Rhymney Railway R class

[nickd]

I'm building a big South Wales tank loco from a Taff Vale Models kit with some upgrades, inc inside motion and a fully detailled cab.  I'm modelling no.44 which was one of the last batch of the class built by Beyer Peacock in Manchester in 1921.  I think it was designated AR class as it had an upgraded boiler.  Anyway, the kit has been around for a number of years, it was originally marketed by Dragon Models, but was drawn by my good friend Adrian Rowland, so I'm confident it will go together with little or no problems, other than the ones that I cause!  I'm not sure whether this class of loco was used for hauling coal or passengers, perhaps someone reading this will be able to fill me in.

 

So as usual I will start with the coupling rods.  I will need them as a jig for positioning the axleboxes in the chassis so they're always a good place to start.  The etches in the kit look good, but according to the drawing I have the rods are thicker at the bosses, and there's no overlays in the kit for these.  The rods always look a bit more business-like if they have the oil filler necks and bungs, so I'll add them as well.  I think the pictures are pretty self explanatory.

 

 

 

You can see I drew a right angle in pencil on the paper on my bench to aid alignment.

 

 

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When I'm making rods I just flood the joins with solder and spend hours filing.  The oil pot fillers are thin walled tube and brass rod filed into a hex (although it's questionable whether you can see the hex!)

 

The next job was to fettle the slide bars and crossheads from these LGM castings.  They work very smoothly now.

 

 

I think this is my 5th set of LGM Stephenson inside motion in the last 12 months!

[LaScala]

I’m sure this will be stunning.

 

I have gone the other route to Rhymney; 88d’s rebuilt “A”.

 

A multi media kit of more recent design.

 

just noticed an ugly blob on footplate and yes the safety valve needs fixing, but here she is suspended in the Queensland sun.

[nickd]

I've done a few hours more fettling of castings and I now have the basics I need to make the chassis.  I will make cylinder fronts and rears and the stay in front of the ashpan.  The slide bars are easier to fit at this stage too together with a motion bracket and the valve rods and guides.

 

 

That's it until the new year.  Have a great Christmas and New Year break one and all.

[nickd]

Great looking model.  Is it 3D printed?

[LaScala]

9 hours ago, nickd said:

Great looking model.  Is it 3D printed?

Only a few bits are printed:

 

taper boiler, firebox, water balance pipes, sbd, splashers; otherwise n/s 

[hayfield]

Looks to be a very interesting build

[Penrhos1920]

Yes the kit is of the later AR class.  The main difference between the earlier R class and these was the length of the footplate at the front and the conn rods.  Also for some unknown reason the AR were built with Westinghouse pumps despite being a goods class.

[Darwinian]

According to the notes in Welsh Railways Research Circle, Rhymney Railway drawings ; the first 3 R class were built with Westinghouse brakes that were later removed. Many of the earlier K class were also Westinghouse fitted and are pictured on passenger trains despite having 3 link couplings. I guess the 4’6” 0-6-2T classes were considered mixed traffic locos although only a limited number were fitted for passenger work. There were not that many passenger locos after all.

[nickd]

This one will be finished thus (with a Westinghouse compressor)

 

[The Johnster]

On 24/12/2020 at 09:01, LaScala said:

just noticed an ugly blob on footplate

I used to know an engine driver like that as well...

[nickd]

So as you have probably guessed the brief is to upgrade the kit with inside motion and a few other appropriate bells and whistles.  If fitting inside motion it seems like a good idea to rework all the frame stays so that they're in the correct places, but retain the pair at the ends to screw the body into.  So I examined the GA I have (it's a poor one, and if anyone has a decent copy I could have a sight of I'd be eternally grateful!) and drew the location of the inside cylinder front and rear on the frame.  

 

 

Then I assembled all the components of the crank axle to decide on a suitable frame spacing.

 

 

The current version of Stephenson motion castings from Laurie G place the cylinder centres at 13.5 mm, which is a but less than the prototype which scale out at about 17 mm (which wouldn't easily fit between FS frame spacing anyway!)  So I had a cuppa and a chat with DLOS and we had a moan about why (oh why) FS kit frames are always so narrow.  The frame spacers in the kit place the outside dimensions of the frames at around 25.6 mm which is ludicrously narrow, so I decided to kick the frames out quite a lot to 27.6 mm, which will look much better and allow me to narrow the frame parts above the footplate to match without making the smokebox look too waisted.  You really don't need 2mm end float on tank (or any) loco, (why oh why......) and the crank axle will fit in there without any mods to the crank webs and/or horncheeks.

