Whats on your 2mm Work bench

[65179]

On 11/05/2023 at 00:08, Nick Mitchell said:

5702 Progress report #5a

 

Thanks @65179 and @Izzy for your advice regarding the drawbar.

I decided to try and fit the body and see how the land lay. I wanted to work out how much surgery would be necessary, and where an alternative drawbar arrangement might fit.

 

Not wanting to ruin the red body in case it all went wrong, I practiced on another Jubilee body (why do I need so many???):

 

 

The surgery involved carving away the frames at the front, and removing some of the central web that supports the footplate at the rear. This leave it very fragile.

 

I removed the unwanted plastic using a milling cutter freehand in my mini-drill.

 

 

To my amazement, the tender drawbar lines up perfectly height-wise with the blind slot in the body where the real draw bar passed between loco and tender.

Imagine Mike Raithby designed his kit to be like the prototype!!!

 

 

This looks really promising, so before going about altering the drawbar or modifying the loco chassis, I thought I'd see if I can make things work as they currently stand.

 

There are actually three "floors" that stack on top of each other. The one in the pictures so far is the lowest level.

I cut away an area of the floor to accommodate the draw bar, in the region of what would be the drag box on a real loco.

 

In the picture below, you can also see that I've fitted a bolt to locate in the second hole in the loco's rear frame spacer. This bolt is 12BA countersunk, fixed underneath with a half-nut. (There's not room for a full nut on top of the spacer.)

 

 

 

The bolt for the coupling comes up from underneath. Two 12BA washers stacked on the spacer give the tender the correct ride height at the front end:

 

 

 

The top of the drawbar is still below the level of the floor, meaning little or nothing will need to be cut away from the "upper floors" - potentially a perfect solution?

 

 

 

 

 

With the cab clipped loosely back in place, nothing interferes with the coupling, and I'm pleased with the loco - tender gap. The enormous fall plate is going to have to go, however!

 

Viewed from behind, the tender doesn't look stupidly narrow considering that it is 2mm scale rather than N gauge. Not forgetting that the real ones were narrower than the loco cabs...

 

 

With Trafalgar (which will become Colossus) waiting patiently, I decided I was happy enough with this set up to start dismantling her and making similar modifications.

 

 

Here she is with the same modification to the "bottom" floor. I've added the middle floor, which is attached to the backhead. A 4mm dia. hole has been drilled through the firedoors to accommodate the universal joint.

 

This floor is not solid, and I enlarged the hole in it slightly to make room for a longer coupling bolt to stick up.

When I was messing about with the green body, I also narrowed the tender drawbar a little bit, which can be observed in this picture.

 

 

It wasn't strictly necessary, but I also made a slot in the "back wall" of the intermediate floor. I think I'll do something similar with the cab, which fits over and around this floor. It just allows a bit extra vertical movement, and it might come in handy when coupling the finished loco/tender.

 

 

You can see in the photo above that I've made a start removing the handrails from the body on this side. The large holes will need filling and re-drilling for etched knobs. I just can't live with the gross-ness of these plastic knobs - especially on a red engine. (compare with the unmolested handrail on the other side in the shot below) I'd even go as far as to say the moulded on handrails on the original PECO jubilee looked better, as they were so much finer.

 

 

The loco footsteps also fell victim to the milling tool. These will be replaced by etched ones to match the tender.

I'm not sure at what point this ceased to be a "simple conversion"!

 

 

The bogie is still next on my list of things to do...

 

Saw this and thought of what you are doing Nick:

 

 

Simon

[Sithlord75]

1 hour ago, 65179 said:

 

Saw this and thought of what you are doing Nick:

 

Simon

Look at all those extra parts he'll have to make... 🤣

[Ian Morgan]

I hope he is doing all the required paperwork too. Typewriter, not word processor, of course.

 

[Nick Mitchell]

Speaking of old instructional videos, YouTube suggested this to me while I was procrastinating from exam marking last night...

