Countdown to Christmas... An Advent Challenge

[Nick Mitchell]

Nearly three years ago I wrote the instructions for Nigel Hunt's then brand-new Fowler 2-6-4T kit.

As part of that exercise, I needed to part-build the body of one of the original cab variants of the kit, but I never finished it off.

A year later I started building the chassis, but never finished it off.

Is anyone noticing a pattern?

 

Today is Advent Sunday, and I have decided to set myself the challenge of finishing off the loco (not including painting) before Christmas.

Seeing one of Nigel's own superbly finished models "in the flesh" again at the AGM really made me want to get on with mine. 

I made a list of all the jobs I need to complete, and there are currently 24 of them.

So... as an incentive to myself, I am intending to post here each day between 1st December and Christmas Eve about the construction sequence.

It will be a kind of Advent Calendar, for anyone who wants to take a peek each day.

I took photographs as I went along, and I thought this would also be a nice way to share them.

With a bit of luck, I should finish the build in time for the last post on Christmas Eve...

 

Let's hope the loco doesn't turn out to be a Christmas Turkey!

 

By way of inspiration, although in a later period than I intend to model, here's 42374 on the L&Y main line with a Rochdale to Southport service:

 

[VRBroadgauge]

Was the list of jobs a happy accident or advent advantageous?

[Sithlord75]

One is tempted to do something similar… starting a day late due to time zones and what not, but like the Aussie ODI team I’m sure the deficit can be overcome.  
 

🧤picked up - but I’ll do my own thead!

[MrSimon]

Sounds like my kind of advent calendar!  Best of luck.

 

I made a similar decision about my Ivatt 262, just to get it running by Christmas, nothing as exciting as ‘finished’.

 

Cheers

Simon

[VRBroadgauge]

6 hours ago, Sithlord75 said:

One is tempted to do something similar… starting a day late due to time zones and what not, but like the Aussie ODI team I’m sure the deficit can be overcome.  
 

🧤picked up - but I’ll do my own thead!

What Kev said. I've got an annoying Beyer Peacock VR T class in bits. Like Simon said I'll hope to get the chassis running.

 

Challenge accepted...

[queensquare]

Finish an unfinished project by Christmas - great idea but which one! 😊

 

Jerry

[65179]

3 hours ago, queensquare said:

Finish an unfinished project by Christmas - great idea but which one! 😊

 

Jerry

 

Easy. Just create a new unfinished project.

[Nick Mitchell]

1st December - Footplate

 

In a real advent calendar you only get one picture behind each window, but here I can give you a construction sequence for each feature, and this first one is quite complex.

 

Fowler tanks have their footplates on three different levels, just to make life interesting.

Fortunately there are long deep valances that step up and down between the levels, and everything will be set up from these.

The valances bend in and out in various places, so there is a bit of work to do in preparation.

 

Here are the footplate sections (underside visible) and valances laid out ready. The left end is the front of the loco:

 

You might make out little half-etched notches in the valances showing where they bend in and out.

There are also some rivet heads at the ends of the valances to press out.

 

Here I'm putting a "set" in one of the valances. Different width slots in my home-made "setting tool" were required to achieve different sharpness of the various bends:

 

I started assembly with the middle section of the footplate, and began by checking the bend in the valance was in exactly the right place to line up with the half-etched recesses under the footplate:

 

It was then a case of tacking the valance in place, and checking the corners were perfectly lined up with the end of the footplate before forming a full seam:

 

 

Next came the dropped front section of footplate.

This had half-etched sections to curve up. I used blocks of steel to ensure these two sections were bent straight and evenly around a length of steel rod.

 

Again the footplate is tacked in place, while repeatedly checking from every angle that everything is straight and square.

 

The supports of the smokebox saddle need to be folded up at this point to keep everything rigid:

 

The front end is completed by the addition of the frame extensions with their lifting eyes:

 

Finally, the rear footplate section can be added. The bends at the front end are quite sharp, and it was easier to over-bend them in order to make sure everything was lined up at the rear end, then fold them forward to join up with the centre footplate.

 

These bent-up sections were deliberately made over-long, so they would overlap the centre footplate, and then be filed back to make a perfect corner.

