Train spotting at Finsbury Square

[31A]

1 hour ago, Mallard60022 said:

 

Thank you Phil, some great photos there!  The location cases by the stairs in the picture of Finsbury Park No. 6 are the kind of thing I've got in mind; the pictures of Biggleswade box in the MRC article show some similar at the back of the box and they would look good there on my model as that is the side that you see.  I had in mind that I'd seen some drawings of similar, but can't find them now.

 

[Chas Levin]

I was going to say "that's bl**by marvellous!" but leopardml2341 beat me to it!! Wonderful piece of work Steve, absolute pleasure to look at...

[31A]

35 minutes ago, Chas Levin said:

I was going to say "that's bl**by marvellous!" but leopardml2341 beat me to it!! Wonderful piece of work Steve, absolute pleasure to look at...

 

Thank you Chas, glad you like it!

[31A]

6 hours ago, leopardml2341 said:

Bl@@dy marvellous work - well done Sir!

 

Thank you, very kind - glad you like it!

[Jamiel]

Superb work on the signal box. I don't think it is over weathered at all, it looks like it belongs somewhere surrounded by smoke and oil. Very inspiring work.

[lezz01]

Outstanding work as usual Steve.

Regards Lez.

[wilks]

On 28/02/2022 at 14:07, 31A said:

Well I think the signal box is just about finished now.  The weathering turned out a bit more extreme than I intended!  Still, steam age buildings couldn't have always been clean.

 

The excellent laser engraved name boards from Scale Model Scenery finish it off nicely, much neater than I could have made myself.

 

https://www.scalemodelscenery.co.uk/lx093-oo-laser-engraved-signal-box-nameplates-oo4mm176-1081-p.asp

 

And I even managed to find a "PRIVATE" sign for the door on a sheet of printed notices.  The chimney pots still haven't turned up though so I'll have to deal with that later.

 

 

 

This is more the view that will normally be seen on the layout.  It will need a bit of scenic 'bedding in' obviously, but I suppose I ought to have a go at some point rodding first - such fun!

 

 

It could probably do with some 'stuff' around it like a coal bunker, for a start.

 

I wonder whether anyone's got any details of old-style location cabinets / relay / battery boxes - the sort that were made of wood and stood on concrete legs, for example?

 

The signal box looks fantastic. There was a series of articles by Peter Kay in London Railway Record on the signalling of the southern end of Great Northern Mainline - the last article I saw was upto Wood Green/Bowes Park where the Hertford Loop diverged. There are some really useful detail photos in the articles.

 

I managed to obtain from ebay the D&S GNR signal box kit, unfortunately it did have any instructions. I can work out where most of the items go but do you have a set of instructions that you could copy and send me?

[31A]

12 minutes ago, wilks said:

The signal box looks fantastic. There was a series of articles by Peter Kay in London Railway Record on the signalling of the southern end of Great Northern Mainline - the last article I saw was upto Wood Green/Bowes Park where the Hertford Loop diverged. There are some really useful detail photos in the articles.

 

I managed to obtain from ebay the D&S GNR signal box kit, unfortunately it did have any instructions. I can work out where most of the items go but do you have a set of instructions that you could copy and send me?

 

Hi Wilks, yes I have got the instructions and can send you a copy.  It might not be until tomorrow though as I am busy today.

 

Yes, the London Railway Record is good for pictures of GN signal boxes!  Glad you like mine - thank you.

[31A]

So, I found my self looking at pictures of J39s, and though what an elegant design for a goods engine.  Well perhaps neat anyway if not elegant, as with most Gresley designs (although in this case more "Darlington" than "Doncaster").

 

I remembered that I'd got an old Bachmann one stashed away somewhere, and dug it out.  Sadly it was a very poor runner, which was probably why it had been sidelined in the first place.  Later, browsing the Wizard Models web site I realised that the correct Romford driving wheels were in stock, and a plan began to formulate.  So I ordered a Comet J39 chassis kit, LNER tender chassis kit, and Romford driving and tender wheels.  In my stock of Loco Bits, I had a Mashima 1024 open frame motor and a Branchlines 67:1 gearbox.