I'd not come across it before, but it might be useful preparation for those attending the chassis building workshop in Bradford later this month...

 

 

[Sithlord75]

That iron is more likely to be found in the 5" gauge section...

[65179]

7 hours ago, Sithlord75 said:

That iron is more likely to be found in the 5" gauge section...

 

Oh I don't know. Now I know what to use to attach stayalive to those decoder pads.

[t-b-g]

23 hours ago, Nick Mitchell said:

Speaking of old instructional videos, YouTube suggested this to me while I was procrastinating from exam marking last night...

I'd not come across it before, but it might be useful preparation for those attending the chassis building workshop in Bradford later this month...

 

 

 

Soldering with a silent L. I have heard this before from across the Atlantic.

[Compound2632]

3 hours ago, t-b-g said:

Soldering with a silent L. I have heard this before from across the Atlantic.

 

Well, I found this interesting:

https://www.circuitspecialists.com/blogs/news/solder-not-sodder-the-story-behind-the-silent-or-not-so-silent-l

 

 

[t-b-g]

1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Well, I found this interesting:

https://www.circuitspecialists.com/blogs/news/solder-not-sodder-the-story-behind-the-silent-or-not-so-silent-l

 

 

 

Fascinating stuff!

 

I just can't help but get silly schoolboy giggles at the thought of me going down to me shed to do some "Soddering".

[Simon D.]

It always brings the unfortunate demise of Edward II to mind…

 

(Sorry)

[yaxxbarl]

So tonight, from what was on my workbench to what is...

 

What has finally left the bench (despite several false endings) is 3733, now with couplings, coal and weathering...

 

 

It does need a fire iron or two on the back and crew, but that can wait a bit for now.

 

Next up though is the frames for a Hunslet Austerity Tank - ready for tomorrow's loco workshop in Bradford...

 

 

Suitable pieces of PCB for the spacers have also been cut and filed. Let's see if I can have a runner by the end of the day...

[yaxxbarl]

Here's the fruits of Saturday's Loco workshop organised by Nigel Hunt and Ed Sissling in Bradford - my first running chassis!

 

I'd temporarily added the bits to make it a runner to validate that it worked, as I write it is again dismantled for the paint shops where it will also gain sandpipes and brake gear.

 

 

It'll also gain a better motor mount than a blob of Blue Tack!

 

It is also worth acknowledging Nigel, Ed and also Nick Mitchell and Mick Simpson who shared their skills on Saturday and gave me and quite a few others the confidence to get a chassis built!

Edited May 31, 2023 by yaxxbarl

[Sithlord75]

1 hour ago, yaxxbarl said:

Here's the fruits of Saturday's Loco workshop organised by Nigel Hunt and Ed Sissling in Bradford - my first running chassis!

 

I'd temporarily added the bits to make it a runner to validate that it worked, as I write it is again dismantled for the paint shops where it will also gain sandpipes and brake gear.

 

 

It'll also gain a better motor mount than a blob of Blue Tack!

 

It is also worth acknowledging Nigel, Ed and also Nick Mitchell and Mick Simpson who shared their skills on Saturday and gave me and quite a few others the confidence to get a chassis built!

 

To quote HM The King (although he was only Prince of Wales at the time and it was a very different thing he was missing) “my knees dropped off having turned green with envy” at the thought of missing out on the workshop - dunno if any of the experts fancy a trip south to reprise it do they?  We can offer hot pies and cold beer (along with spiders, snakes, drop bears, kangawallafoxes and bunyips)!

 

Seems like a day well spent - well done John (and well done to the organisers and teachers).

[Matt.S.]

One dropped van straightened, two Chivers open C rustled up - fingers crossed decals won't take too long to reach NZ.

[Richard Hall]

Not much time for tiny train stuff lately due to having taken on far too much work, but found a bit of time to be super brave and tackle my Ivatt 2MT project.  I bought this minus its motor and gears for not much money, and it will be perfect for Longwitton if I can get it running.