And here's the completed footplate - still quite fragile at this stage:

 

It is worth making a little stand from bits of wood to hold everything flat and square as assembly progresses. The one I used was lent to me by Nigel for the purpose while I was writing the instructions.

 

Edited December 1, 2022 by Nick Mitchell

[Nick Mitchell]

2nd December - Front buffer beam, and beginnings of the superstructure

 

The downward projections at the font end of the valances are quire vulnerable, so the next task was to fit the front buffer beam.

This is in two layers, the front one having a cornucopia of rivets to press out, enabling the builder to choose their preferred rivet configuration. The slots that the coupling hook will move in is a separate part. Buffers are the turned brass "Coronation" type from N Brass:

 

 

 

To help align the superstructure, Nigel has opted for a novel arrangement of "battens" round which the tank and bunker sides will fit.

These are soldered onto the footplate (strengthening it in the process) and aligned with 1mm holes (perfect for top-hat bearings).

 

 

It was necessary to clean away any fillet of solder along the outside edges of these battens, to allow the tank and bunker sides to fit up tight against them.

In the next picture, you can see I've also added 12BA nuts for the chassis fixing screws. These were done with my usual method of screwing them tight to a cocktail stick inserted from underneath to both align them and prevent solder from entering the threads.

 

 

The cab front is the first part of the superstructure to rise up from the footplate, but before it could be fitted in place, the front cab window frames were soldered on. On the prototype these hinge upwards, and I've tried to represent their characteristic "closed" position with the bottoms of the frames projecting slightly.

 

 

There are two sets of slots in the footplate, catering for the slightly different positions of the Fowler and Stanier style cab options. The rear-most slots are correct for the Fowler style cab. A square is being used to make sure it is fixed vertically.

 

 

Here the right-hand tank frame is being test-fitted against the locating battens. The frame also has to connect to the cab side with a couple of tabs and slots. As one would expect with a Nigel Hunt kit, the fit of the parts is immaculate. I'm holding the tank side in place with a bit of wooden coffee stirrer - it saves on burnt fingers when it comes to soldering!

 

 

Soldering is done a bit at a time to make sure that a) the battens don't move, and b) there's scope for checking (frequently!) that everything is lining up properly as the job progresses.

Here I've completed a seam along the upper footplate batten, and just soldered a small section in the middle of the lower one.

 

 

Soldering complete (with fingers still intact!) including a seam up the cab front, and everything looks nice and square.

 

 

With a bit of luck, not too much solder will have come through to the other side of the joint, but any that has will need cleaning away before the tank side overlay "skins" can be fitted correctly:

 

[Nick Mitchell]

3rd December - Cab (continued) and bunker

 

With the cab front and tank sides in place, the splashers over the rear driving wheels could be fitted, along with the handrails in the cab doorway.

I used etched handrail knobs, soldered to the inside of the cab side-sheets. I filed a little notch out of the splasher to accommodate the stem of the bottom handrail knob.

 

 

The splashers themselves fold up from one piece in a cunning way, but here I encountered the only instance of a part not quite fitting.

When I folded the end of the splasher (see picture below of the left-hand one), it left a bit of a gap. It turned out the splasher was too long by exactly the with of the gap.

My solution was to remove the end, solder it in place butted up to the splasher top, and then file back the protruding side.

 

 

The kit includes a representation of the screw reverser which fits into a slot on top of the splasher on the driver's side:

 

 

Next I moved on to the cab rear plate, and it was time to crochet the glazing bars from the finest phosphor bronze wire I could lay my hands on - 41s.w.g. (or 0.11mm if you are metric).

While fiddly to do, the result is much finer than could have been achieved by etching. The bars thread through holes in the cab rear, all 24 of which all had to be drilled through without breaking a 0.25mm drill bit(!) (along with the 10 further holes on the top edge of the cab).

The kit does provide some etched rings to solder into the recesses to represent window frames, but I chose not to fit these. The cab windows open inwards, and to my mind the half-etched recesses represent the frames of a closed window perfectly.