 

The bits came from the Wizard and I made a start.  I had a few ideas I wanted to try out.  For a start, I fancied making a loco using the "American" system, never having done so before.  This would mean driving wheels earthed to their axles on one side, and tender wheels likewise on the other side.  Usually I prefer to have as many points of electrical contact as possible, but I liked the idea of not having any wiper pick ups to worry about, and figured an 0-6-0 tender engine on this system would be no worse off than a six coupled tank, of which I have several.  To give the best chance of reliability though, I decided that the middle axles on both loco and tender should be sprung.  I also wanted to have the gearbox 'hung' from the driving axle's bearings rather than from the axle itself, as I thought this would be a way of reducing friction.  Also, I'm keen on flywheels!

 

So, here is the loco chassis basically put together.

 

 

Hopefully you can see that the middle bearings are sprung in slotted holes in the frame, with springs from phosphor bronze wire bearing down on top of them.  These bearings are retained by washers soldered onto the inside, which are prevented from rotating by a piece of etch scrap soldered to the frame.  At this point the rear (driving) axle bearings are just pushed into place; they are not soldered in until after the gearbox has been fitted, as that is also carried by these bearings.  I have added spacers with tapped holes, at the front for the coupling and between the axles in case I do decide to fit pick ups at some future date!

 

The tender underframe was quite straightforward.  Again the middle axle is sprung; this time the wire springs just bear down on the axle.  At this point, the tender wheels are spoked.

 

 

I 'earthed' both the driving and tender wheels by drilling 0.55mm holes through the insulation and forcing brass pins into the holes, then cut off on either side and test to make sure that the insulation is broken.  For later identification, I painted the wheel centres red on the inside on the 'earthed' side.

 

At this point I hadn't decided what to do about the lubricator drive from the middle axle which was quite a prominent feature of these otherwise plain locos, but in the end I decided to re-use the Bachmann parts, and make a mounting onto the frame similarly to the way Bachmann did it.  It consists of a 12BA bolt with a spacing tube threaded over it, then passed through a hole in the frame with a nut soldered onto the inside.  The bolt head is filed down a bit and the slot filled with solder.  The Bachmann parts are quite 'chunky' really but I doubted I could do better myself, and I did try and reduce them a bit with filing.  Hopefully they look better after painting, etc.

 

So these pictures show the mechanism just about finished, with the gearbox, motor and flywheels in place.  Using this gearbox, there wasn't room for bigger flywheels, but I did manage to get two small ones in!

 

 

 

On the Bachmann model the underneath of the boiler forms part of the mechanism, and I had hoped to fill all of the space on the body with curved postcard, but sadly that would have made it impossible to put the chassis into the body!  So I had to be content with only part of the boiler underside being modelled.

 

 

The next picture shows the new loco and tender underframes in place.  The drawbar is insulated at the loco end, by a piece of plastic tube passed over the pivot bolt (which also secures the body).  One of the brushes is connected to the drawbar, and electrical contact with the pivot bolt on the tender is assured by the piece of PhB wire sprung against the bolt head.  The other motor brush is earthed to the loco frames at the spacer between the rear two axles.

 

 

At this point I needed to add weight to give the loco some tractive effort, and make the springs work.  It was quite easy to put a roll of lead sheet into the boiler front / smokebox, but that left the engine unbalanced so I squeezed as much as possible into the firebox around the motor and between the frames.

 

Something else I'd not done before was to make driving wheel balance weights but it turned out to be quite easy using 10 thou plasticard and an Olfa cutter.  I had the Ian Beattie drawing from a 1995 Railway Modeller to work to; I think these sometimes have shortcomings but this one seemed OK, in that respect at least.  The weights were then glued to the driving wheels with cyano.

 

 

The model that I had was a factory weathered one, to which I seem to have added some embellishments myself a long time ago.  I've seen worse, but thought I could do better.  I managed to clean some of the factory weathering away from the cab side number, and just went over the rest in my usual way.  Consequently it is one of the more dirty locos on my layout!

