Nick Dunhill's workshop - LSWR/SR 02 0-4-4T locos from Connoisseur Models kits.

[nickd]

I like Jim's kits, they go together very nicely and are easy to make.  This is a simple out-of-the-box build of a pair of 02s one from the mainland and one from the Isle of Wight.  The plan is to do a few minor upgrades to the cab and some of the pipework on the loco body.  I have borrowed a copy of the Bradley LSWR 'Bible' of Adams locos for reference.  However I'm not a LSWR buff and would be grateful for any help/comments that would help me along the build.  One loco will be of no 185 in early LSWR era and the other of W17 Seaview in SR Malachite Green era.

 

As usual I began the build by making the rods.  Both had fluted rods and I have added a few bits and pieces of detail.

 

 

I decided to make the rear driven axle rigid and add some simple suspension to the front driving axle.  I used Slater's square horn blocks and horn cheeks made from 1.5 x 1.5 mm L section brass.  I used the rods as a jig for accurate location of the axleboxes.

 

 

 

The rest of the chassis build so far has followed the instruction sheets.

 

 

 

If anyone has spotted anything that's wrong please let me know and I can ammend it!  More pics here https://www.flickr.com/photos/144381574@N05/with/51904857513/

[hayfield]

Looking good and something (flexi chassis) I want to do in 4mm scale

[Chas Levin]

Hello Nick, I agree with John, looking very neat. Do you also plan to use any form of compensation or guidance or springing on the bogie?

[nickd]

 

Work has moved on and the chassis have sand boxes, pipes and pickups.  I messed about with the pivot for the bogie and decided that the mounting hole should be slotted slightly to allow a little sideways movement.  This allows the model whizz round a 6' curve smoothly, but I did introduce some simple side control using phosphour bronze wire.

 

 

Next was the footplate assemblies.  These went together easily, the valances have fold-over tabs that locate in half etched rectangles on the underside of the footplate etching.  The tabs are there to help locate the valances but in actual fact lift the lengths of valance in between them out of the half etched slot along the footplate edge.  The valance unsupported by tabs then has a tendency to wobble about above the etched slot.  Next time I think I would either remove the tabs and locate the valance etch in the slot or not file the etching cusp off the top edge of the valance etch.

 

 

The rest of the week was spent cutting out and preparing body parts.  The beading was attached to the side sheets and opening cab doors added where appropriate.  The cab fronts and rears were prepared.  Bars were fitted to the IOW cab rears and all the brass cab window surrounds prepared.  The structures for the cab interiors were prepared.

 

 

The last job of the week was preparing the bunker rear sections.  The parts provided have etched lines on the rear to aid bending.  The lines aren't continuous across the panel and when you begin to form curves witness marks appear on the outside.  I decided against trying to dress these out and just cut out rectangles of thin nickel silver sheet as replacements.

 

 

 

Next week I will assemble it all.

[nickd]

Here are a few pictures of the work I did yesterday on the 02s.  I spent a large part of last week preparing all the various parts for the loco superstructure and was able to assemble it all in one day, twice!

 

 

 

 

[hayfield]

Very impressive

[nickd]

More progress was made this week.  I added the handrails and extended the cab floor into the doorways.  The tapered cab door handrails were made by spinning nickel silver rods in a mini drill and filing them into a slight taper using a file.  The spinning rod is supported on a block of wood.

 

 

The kit comes with cast whitemetal buffers but the brief was to replace them with turned buffers from Markits.  The buffers were very nice but the customer service at Markits is not.  

 

As is the case with all telescopic model buffers a certain amount of hardware extends to the inside of the buffer beams.  This inhibits the fitting of support gussets so I decided to make the buffers self contained.  I've done this with quite a few sets of buffers, but these were easier than most because they are rather nice turnings.  The cast ones can be a nightmare to convert because they are often not square or the hole doesn't go through the centre etc. 

 

 

The Markit items have nice stocks that are accurately turned and have drillings for the fixing bolts.  I took brass rod and filed it into a hex pattern using the flats on the chuck of one of my pin chucks.  These were let into the drilled holes in the stocks and soldered in place on the rear.  I had to made additional holes in the stocks for the SR model as the buffers had acquired extra fasteners by then.  The fake fasteners I used for this application were from GHW-Modellbauversand in Germany.  The Markits buffers don't have a packing disc between buffer and beam, but both of my chosen prototypes did.  I cut these from 0.8 mm nickel silver sheet.  I can only imagine how much quicker this step would have been if I had a lathe.

 

The next step is to shorten the bit sticking out of the back of the stocks to the thickness of the buffer beam.  I did this by drilling a hole in some scrap sheet of the same thickness, poking the back of the buffer stock through it and grinding off the excess length.  The buffer heads had to have 4.2 mm cut off the length.  This meant that the thread for the fixing nut was removed.  I decided to use a ring cut from NS thin walled tube as a new fixing soldered to the end of the head (you need to use Baker's fluid as a flux for this so be careful.)  The buffer shanks then have to be drilled out with a 2mm drill to form a relief for the ring.  I drilled 2mm into the rear of the stock for this.  If you're a bit lost have a look at this sketch.  Hopefully it will add some clarity, but maybe not!

 

 

You end up with something like this, and you can see my scribblings on the sheet under it.  I've converted many sets and they all follow the same principal.

 

 

The buffer beam furniture was completed with some CPL SR coupling and safety chains for the LSWR loco.  The CPL stuff is very good but they take a while to assemble.  Taps and dies are required.