 

 

after threading through, the wires were pulled tight, trimmed, and soldered on the inside of the cab. I've done my best to clean up the excess, but stopped short of filing them completely flush, so that there is no chance they will come loose and fall out.

 

 

The cab rear was then fitted, much like the front...

 

 

...and the wrap-around bunker frame folded carefully to shape and fitted round the batten on the floor. Once again, the fit was spot on.

 

 

The final tasks at this stage were to fit the rear set of cab doorway handrails, and file the protruding tabs flush on the cab sides, so they won't make lumps under the skin later.

 

 

You may notice two tiny holes in the footplate either side of the cab opening in the picture above. These are for locating the handrails on the Stanier cab version of the kit. I will fill them in later.

 

One other thing I found when fitting the cab front and rear was that the tabs on the bottom edge were longer than the thickness of the footplate. This meant i couldn't have the footplate sitting flat on the wooden support block when the parts were initially fitted together, or they wouldn't have sat down fully.

It also meant that the protruding tabs needed filing flush in the underside of the footplate... lucky for me that I hadn't fixed the rear buffer beam in place by this point...

 

[Nick Mitchell]

4th December - Final cab details and side overlays

 

Many of the fowler tanks were fitted with water pickup apparatus (others were assembled with some of the parts, with an eye to full retro-fitting at a later date).

The domes for the pickup gear were located on extensions to the bunker tank which protruded inside the cab.

These called for the first of many turnings to be made on my watchmakers' lathe.

Although a lathe is not essential for 2mm work, I really enjoy using mine, so it is my go-to for jobs like this. The kit instructions suggest commercial castings or other ways of making these details.

 

I turned spigots on the domes for locating them on the tank extensions.

 

 

With the tank extensions and domes in place, the raised cab floor could be fitted.

The cab floor has holes to locate the handbrake and water scoop stanchions, and I worried that these didn't like up vertically above the holes I had previously drilled in the footplate.

As it turned out, the bottoms of the stanchions don't need to go through the footplate anyway, just down through the cab floor.

 

 

Here the brake and scoop handles are fitted into the holes in the cab floor, and making use of some handrail-knob-like etchings to steady them at the top - they look close enough to the prototype brackets.

 

 

With the cab interior detail complete (as far as what is provided in the kit is concerned - backhead detail etc, is left up to the builder, and with the enclosed nature of the cab in this instance, I don't think it will be visible - everything that can be viewed in silhouette through the cab windows is catered for) the half-etched side overlays can be fitted.

 

There's a bit of careful folding to be done in preparation. Firstly, the bunker side needs to be scored from the inside. Two little etched "whiskers" thoughtfully mark where the score line should be. I did this gently with a scriber on a hard surface.

 

 

The scoring on its own is enough to impart just the right bend into the metal.

 

 

Next, the top of the cab needs to be bent inwards. Both sides of the cab opening need to be bent along exactly the same line, and I used a hold-and-fold to achieve this. Here you can see me checking against the cab rear to verify the angle of the bend is correct.

 

 

Here is the fireman's side checked and ready to fit:

 

 

The left (driver's) side is fitted in place - with a huge sigh of relief that everything lines up neatly.

 

 

To attach the overlays, they were tinned, and plenty of flux was added. Then a decent amount of solder was introduced through the holes in the tank frames to tack the overlays into position. The soldering iron was then used on the outside of the overlays to draw the solder from the holes, and all over the side.

 

 

To get the heat transfer from the iron tip, there has to be solder and flux on the outside of the tank, which leaves a bit of cleaning up to do.

The picture below shows the right hand side "sweated" in place, before being cleaned up.

 

[Nick Mitchell]

5th December - More overlays and associated details

 

A tip I picked up (I think it was from @Nig H) was the use of wooden clothes pegs for clamping things whilst soldering.

Here you can see how mini clothes pegs came in handy holding the right hand tank overlay in place.

 

 

The tank fronts also have overlays, which needed careful lining up so that the beading along the top edge matched the sides perfectly.

 

 

There were also steps to add, plus rivetted flanges along the bottom edges, which were fun to fold up!

The little oval maker's plates have been soldered into the recesses in the tank sides too.