 

I didn't come across a picture of the real 64841, so I have trusted that Bachmann have got the right sort of tender for it.  I suspect possibly (from the build date) that it should have two Wakefield lubricators on the running plate rather than one.  Ho hum; if I come across one I might fit i!  I haven't really done anything to the body, although I think the boiler bands and handrails are a bit chunky really.

 

After some 'tuning' and running in, it is now a smooth and free runner, if perhaps not as quiet as we are used to with modern RTR locos.  The "American" system seems to be working very well so far, despite dead frogs in some of the pointwork on the layout.

 

I mentioned earlier that I had fitted spoked tender wheels; this was because I couldn't find a source of metal centred disc wheels.  While I was clearing away the left over bits on the bench, I realised that the original Bachmann tender wheels were in fact metal centred discs with hub insulation, so I broke their insulation in the same way I'd done with the Romford wheels and put them back on instead!  The Romford wheels can be used for something else....

 

So there we are, another addition to the fleet and some fun had in making it!  It can't be argued that modern RTR isn't great straight from the box, but I find there's always some satisfaction in a model that you've had at least some 'input' int; in this case, more than usual!

 

 

 

[lezz01]

Nice job Steve. 

Regards Lez.

[Mallard60022]

That's a cracker Steve. Silk Purse and all that; love the weathering too.

P

[31A]

9 hours ago, lezz01 said:

Nice job Steve. 

Regards Lez.

 

37 minutes ago, Mallard60022 said:

That's a cracker Steve. Silk Purse and all that; love the weathering too.

P

 

Many thanks guys, glad you like it!  And everyone else who's very kindly 'liked' etc....

[Chas Levin]

As others have said, a terrific job Steve! I've wanted one of these for ages, avoided the split chassis version and was waiting for the new Bachmann one to come out, only to see it cancelled, so building one went from 'never' to 'probably' and your build is therefore very topical...

[31A]

9 minutes ago, Chas Levin said:

As others have said, a terrific job Steve! I've wanted one of these for ages, avoided the split chassis version and was waiting for the new Bachmann one to come out, only to see it cancelled, so building one went from 'never' to 'probably' and your build is therefore very topical...

 

Thanks Chas!  Yes, a pity about the new Bachmann one being cancelled.  It would have been nice to have seen an updated body moulding.  Having said that, what I did wasn't too difficult and has turned out OK.  Probably I could have done a bit more to upgrade the body myself.

 

I used the Branchlines gearbox because I had had it in stock for years, but if I was to do it again I'd look at using a High Level Kits one.  I did a bit of playing around with drawings and think a Loadhauler would probably fit in the same way that I've done it.

[Chas Levin]

13 hours ago, 31A said:

 

Thanks Chas!  Yes, a pity about the new Bachmann one being cancelled.  It would have been nice to have seen an updated body moulding.  Having said that, what I did wasn't too difficult and has turned out OK.  Probably I could have done a bit more to upgrade the body myself.

 

I used the Branchlines gearbox because I had had it in stock for years, but if I was to do it again I'd look at using a High Level Kits one.  I did a bit of playing around with drawings and think a Loadhauler would probably fit in the same way that I've done it.

If it ain't broke... 😀

[31A]

Well after all that constructive activity things have quietened a bit this week, and some trains have been run.

 

One of the features of the computerised loco rostering system is that you don't get to choose what runs and some locos won't turn up for a while.  Hence this new V2 was having its first revenue earning turn this evening, despite having been bought at the Doncaster Show back in February.  So Top Shed's 60983 was a cop for the spotters at Finsbury Square, and cameras were pointed at it.  Having worked in from Peterborough, she ran tender first to the loco yard for coaling and turning.

 

 

 

 

This V2 started life as a Rails' Special 60964 "Durham Light Infantry" but now has a more appropriate identity.  Any similarity between this and a loco on @great northern 's Peterborough North layout is not entirely coincidental and thanks are due for Gilbert's research which identified this loco as being mutually suitable!