 

I checked the positions and mesurements (I made sure that the slide bar centres point at the driven axle centre, and nowt clatters into owt) and made some cylinders and attached the slide bars.  I also made the motion bracket and attached the valve rod guides.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I did a cut-and-shut on the three frame spacers in the kit I intended to use, it might have been quicker to make new ones however!

 

 

I also made the stay that sits in front of the firebox/ashpan, and then discovered that it sits mainly on a section of the chassis not present in the kit, bah!  I thought it best to modify the chassis, mainly as I had already made the stay and the bolt plates.

 

 

I have prepared the frames to accept Slater's brass hornblocks and formed the joggles ready to assemble the chassis tomorrow (or shall I make the ashpan first?)  Decisions, decisions.......

[nickd]

Today I assembled the chassis from all the parts I had prepared over the last few days.

 

 

 

It was checked for squareness and that all was straight, then I decided to make the drag box, which will strengthen the joggle in the frames, and the ashpan to add a bit of rigidity to the chassis and disguise the gearbox.

 

 

 

 

I think tomorrow I'll add the cylinders, slidebars and motion bracket, and pop some axleboxes into the mix and get it all running.

[nickd]

So batting on, today I instaled the slidebars and motion bracket and made some cylinder bottoms and draincocks, as they're just about on view (not that I do wild-west-filmset modelling.)

 

 

 

I cut some suitable lengths of 1.5 x 1.5 mm brass angle to make the horn cheeks, as you can see I used jury axles and the rods to find the axlebox centres.  You can see that I have soldered the angle in place to guide the square axleboxes.  I'm hoping that the printing fairy will bring some 3D printed bolt plates to jazz up the hornguides.

 

 

As you can see everything is prepared now to put the wheels, gearbox and motor in the chassis and check for smooth running.  Might even be some crank axle activity tomorrow, you never know!

[nickd]

So today I assembled the wheels into the chassis and did a whole host of other little jobs.  The careful fabrication of the chassis paid dividends as the mechanism worked perfectly first time with no additional easing of the crankpin bearings (satisfying when that hapens!)  The gearbox is one of Julian Wynn (Taff Vale Models) items, it's very good, and the motor is from my dwindling stash of Mashima 1833s.

 

 

The bogie should be a radial truck but the kit advises to make it into a bogie.  I modified it to work as a radial trick with some V-shaped phosphour bronze springs to control both downward movement and side control.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Crank axle on monday!

[nickd]

I hoped to do the crank axle thoday but got bogged down making eccentric straps fit eccentric sheaves.

 

 

After rather a lot of filing it was time to break out the patent eccentric rod jig.

 

 

 

 

But I did manage to make 4 rods in the end.  Will make a crank axle tomorrow.....hopefully.

[nickd]

Laurie Griffin uses a system that holds the sheaves between the crank castings using a locating pin through pre drilled holes.  I found this puts the sheves in the wrong place with respect to the crankpins.  Well at least I think they are, anyone had any experience of this?  I ended up re drilling the individual sheaves so they were in the correct place.  Next I assembled the crank etc. castings on the axle, did lots of measuring and double checking and soldered the lot up.  I screwed a long screw in the axle hole and held the assembly in a vise.  I put lots of paper on the floor as I was using Baker's fluid as a flux, and I didn't want it burning through to the dining room below!

 

 

I transported solder between the crank castings using a 100W soldering iron and then heated the workpiece very gently with a blowlamp, applying lots of flux, until the solder appeared between the sheaves.  Then allowed it to cool.

 

 

I washed thoroughly to remove all traces of the flux.  Then it's a case of filing and sanding with Wet-or-Dry paper and polishing.  Here's the finished job.

 

 

Here it is mounted in the chassis.  Everything runs very smoothly.

 

 

 

 

As you can see I have added the lifting links and weigh shafts and weights and trunnions etc.  The expansion links are pinned to the valve rods so tomorrow I can install the eccentric rods and straps and hopefully that will be it!

[nickd]

I have assembled the last few components and got the inside motion running nicely.

 

 

Brakes tomorrow......

[nickd]

So today attention turns to the brake rigging.  The kit has some good blocks, hangers and spreader plates, but the pull rods are wrong for an AR.  So I made a load of little components for the compensators.

 

 

And here are the spreader plates with the compensators built up.

 

 

And fitted to the chassis.  Will make the brake shaft and cylinders etc tomorrow.  Will hopefully get the sand boxes in place too, then the chassis is complete.

 

[nickd]

Short-ish day today but I made the brake shaft with all the gubbins.  I made a representation of the steam and air brake cylinders from ones left over from previous jobs or scratchbuilt items.  I also fitted sand boxes and added a bit of an embelishment with the operating rods.