 

 

Adding the overlays has created a ledge for the tank tops to sit on. They also have a little tab that engages with the cab front.

The tank tops are sprinkled with various holes and recesses to help locate the details:

 

 

I chose to fit the smokebox saddle next. It slots over the tabs at the rear end of it's side supports, which after soldering in needed filing flush.

Those tabs are still visible on the outside of the saddle, but will eventually be hidden behind mechanical lubricators.

 

 

I added as much detail to the tank tops as I could at this stage, before the boiler was in place which would make access slightly more tricky.

Four identical tank filler lids were supplied in the kit, but the rear pair weren't actually opening lids - just bolted on inspection covers. They were the same shape as the lids however, so I have attempted to file off the raised detail representing the hinge and the latch.

In the view below you can also see the lifting eyes, the bases for the tank vents, and also three little discs each side. Once the boiler is fitted, stays will connect the boiler to the tanks, fitting over the wires you can see projecting from some of these discs.

 

 

Next I moved on to the bunker rear overlay.

Again it was the beading along the top I was most concerned to get line up perfectly.

You can see below there was a slight gap at the left hand corner, which I subsequently managed to fill with solder.

 

 

 

The various steps and other details were added before cleaning up.

In the picture below you can see I added the rear buffer beam, and the steps which protrude below it at this stage as well as the vertical handrail.

 

 

 

Edited December 5, 2022 by Nick Mitchell
moved out-of-sequence picture

[Nick Mitchell]

6th December - Making sure the mechanism fits inside the body

 

Before going any further with the loco body, I wanted to make a start on the chassis so that I could be sure the two would fit together nicely.

Specifically, any material that needed removing from the body to accommodate the mechanism would best be done at this point, and i wanted to know how much room the motor would take up between the tanks before starting on the boiler.

 

I don't have step-by-step photos of the main frames going together, but they are pretty much the same as any locomotive built using folded etched spacers (such as my Jubilee).

In the photo below, the bearings are fitted, the frames assembled onto their spacers (with thin PCB for electrical isolation), and Simpson springs fitted to the front two axles.

 

 

i like to lay out the wheels on a board to make it easier to glue the balance weights in position and give them a coat of paint before fitting them to the chassis (which is what I was about to do when I took the photo below):

 

 

Here the wheels are painted and fitted to the frames, as well as the gears. I also painted the frames behind the wheels, but most of this paint ended up needing to be scraped away in order to fit the sand boxes and brake gear. The coupling rods are held in place temporarily with bits of PVC wire insulation on the centre wheels. I've already soldered crankpin cap washers to the rear wheels. at this stage, the chassis should be able to roil freely by itself down an inclined plane.

 

 

This is the underside of the chassis. You can see where I had to crank the brake pull-rod round the spur gear.

There's a better view here of the brass bearings fitted to two of the spacers to mount the bogie and pony truck. These were made on my lathe. There's a cup on the upper side which contains a 14BA nut soldered in place. The hole up the centre of the bearing accepts a 14BA bolt.

 

 

The spur gear on the driven axle was a loose fit on the muff. I thought when I inserted the stub axle, it would tighten up, but in this instance it did not, and the gear was able to turn on the muff. My solution, seen below, was to drill a small hole diagonally into the muff, cutting into the gear. This was filled with epoxy, and is enough of a key to stop the gear from being able to turn. The other holes in the muffs you may be able to see are to allow air to escape when pressing the half-axles in - otherwise the compressed air will always be trying to push them back out again. After the wheels are quartered, these holes can also be used to introduce some superglue or araldite to help lock them in place.

 

 

The motor is a Maxon 10mm diameter coreless, and is glued to a cradle which in turn bolts to the chassis spacer from underneath. With this arrangement, there is scope to adjust the mesh of the worm by adding shims between the spacer and motor cradle.

 

 

With the motor fitted to the chassis, it can be offered up to the body.

on this loco, the gearing protrudes quite a long way into the cab, and I had to file a way a section of the cab floor to accommodate the worm wheel.

 

 

I also needed to file back part of the centre section of the footplate (behind the front fixing screw) to make more room for the motor tags.

