Ruston's Industrial locomotive and wagon workshop thread.

[417892]

Ruston you have captured the detail and weathering nicely in this wagon..

[Ruston]

And... you're back in the room!

 

Gutted to find that all of my pictures are gone. Two years gone in a flash. I may see about putting them back but I don't know at the moment.

 

In other news, I finished the Diagram 1/274 Prestwin. Just to recap, and without the previous photos for anyone to refer back to, this started out as an ancient Hornby Dublo thing.

 

Before:

 

After:

 

[John Besley]

45 minutes ago, Ruston said:

And... you're back in the room!

 

Gutted to find that all of my pictures are gone. Two years gone in a flash. I may see about putting them back but I don't know at the moment.

 

In other news, I finished the Diagram 1/274 Prestwin. Just to recap, and without the previous photos for anyone to refer back to, this started out as an ancient Hornby Dublo thing.

 

Before:

 

After:

 

 

Glad your back and that I saved some of your pictures as inspiration (hope you don't mind)

[Ruston]

Another wagon WIP.

 

Diagram 1/099 16.5-tonne mineral. At last, a use for those crappy old Dapol/Mainline/Bachmann minerals that are too long! BR used the underframes of redundant Palbricks to build a lot of new minerals in the 1970s. They of course had a 10ft wheelbase and were 1ft longer overall than the more usual 16-tonners.

 

This one is a real parts bin special. I used the sides from a Dapol wagon, which had to have the top flap cut out and new material let in, including a new top rail. The sides were also thinned by sanding them down from a whopping 2.7mm to 1.9mm.

The floor is from the remains of the Parkside 13-ton high that I used to build the KYV and the ends are spare Airfix mineral parts. The underframe is a Red Panda kit, whilst the buffers and vac cylinder are whitemetal parts from LMS. The body supports are robbed from the floorpan of the Parkside 26-ton tippler kit that donated its axleguards to the Prestwin project.

 

The axleboxes have been cut off and are to be replaced by whitemetal hooded roller bearing types.

As these would have been brand new during the time period of the layout I won't be going overboard with the weathering.

Edited April 1, 2022 by Ruston

[Ruston]

And another one finished.

I posted a little about this a few pages back but never really followed it up. It's the Airfix/Dapol Diag. 1/277 Prestwin kit. All I've altered is to add some bits of wire as handrails and have put my own and other, extra, transfers on that don't come with the kit. The buffers are also replacements, from Accurascale. I stuck some cross shafts in the otherwise empty brake gear, which really improves things.

[Corbs]

Nice. Did you drill holes for the cross shafts or cut them to fit in the gaps?

 

[Ruston]

13 hours ago, Corbs said:

Nice. Did you drill holes for the cross shafts or cut them to fit in the gaps?

 

I drilled holes before assembly.

[Ruston]

I have been through all 24 pages and have reinstated all the photos that were lost in the RMweb server crash. There may be one or two that I missed but I seem to have got most of them.

 

The Diag. 1/099 is almost finished.

[Ruston]

This Hattons Barclay landed on my workbench, today. It had been remotored by the owner, who also fitted DCC sound. Apparently, it ran fine but then wouldn't.

 

When it comes to fixing motors, Black Tac is not a proper engineering solution. 😄 The continued anonymity of the guilty party was secured with a gift of a bottle of Jack Daniel's.

[Ruston]

A double build. An Andrew Barclay 0-4-2ST and a Grant, Ritchie 0-4-2ST.

 

A mixture of scratchbuilt parts and RTR mechanism and tank, from Hattons RTR Barclays will mean a few compromises have to be made.

 

The first job is to make the drawing for the new running plate, which will be milled from brass.

[AlfaZagato]

14 hours ago, Ruston said:

The continued anonymity of the guilty party was secured with a gift of a bottle of Jack Daniel's.

 

I was going to accuse you of being cheap for being bought so easily.   Then I remembered Jack is probably exotic over there.

[Ruston]

7 hours ago, AlfaZagato said:

I was going to accuse you of being cheap for being bought so easily.   Then I remembered Jack is probably exotic over there.

It's not exotic; it's available in any supermarket and corner shop and I actually prefer bourbon anyway. I guess that means I am cheap. 😁

[5050]

2 hours ago, Ruston said:

It's not exotic; it's available in any supermarket and corner shop and I actually prefer bourbon anyway. I guess that means I am cheap. 😁

It's exotic with Tennessee Honey..................................🤪

[AlfaZagato]

Try Yellowstone, if you can find it.   