 

 

Association conversion bushes etc and a Nigel Hunt etch for the tender chassis and valve gear. The tender went together no bother: I learned from my J39 build, and this one has the muff on the centre axle narrowed slightly to give a bit of sideplay so it can go round curves.  The J39 works well in a straight line but I am going to have to pull it apart or possibly start again with a fresh chassis etch .

 

The bit of the 2MT which really frightens me is the valve gear, but look at this:

 

 

It took me an hour, and I needed two attempts at each joint, but I have an assembly which moves freely without the joints waggling around.  Beginner's luck?  Almost certainly, but it does look a bit prettier than the Farish version with its giant rivets. Now if I can just make another one the same...

 

Richard

[yaxxbarl]

I'm almost finished with ANOTHER Pannier build... this one has been photographed for a forthcoming article in the mag...

 

Here it is posing in the new lightbox...

 

 

...and here it is running on the rolling road...

 

[Klaus ojo]

Do you want a horsebox?

 

see: RMweb  2mm Finescale  Down Under Work Bench - Page 3 

 

When recently we´ve been asked by Sithlord75 and VRBroadgauge if we´d like to have one of their horseboxes I said „yes“. I´ve expected to be number #17 or so on the list of applicants being told it would take some months and having to pay xyz plus p&p...

Surprise!: After a fortnight there was a pouch in my postbox with a fret of a neatly etched NE horsebox!

This was my inspiration to instantly begin (of course before asking for and reading any instructions. Who does? ).

All went together very neatly and it was quite straight forward. A really nice model and worth running on any layout.

Well- I ended up with thoroughly sweating on some scrap parts I had to remove afterwards and added a bufferbeam which was not prototypically. A look at the picture of the GNR horsebox before would have been better. I was afraid of wiggling the half etched parts when filing off the pips. The photo shows I better would have filed these off more thoroughly.

The etch is providing some brake levers, handles and steps I have not yet mounted. The edges need some rework to cover the slots which were very useful for easing the bending.

So I´d say: we are having a new star of etch design! Bruce, Thanks for that!

 

Edited June 18, 2023 by Klaus ojo
spelling

[yaxxbarl]

So... this is what has been on my workbench tonight...

 

 

I've given it a test run and OK so far, bar a few minor quartering issues.

 

I did have to narrow the ungeared muffs as the chassis seems narrower than the Farish chassis for which they are designed, so far the geared muff has seemed OK.

 

Coupling rods are made using the 3-170 etch, 15mm and 19mm shortened to 18.5mm.

 

I made a jig to fettle up the rods...

 

 

This was when I was doing some initial cutting and test fitting.

 

Next...back to my NCB Austerity!

 

Cheers,

 

John

[Richard Hall]

On 20/06/2023 at 00:08, yaxxbarl said:

So... this is what has been on my workbench tonight...

 

 

 

Nice work. @GER_Jon brought one to the Norfolk meeting on Sunday for everyone to admire and we were pondering on how to rewheel it. Now if the RTR manufacturers could stop with these ridiculously obscure prototypes and do a proper engine like a J27 or G5...

 

Richard

[Richard Hall]

A bit more work on the 2MT.

 

 

I now have four bits of valve gear, eight joints, each of which felt like a total fluke that I would never be able to repeat. My beginner's luck still seems to be holding.  In between ruining my eyesight with the valvegear I made a bit of progress on the chassis:

 

 

This rolls very nicely and this time I remembered to put a bit of sideplay in the middle axle so it should cope with Longwitton's fearsomely sharp (22 inch radius) curved crossover. So much easier to do quartering with removable wheelsets.  The pony truck frame is "live" to one side of the split chassis so I only insulated the axle bush on the non-live side.  Only one more wheel for pickup but every little helps as they say.