 

 

[nickd]

I got a little lucky with the footplate etching.  Adrian drew it with a bit of extra width down each side and it sat on top of the widened chassis underneath.  The footplate etch needed only a minor amount of modification to fit.  The main modification was to accommodate the section of chassis above the footplate, planting it on the footplate in line with the chassis below.  

 

This will mean that the smokebox will have to be made slightly narrower at the base to fit between the narrowed frames, but hey, something has to be wrong here!  I have spent quite a while building inside motion and detailing the frames.  I hope that the new owner will be able to see all the moving parts without seeing a step in the chassis, so I'm affraid the compromise will be a narrow base to the smokebox (no-one ever notices, I've built a few like this now!)  

 

Anyway the footplate has an half etched line into which the top bit of the chassis fits.  I filled this with some 0.375 mm rod and a lot of solder.   The whole lot was blended in with my trusty sanding disc.  I soldered the valances and buffer beams in place.  The etched chassis extension is too short.  It covers the bottom of the smokebox then just disappears behind the splasher.  I made a new section of chassis and soldered it on top of the footplate in line with the chassis below.  I used some blue roll soaked in water as a heat sink so my slot filling exploits nearby weren't disturbed.

 

 

 

You can see that the valances are straight-through from buffer beam to beam.  Usually they swoop down to meet the bottom of the buffer beam, and this leaves the large gusset between chassis and buffer beam on view, so I decided to make some.  First though I needed to make the buffers self contained.  The ones supplied are nice cast tapered buffers correct for the locomotive, and they work.  This means that there's a load of casting and buffer tail and a huge 10 BA nut behind the beam.  I think I'd prefer my buffers not to work than have all this stuff sticking out behind the beams.....and it's in the way of the big gussets.

 

 

I took the opportunity to remove the cast fixing blobs in the corners of the fixing plate and replace them with some nice turned fake nuts from Germany. 

[nickd]

The first job of the day was finishing off the air reservoir tank for the Westinghouse system.  It's just made from tube and scrap bits of strip.  That was installed on the model with some pipework to the brake cylinder.  The couplings were made from a Slater's kit.  The rear coupling hook has a very long shaft that is anchored to the drag beam under the cab.

 

 

 

I also made and installed the big gussets between the buffer beam and chassis.

 

 

 

Mick Davies 3D printed me some decorative horn guide bolt plates to fit round the horn cheeks already installed, and made from brass angle.  They look very nice I think.

 

 

Splashers and pickups tomorrow.

[nickd]

I have spent a couple of days soldering the bodywork together.  So far I have done the splashers over the front and middle wheels, the bunker/cab rear and the two water tanks.  I have also done an experiment with the pick-ups.  I have installed conventional phosphour bronze wipers but mounted outboard under the footplate.  They are out of the way and you can't see them when looking at the inside motion but.....wires have to be unsoldered everytime you remove chassis from body, and the downward force did distort the footplate etch until I added the tank sides.  Swings/roundabouts.

 

The kit is a little gem and the parts go together with sub millimetre precision so a big pat on the back to Adrian Rowland who designed it.  I hope he was speedily and generously rewarded by Dragon Models for whom he did the CAD work.

 

 

 

 

 

[nickd]

I have spent a today and a few hours over the weekend adding a few details.  Lamp irons are on, so are all the handrails and steps on the water tanks.  I decided that the tank tops were too narrow, so I extended them and reattached the inner walls. This gave me the opportunity to fill the tanks with lead sheet.  I made a new cab floor and the portion of the front tanks that are inside the cab.  

 

 

 

 

Tomorrow I think I'll complete the cab interior with some sand boxes and planking.  Then I can make a backhead, or might make the steps that are below the footplate, who knows......

[Penrhos1920]

Nick you seem to be going the extra mile here, so you might want to correct a couple of errors that there are in the kit.  There should be a hole between the cab footplate and the main footplate.  There should be a recess in the footplate above the steps.  Both features can be seen in this photo of 35 and are common to nearly all Rhymney side tanks.

 

[nickd]

 

Thanks Penrhos.  I never noticed the relief in the footplate edge above the step, I'll do it tomorrow.  No 44 was supplied by Beyer Peacock with the upstand filled in.  Maybe it acquired a recess shortly after.  Interestingly the valence below the footplate has no section at the end that drops down to the bottom of the buffer beam.  I'm making the model as this picture and it depicts the loco shortly after delivery from Manchester, it had quite a few modifications shortly after this apparently, including removal of the air brakes.

 

Thanks again.