 

 

[65179]

Any particular reason why you've gone for a Maxon with this one Nick? Length rather than diameter seems to be the issue here, but presumably a smaller motor would have been OK unless you're envisaging this pulling Wakes Week specials?

 

Simon

[Nick Mitchell]

9 hours ago, 65179 said:

Any particular reason why you've gone for a Maxon with this one Nick? Length rather than diameter seems to be the issue here, but presumably a smaller motor would have been OK unless you're envisaging this pulling Wakes Week specials?

 

Hi Simon,

The mounting cradle in the kit was designed to take a 10mm cylindrical motor. If a smaller one were used, it would need some packing underneath.

Maxon are my favourites - plus I happened to stumble across a handful going for a too-cheap-to-say-no-to price on eBay a while ago.

 

As for the wakes week special - in my dream, it will be pulled by the Crab that I'm still waiting for Nigel to release a kit for...

[65179]

11 minutes ago, Nick Mitchell said:

 

Hi Simon,

The mounting cradle in the kit was designed to take a 10mm cylindrical motor. If a smaller one were used, it would need some packing underneath.

Maxon are my favourites - plus I happened to stumble across a handful going for a too-cheap-to-say-no-to price on eBay a while ago.

 

As for the wakes week special - in my dream, it will be pulled by the Crab that I'm still waiting for Nigel to release a kit for...

 

Understood. Keep plugging away 😉

[queensquare]

27 minutes ago, Nick Mitchell said:

 

……. it will be pulled by the Crab that I'm still waiting for Nigel to release a kit for...

Good man, keep the pressure up - a red Crab spent the summer of 1927 at Bath where it evidently acquitted itself very well. Nigel is far too good a kit designer to retire just yet! 😊

 

Jerry

[Nig H]

2 hours ago, queensquare said:

Good man, keep the pressure up - a red Crab spent the summer of 1927 at Bath where it evidently acquitted itself very well. Nigel is far too good a kit designer to retire just yet! 😊

 

Jerry

Oh no he isn’t!

[queensquare]

18 minutes ago, Nig H said:

Oh no he isn’t!

Oh yes he is.
Sorry Nigel but it is Pantomime season!😊

 

Jerry

 

 

[Nick Mitchell]

7th December - Firebox

 

Back to the body, and the next stage was to assemble the firebox - always a scene of trepidation when there is so much scope for getting the bends in the wrong place!

 

I started gently forming the curves in the wrapper around a suitably sized rod. The row of holes for the handhole doors is a mixed blessing: They assist with getting the bend in roughly the right place and horizontal, but the metal tends to distort around them.

 

 

 

Nigel has very thoughtfully included some slots to align the wrapper centrally on the end profiles - the outer part of which will be filed away after soldering is complete.

Using the centralised end as a guide to finishing the bends prevents that most embarrassing of problems that the late Peter Whitehead described so eloquently when he looked at my first attempt at a Raithby 4F Firebox more than 15 years ago and sympathised: "Ahh - the duvet slipped".

 

 

The front end is made up of multiple layers stacked over 0.7mm rod, and includes a support for the boiler tube:

 

 

The wrapper soldered to the ends - reasonably straight, and not even inside out!

 

 

The firebox is quite flimsy to begin with, but strength is increased with the addition of the inner layers which contain representations of the washout plugs.

These were quite tricky to do, as you have to solder them from the inside, without being able to see whether they are properly lined up. The drill is to line them up and clamp them in place, tack solder, and double-check that they haven't moved.

 

 

Next come the hand-hole doors on the firebox shoulders. Not all fireboxes had these, but since the holes were there, it felt rude not to put them on.

The door covers are etched individually and are designed to be lined up over a length of wire.

First stage therefore is to solder in the wires, to create something not unlike those 1970s dinner party hedgehogs - albeit devoid of chunks of cheese and pineapple!

 

 

The oval doors need curving slightly to sit on the firebox shoulders. Here they are soldered in place before cleaning up.

 

 

After the wires were trimmed back and the excess solder cleaned up, two short lengths of 1mm brass rod were soldered into the rear end of the firebox. These will plug into the cab front.