 

Next up, crossheads.  I tried to attach the connecting rods using the Farish washers as per Nigel's excellent instructions but made a mess of it and I don't think I have enough metal left on the retaining pin for another go.  So I will have to find or make some very thin nickel or brass washers (the Farish ones look to be stainless steel), solder a pin to them, drill the crosshead and attach the whole lot with a soldered washer at the front which should work in theory.

 

Richard

[Yorkshire Square]

With the layout well on and stock making reasonable progress, I returned to the decals. I've drawn and printed a test onto photographic paper to make sure I'm happy with their look. Next I need to get them printed properly. 

 

[Richard Hall]

More 2MT fiddling.  Bad news first: I broke the piston rod off one of the Farish monkey metal crossheads.  Things were already going badly by that point: as I feared the washers that were supposed to attach the connecting rods refused to stay put and I was half way through drilling out the pivot to take a nickel silver pin when the piston rod snapped off.  

 

Not to worry, I have ordered some of the brass Black Five crossheads from Shop 3, not exactly the same as 2MT ones but close enough for my kind of bodgery anyway. What to do while waiting for them to arrive?  I thought I would see if I could get the thing to move under its own power, and I succeeded.

 

 

 

That second photo requires some explanation.  The Farish model has a coreless motor in the firebox.  At least it should have: mine was missing the motor and its mounting plate which is why it was cheap.  I have a small stash of this particular size of coreless motor: but Longwitton will be using the same controller as Longframlington, an old AMR feedback unit which works superbly with open frame motors and big cans, but eats coreless motors in about the time it takes to say "that isn't running very well".  

 

I had a dead coreless motor which I gutted to turn into a bearing support for the worm shaft, with a home-made mount Araldited to the chassis.  It isn't exactly model engineering, but it works. In the tender we have one of a large number of Chinese 1015 flat cans that I bought for pennies: they are a bit odd as the brushgear is at the output shaft end but they are nice and torquey, and just narrow enough to fit a 2MT tender.

 

Driveshaft is 0.7mm nickel wire cross drilled 0.3mm one end for a drive peg, simply bent 90 degrees at the other to engage with a hole drilled sideways into a length of 1.0mm ID brass tube.  At the motor end the same size tube is used, with a slot cut across the end with a razor saw and the inner bore radiused a bit with a cheap diamond burr from Aldi.

 

 

Needless to say the Mk1 version is a bit rubbish but not as bad as I thought it would be.  I need to shorten the motor shaft and lengthen the driveshaft as the articulation isn't quite good enough, and I will be cramming bits of lead into every tiny bit of space in the 2MT body.  The Farish model has traction tyres on the trailing drivers, and without these mine will just about pull its own tender at the moment.

 

Richard

[Izzy]

48 minutes ago, Richard Hall said:

and I will be cramming bits of lead into every tiny bit of space in the 2MT body.  The Farish model has traction tyres on the trailing drivers, and without these mine will just about pull its own tender at the moment.

 

That's a clever idea with the dud motor. Could you stuff lead inside the casing to add more weight? I just used a length of tube as the bearing in mine and mounted it on lead strip which I also packed all around it to get a reasonable amount of haulage. This seems to be the downside with the plastic bodies in N. They look great but the loss of weight makes a big difference to traction, the lack of it.

 

Bob

[bradfordbuffer]

41 minutes ago, Izzy said:

 

That's a clever idea with the dud motor. Could you stuff lead inside the casing to add more weight? I just used a length of tube as the bearing in mine and mounted it on lead strip which I also packed all around it to get a reasonable amount of haulage. This seems to be the downside with the plastic bodies in N. They look great but the loss of weight makes a big difference to traction, the lack of it.

 

Bob

It's defo thinking outside the firebox 

[Caley Jim]

Ideally you should have either end of the driveshaft within the wheelbases of the loco and tender.  I use much finer wire than that, 8 thou guitar string usually.

 

Jim