the fence is a root from a large weed from the garden, this was cleaned and soaked for a week in Glycerine.

 

More scrap was found / created and carefully dumped on the pallet from a variety of sources - Tipex mouse, screw tops form the granddaughters baby food pouches and plasticard shapes made up as random fabricated sections 

 

 

At the moment nothing is bedded down as its a work in progress.

[Ruston]

I saw this in the latest BRM and then discovered it on here. I love the detail and the weathering. The one thing that could be improved upon are the figures - they are very cartoon-like. I think that with some Modelu figures instead it would be almost impossible to tell if the photos are of a model or the real thing.