[Enterprisingwestern]

2 hours ago, AlfaZagato said:

Try Yellowstone, if you can find it.   

 

Saturday night. 9pm. 5 USA.

 

Mike.

[Ruston]

Some progress with the Barclay 0-4-2ST.

 

The running plate is being made in two parts - a thick base and a thinner top, which will be slightly wider. This sort of thing is usually done with thin brass and lengths of the same acting as valances but as this has to go on a RTR chassis I may as well make it like the part that it replaces. It will also help to maintain weight as the running plate and buffer beams on the Hattons model are diecast metal.

I have also made a baseplate for the cab, which will be fixed using screws. The chassis block needs to be shortened at the front end and an extension made for the rear. Another alteration to the chassis block will be to notch out a quarter circle shape in the front of the frame plates, below buffer beam level.

 

The smokebox door has been removed by sanding as it was all one piece with the smokebox. A scratchbuilt replacement will be made. The one in the picture will be going on the Grant Ritchie and has had the handrails removed to make the sanding off of the safety valve cover easier, where the donor loco for the GR has had the handrails glued in. The water filler also needs to be removed and replaced with a taller one on the GR. The AB can keep the current set up but both need the chimneys to be cut off at the join and be replaced by taller ones.

[Ruston]

One chassis block prepped.

 

The front end has been cut down to length and a new notch for the buffer beam put in. The rear end has been squared off to mate up with the frame extension and the rear gusset plates have been removed. Hornguides, suitable for a 2mm axle, have been cut in for the trailing axle.

The curved notch in the lower front needs to be cut deeper yet.

 

[Ruston]

It's still a bit of a mix, because I'm making parts and testing the fit as I go. The chassis block here is for the Grant Ritchie, as is the tank. The buffer beams are for the Barclay and have the original Hattons buffers trial-fitted. The running plate now has its top layer of thin brass.

 

The new smokebox door is also having a trial fit. It was made from a disc of 1/16th plastic with a plastic rod through so it can be held in a drill chuck. By spinning it and holding coffee stirrers, with differing grades of sandpaper glued on, against it I formed the shape. The flash has bleached out the shape, so you'll have to wait until it get painted to see it properly. It still needs hinges but the original door handles were retrieved from the old door.

 

[Ruston]

Ever started a project and wished you hadn't?

 

I knew there was something about Barclay tanks but I couldn't put my finger on it until I spent some time studying photos. I don't know if Hattons tank is absolutely right anyway, but their models are the sort of post-1920 look. Before that, Barclays mostly had frames with a curve in the bottom corners and cabs with a curved opening, instead of straight, as on the Hattons models. The pre-1920 tanks seem to have been wider and flatter, even though the vertical sides were about the same dimension. I checked all this against the GR drawing and the Hattons tank is a scale 9 ins. too narrow. I need to widen it and use filler to get the curvature on the top. This has meant sanding off all the fittings that I really wanted to keep, especially on the Barclay. It's a huge set back but I couldn't live with the tank looking so obviously the wrong shape.

 

I'm definitely past the point of no return now.

I'm also wondering what I'm going to do about the fittings. The chimneys would have been an easy job to turn as the flare on the bottom was already catered for on the moulding, with only the top part needing replacement but making a chimney myself is now out of the question.

[cctransuk]

5 hours ago, Ruston said:

Ever started a project and wished you hadn't?

 

I knew there was something about Barclay tanks but I couldn't put my finger on it until I spent some time studying photos. I don't know if Hattons tank is absolutely right anyway, but their models are the sort of post-1920 look. Before that, Barclays mostly had frames with a curve in the bottom corners and cabs with a curved opening, instead of straight, as on the Hattons models. The pre-1920 tanks seem to have been wider and flatter, even though the vertical sides were about the same dimension. I checked all this against the GR drawing and the Hattons tank is a scale 9 ins. too narrow. I need to widen it and use filler to get the curvature on the top. This has meant sanding off all the fittings that I really wanted to keep, especially on the Barclay. It's a huge set back but I couldn't live with the tank looking so obviously the wrong shape.

 

I'm definitely past the point of no return now.

I'm also wondering what I'm going to do about the fittings. The chimneys would have been an easy job to turn as the flare on the bottom was already catered for on the moulding, with only the top part needing replacement but making a chimney myself is now out of the question.

 

Any bodies on Ebay from which you could cannibalise the fittings?

 

CJI.

[Ruston]

48 minutes ago, cctransuk said:

 

Any bodies on Ebay from which you could cannibalise the fittings?

 

CJI.