 

[Nick Mitchell]

8th December - Boiler and Smokebox

 

The boiler started off as a length of  13/32" diameter brass tube, carefully measured* to be 33.33mm long

*or not so carefully, as it turned out, but that is a story for another day.

 

 

The smokebox is formed as a pair of wrappers soldered to what will be the front end of the tube. The inner wrapper is mostly full thickness, and the outer wrapper half-etched with rivet detail etc.

 

I used a miniature swage block to help form the curves in the wrappers, rolling them over-tight (as can be seen in the next three pictures of the inner wrapper being formed) so they would be a spring fit onto the tube.

 

 

 

 

Once a reasonably close fit was achieved, I could hold the wrapper in place for soldering. The inner wrapper needed to be flush with the end of the tube.

 

 

The method of soldering I used was to coat the tube and inside of the wrapper with Carr's solder paint, then heat the whole lot with a mini blow torch.

Soft iron wire was loosely wound around the wrapper to hold it gently in position while the heat was applied.

It did the job, but created quite a mess.

 

 

Nigel has since shown an alternative (and much cleaner) method of tinning both parts, clamping with wood, and using a normal soldering iron to sweat them together.

 

Anyway, once cleaned up with a Garryflex block (the boiler, not me), I was ready to repeat the process for the outer wrapper.

 

 

i needed to be careful that the holes etched in the two wrappers tiled up perfectly, and this time the wrapper needed to protrude slightly from the front of the tube:

 

 

Some years ago I splashed out on a Proxxon micro milling machine, although it doesn't get nearly as much use as my watchmaker's lathe (which, incidentally, was used to cut the boiler tube to length). The milling machine was perfect, however, for cutting a wide slot in the bottom of the boiler tube to accommodate the motor, before soldering it to the firebox.

 

 

All that remained was to use the smokebox wrapper as a guide to drill holes through the brass tube for chimney, handrails and steam pipes to be fitted, and the main boiler unit was ready for trial fitting.

 

[Nig H]

On 06/12/2022 at 23:10, queensquare said:

Oh yes he is.
Sorry Nigel but it is Pantomime season!😊

 

Jerry

 

 

I set you up nicely for that Jerry!

 

Regards,

 

Nigel H

[Nig H]

3 hours ago, Nick Mitchell said:

8th December - Boiler and Smokebox

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The method of soldering I used was to coat the tube and inside of the wrapper with Carr's solder paint, then heat the whole lot with a mini blow torch.

Soft iron wire was loosely wound around the wrapper to hold it gently in position while the heat was applied.

It did the job, but created quite a mess.

 

 

Nigel has since shown an alternative (and much cleaner) method of tinning both parts, clamping with wood, and using a normal soldering iron to sweat them together.

Whichever method you use, you probably end up with a mess of solder. That doesn't worry me as it can be cleaned off, I'm more concerned about getting as much heat as possible to try to ensure a good join all round the smokebox.

3 hours ago, Nick Mitchell said:

 

 

All that remained was to use the smokebox wrapper as a guide to drill holes through the brass tube for chimney, handrails and steam pipes to be fitted, and the main boiler unit was ready for trial fitting.

 

 

Nick, great work and I'm enjoying your postings on this.

 

Nig H

[Nick Mitchell]

9th December - Disaster and Recovery

 

With the firebox pegged into the cab front, I drilled hole up through the smokebox saddle and tapped it 12BA, just so that I could temporarily bolt the boiler in place. Eventually, the steam pipes will permanently hold everything together.

 

 

 

Speaking of steam pipes holding things together, the holes in the footplate will obviously need to line up perfectly with those in the smokebox wrapper. When they do, the back of the smokebox should be in line with the back of the saddle.

 

Unfortunately, when everything lined up perfectly at the front end, I discovered a gap of just under half a millimetre at the back of the firebox.

 

 

The view from above highlights the problem:

 

 

Somehow I had managed to cut the boiler tube slightly too short. I didn't feel confident that I could remove the smokebox wrappers to install on a replacement tube without mangling them, so the existing tube had to be extended.

 

I un-soldered the boiler form the firebox, and soldered it onto a piece of nickel silver the appropriate thickness.