 

 

Yesterday was spent adding steps to the underside of the footplate and closing the water tanks.  Lead sheet was added to the inside of the tanks.

 

 

More next week.

 

Edited March 13, 2022 by nickd

[nickd]

I have had a couple of days off from the 02s to carry out a couple of little jobs.  

 

One was fixing a Slater's Saint for a Guild member who approached me at Kettering ('A morning's work!' said the Loco Clinic, HaHa.)

 

The other was a footbridge built from an iffy Churchward Models kit now marketed by Phoenix/Precision of SR Z class kit fame (don't you just love hand drawn, blown up 4 mm etches?)

 

 

 

[nickd]

Not much progress on the 02s this week because of the above, however I did manage to add some pipework.  I added steam heat and air brake pipes to the IOW loco and some vacuum brake pipes to the LSWR version.  No train steam heat pipes on the latter as it hadn't been invented at that time, or rather the LSWR weren't that good at customer service (like Markits!)  All the hoses are detachable to keep the painter happy, and there's some pipework detail represented under the footplate.

 

 

 

 

I also ditched the kit CWM injectors and added some nice cast ones with copper pipework.  The LSWR early injectors look a bit weedy!

 

 

 

 

I've put it off for long enough so it's cab detail next week.

[nickd]

I seemed to have got through quite a lot of the build this week.  I began by making the smokeboxes.  The wrappers for both locos were without rivet heads, so that helped.  All the parts in the kit for the smokeboxes were used.  They all fit nicely, but the smokebox wrappers have half etched lines on the inside to aid shaping.  In reality they just produce a threepenny bit shape and witness lines on the outside.  It would be good if manufacturers just used thinner (half etched?) material which can be folded by hand without the need for half etched relief strips, although I suppose that would not allow pips for rivet heads to be raised.  See above for bunker rears.

 

Someone pointed out to me that the smokeboxes in this kit stick out beyond the sandboxes and in reality the fronts of the smokebox and sandboxes should coincide.  They were right.  I decided that the way to achieve this would be to shorten the boiler.  The kit advises the use of a ring of brass wire to produce the quarter circular section cover between the front boiler band and the rear of the smokebox.  I decided to make life more difficult by cutting out circles of 1.0 mm brass sheet to the required diameter, and radiusing one edge.  These were soldered concentrically to the rear of the smokebox to give the same effect as brass wire with a fraction of the dressing.

 

The smokebox and the boiler were stood on the footplate and I could measure how much to cut off the front of the boiler so that the smokebox front and sandbox fronts were in line.  It was quite a bit at 1.8 mm.

 

 

I soldered the boiler to the smokebox and added all the cast weights that Jim puts in the kits.

 

The next task was to fettle all the castings for the chimney, dome and SVs.  The brief was to replace the white metal castings in the kit with brass castings from elsewhere.  The kit castings for the chimney were not hollow (!!) and the SV plinths, covers and valves were one cast lump, so probably a good decision.  I did have some issues with the replacement brass chimneys and SVs.  The Adams chimney was fine but the later Drummond chimney had a couple of issues.  The Drummond chimney had casting marks that went through the bolt heads on the saddle.  The only way to remove the lines and make the saddle a good shape was to grind off the cast bolt heads, shape the saddle and then drill the saddle to accept replacement fake bolt heads from my favourite German supplier.  Also the chimney cap has 4 holes in it.  When I put the chimney on the smokebox the holes were not in line with the axis of the boiler so had to be filled and re-drilled.

 

 

An easy fix but.......

 

 

Also neither chimneys were hollow all the way through so I still had to drill and cut out the bottom and do a fair amout of grinding with a vicious looking burr to clear ot the flues.  All in all 4 hours work to fettle 2 chimneys.

 

I used the cast white metal kit domes, which were a bit pitted but filled ok with low melt solder.  I moved on to the safety valves.  I dressed up the plinths and shrouds and popped one on the firebox.  The plinth nestled very well on the firebox clothing but.....

 

 

FFS!

 

This time I altered the saddle to twist the casting straight.  It would have been quicker and better to cut off the shroud and either reattach it or make another one!!

 

Next I made the steam manifolds with all the pipework and whistles etc.  The LSWR loco has 2 whistles...

 

 

And the IOW loco has a church organ whistle and a steam pipe that feeds the displacement lube in the cab...I think!

 

 

The next step was to complete the cab interior of the early loco and add a crew.

 

 

 

Actually I need to add the displacement lubricator when it turns up.  I left the IOW loco cab until I have made all the Westinghouse system as the brake part is in the cab and I don't have a handle yet.

 

I finished the week by fettling the last parts required for the tanks to be completed.  On monday I'm going to have a mass session soldering everything together!

[nickd]

Well I did have a massive soldering session and everything is attached to everything else.  I added the Westinghouse system to the IOW loco and finished the cab interior.  All that is left to do is to fit the motors when they arrive, check all runs well and take them to Warren 'Felt-pens' Haywood.  

 

 

 

 

I like the mods done to the IOW 02s, it makes the locos look a bit more business like.

 

More pics here;   https://www.flickr.com/photos/144381574@N05/with/51991138780/

[nickd]

Both back from paint and reassembled.  Paint by Warren Haywood.

 

 

 

 

More pics here https://www.flickr.com/photos/144381574@N05/with/52459549887/