There's not a single Hattons Barclay on ebay right now and I don't remember ever seeing any bodies only at all. I've found a whitemetal safety valve cover in my spares box. I don't know what it's for and it has no safety valves but it looks the part and I may be able to get resin copies made. I retrieved the valves themselves from the tanks. I've also found a couple of whitemetal chimneys that are a little too tall but should do the job. The tank filler tops were also retrieved and the rest of the filller should be an easy job as there's no flare at the base.

 

It's looking a bit of a mess at the moment.

[cctransuk]

13 hours ago, Ruston said:

There's not a single Hattons Barclay on ebay right now and I don't remember ever seeing any bodies only at all. I've found a whitemetal safety valve cover in my spares box. I don't know what it's for and it has no safety valves but it looks the part and I may be able to get resin copies made. I retrieved the valves themselves from the tanks. I've also found a couple of whitemetal chimneys that are a little too tall but should do the job. The tank filler tops were also retrieved and the rest of the filller should be an easy job as there's no flare at the base.

 

It's looking a bit of a mess at the moment.

 

Any chance Hattons might have a body kicking around?

 

CJI.

[Ruston]

7 hours ago, cctransuk said:

 

Any chance Hattons might have a body kicking around?

 

CJI.

I haven't seen one on their website. It wouldn't really be a cure anyway. For one thing, I'd need a pair of them and, for another, it would be a difficult task to cut out the parts and then let them in to the modified tanks. All I'd end up using is the base/flare part of the Hattons chimneys and one safety valve cover. I decided to model the GR without a cover as I've seen pictures of two and a drawing of another of their 0-4-2STs and none have a cover. I need to make a bare dome, complete with rivets, flanges and a Ramsbottom-type safety valve that has two "monkey tails" instead of the Barclay's one.

 

Below shows at top the fittings on a Barclay 0-4-2ST and at the bottom those on a Grant Ritchie 0-4-2ST.

 

Here's where I'm up to at the moment:

 

The one on the left is the Barclay, complete with modified tank. On the right is the GR with still untouched Hattons tank. The chimney and dome cover on the Barclay will need a bit of work to get a good fit.

 

[Ruston]

The AB can use the existing cylinders with the only modification being to have them and the slide bars in a horizontal position, instead of slightly inclined. On the other hand, the cylinders on the GR also need to be horizontal but look quite different to those on the Barclay. I thought that I would have to scratchbuild them but as it happens, the Hattons cylinders can still be used, after chopping them from the cross member that locates them in the chassis, turning them around and using them at the opposite sides to which they were originally used.

 

Here, the cylinder isn't yet fixed to anything but a new cross member will be made to once again tie the cylinders together. The photo also shows how the frame plates have been altered to have the curved recess in the front lower part. The chassis extension to the rear will also need to have the same look.

 

The other tank has now been reprofiled, so both builds are now at the same stage. The base plate for the cab has had 12BA threads cut in and is now screwed to the running plate, with the screw heads on the underside and the excess screw cut and filed flush with the footplate.

 

[Ruston]

There is only so much information you can get from a drawing before you have to get your hands dirty. Visit to see AB1193, at the Tanfield.

 

Both the AB and GR have openings in the lower rear cab sheet, as do many older industrial locos. I'm never entirely sure what these a for. Some say they're so the crew could uncouple without leaving the cab, some that they were so the boiler tubes could be cleaned from the rear end and some that they were for use with an additional tender. They are usually on small 0-4-0STs with a single small side bunker but having the hole come through the rear bunker is what I needed to know the arrangement of.  Was it a tunnel through the bunker?

It turns out that it didn't go through the bunker at all and there are two (three, actually - there's a small one side one in the usual position, too), each with its own coal hole.  The engines were built with open cabs but during the war the cab roofs were extended and side sheets and a rear upper backsheet were fitted to fully enclose both footplate and bunkers. Sliding ports were made in the new, upper, backsheet, so that the bunkers could be filled. I don't buy the idea that the openings were for originally intended for use with a tender. The tenders used at collieries in Scotland were nothing but wagons with the end cut off. The fireman wouldn't be able to poke his shovel through that hole and into the coal in the tender. He would have to get into the tender and shovel it. Why shovel it through a small opening and have it go all over the floor when you can shovel it into the bunker and then use it from there as needed? Similar openings can be found on many other small industrial engines, from different manufacturers, which never ran with tenders.

 

Another thing that I wanted to discover was if the springs for the trailing axle were in the cab, or inside the frames. As it happens the trailing axle had four volute springs, in two pairs. The top of one mount can be seen here.

Armed with this information I can now get on with making the cabs and bunkers.