In the photo below, I am part-way through cutting away the excess material:

 

 

The outside of the nickel silver was trimmed away before being filed back to the brass tube.

 

 

Eventually, I ended up with a slightly extended boiler.

 

 

At the front end, the holes line up correctly...

 

 

...and at the rear end, the gap is eliminated.

 

 

With the boiler and firebox still readily removable, it was a good time to file away some more material that was found to be necessary in order to accommodate the motor. A section needed to be removed from the bottom of the firebox sides.

 

 

This was necessary because the motor is ever so slightly wider than the inside of the firebox.

 

 

 

There isn't a huge amount of headroom to spare, but I filed enough away from the firebox sides so that the motor could fit right up against the crescent shaped support piece that formed the join between the boiler and firebox.

 

 

With the corrected and adjusted smokebox/boiler/firebox unit bolted in position, the character of the loco is really starting to reveal itself now:

 

 

[Nick Mitchell]

10th December - Smokebox door

 

When it came to the smokebox door, I'm sure I could have found a suitable casting amongst Nick Tilston's vast N Brass range.

However, Nigel has included some intriguing little bits on the etches to tempt the builder to have a go at making one for themselves.

 

I know everyone has different skills, tools and ideas of what constitutes "time well spent" at their disposal, but for me personally, I find one of the most enjoyable aspects of this hobby is in making things. The most efficient way of getting to the end result isn't necessarily the most satisfying.

 

And so it came to pass that I built the smokebox door from 23 separate pieces of metal. 14 etched parts, 8 bits of wire, one turning, lots of time, some burnt fingers and a fair dollop of frustration. Was it worth it? Absolutely!

 

I began with the two etched smokebox front "rings". The rear-most one ring a half-etched recess into which the front ring nestles, the two being lined up over six lengths of 0.3mm wire.

 

The wires aren't evenly spaced around the rings, and one is helpfully marked "top" - as long as the front ring wasn't soldered in with the word on the underside!

Less helpfully, the actual smokebox door will cover this word when fitted, so I have left the wire at the top twice as long as the others as a reminder:

 

 

On the reverse side, the wires are simply bent over and soldered to the rear of the ring:

 

 

The door itself is a turned brass mushroom shape, with the stem of the mushroom being a close fit into the hole in the rings.

 

 

The mushroom was soldered to the rings from behind, with plenty of flux and solder, so that the solder was carried through to the front of the rings.

The assembly is being supported on the end of a wooden clothes peg, which just fitted between the wires. Having them bent over prevented them from falling out during this operation, when the whole lot got very hot and all the solder re-melted. Cunning!

 

 

This is the front side after soldering was complete.

 

 

Next came the little etched clamping "dogs". In the past I've made these from cut-down etched handrail knobs, but Nigel has included some just the right size in the kit... with plenty of spares in case of the inevitable losses. They thread onto the wires and push down so the half-etched tag bends up against the curve of the door, and are soldered in place.

Below you can see them in place before I trimmed the wires back.

 

 

To hold everything while I soldered on the remaining details, I drilled a 4mm hole in small block of wood to accommodate the "mushroom stem" on the back of the door.

I drew crosshairs on it to help make sure everything went on square and centrally as appropriate, and the wood also provided a "handle" for the workpiece.

 

The picture below shows the door fitted to the wood, with the details in place.

 

 

To get to this point was quite a challenge. The more parts are added, the more difficult things become.

The brass door retains its heat, and so as one part is being soldered, all the others are free to move if you catch them with the soldering iron, or even breathe on them too heavily!

Inevitably there were several times when the "face" of the loco ended up looking more like a Picasso painting... but patience paid off in the end.

 

The door straps and number plate are part of the kit. I used etched handrail knobs (having drilled holes to accept them) and 8 thou. steel wire for the handrail. The hinge pin is a length of nickel silver wire, and the lamp bracket spare from a wagon kit.

 

 

I didn't want to fix the smokebox door in place on the loco at this point, as access was still required to the inside of the smokebox, but I balanced it in position to take the photograph below, just to see what the final effect would be...

 

Edited December 10, 2022 by Nick Mitchell