 

[31A]

About time for an update!  I've spent a lot of time lately building stuff for others, but have been doing a bit on the layout as well.  

 

Having built the new signal box, I decided it looked a bit lonely plonked down on the baseboard on its own, and needed some rodding to go with it.  Ages ago I'd brought some of the Brassmasters etches for point rodding rollers.  They looked fine at first sight and quite an ingenious design but when I tried to put them together I found I just couldn't get on with them, so I looked for an alternative.

 

I think point rodding on layouts can be 'overdone', i.e. over scale really.  I wanted to give the impression that the rods are so close together that you wouldn't be able to reach between them, almost like patio decking.  I think the normal pitch for channel section rodding is something like 2.75 inches, i.e. less than a millimetre in 4mm scale.

 

So I decided to make rollers and stools myself using chunks of copper clad sleeper material for the stools and sections of square brass wire to represent the rollers.  Round wire would obviously have been more realistic but I found chasing bits of wire and PCB around with a hot soldering iron was slightly easier if some of the bits were square.  For the actual rodding I used the 0.45mm square nickel silver wire sold by Wizard Models for the purpose.

 

So here are some of the roller / stool assemblies on the bench.

 

And a section of rodding soldered up.  Both the rodding and the roller assemblies were trimmed to length afterwards.

 

 

I had ideas of using thin aluminium sheet as a distance gauge between the rods but didn't have enough fingers to make that work so just did it by eye.  After that, I soldered more, thin, wire across the top to represent the top rollers.  This was soldered on using low melt point solder in order not to disturb the existing work.  It was difficult to stop the solder from running in between the rods, but I think when painted and weathered that isn't too obvious.

 

I terminated the rods with Brassmasters point cranks at the points where they crossed under the rails.  Here the rodding run is just laid in place one the baseboard.

 

 

At the other end, I tried to make a lead off board to go in front of the signal box, but was unable to fit all the cranks in.

 

 

So I chickened out of that idea, and decided to cover over the area in front of the box with boarding, especially as the front of the box isn't really visible.  Some pictures I found of GN boxes which had the cranks etc. covered over had structures like this in front of the box.  I presume the boards could be removed to access the cranks etc as necessary, but it doesn't look as though it would be easy to walk on - perhaps that was the point!

 

 

And a couple more shots showing the completed run in place but still not fixed down.  I had made the run offs to the left at the bottom before.

 

 

 

 

 

[5BarVT]

3 hours ago, 31A said:

At the other end, I tried to make a lead off board to go in front of the signal box, but was unable to fit all the cranks in.

There quite often isn’t room for all the cranks in order on the leading off bed.  Special high and low cranks allowed them to be interleaved to fit.

Paul.

Rodding run looks good.

[Chas Levin]

Very nice work Steve and it certainly shows how over-scale some commercial products are, as you say. Also very interested in that boarded cover infront of the box, exactly what I need in a similar location, I just hadn't got around to finding photos to work from yet!

[Neil]

I like that a lot. I've often felt that understatement works well in the context of models. In the real world our eye's wouldn't be drawn to point rodding but we would be sort of aware that it was there. Your representation works a treat Steve.

[31A]

13 hours ago, 5BarVT said:

There quite often isn’t room for all the cranks in order on the leading off bed.  Special high and low cranks allowed them to be interleaved to fit.

Paul.

Rodding run looks good.

 

Thank you, Paul!  Maybe if I'd thought about it some more I might have come up with a plausible arrangement but I didn't really want to get into too much complication, particularly as the front of the box isn't really visible from normal viewing angles.  The rodding that I have done is really quite simplified; don't ask about FPLs, for example!

[31A]

4 hours ago, Chas Levin said:

Very nice work Steve and it certainly shows how over-scale some commercial products are, as you say. Also very interested in that boarded cover infront of the box, exactly what I need in a similar location, I just hadn't got around to finding photos to work from yet!

 

Thanks Chas, glad you like it.  I found a few pictures of ex GN boxes where the boarding was like that, so I thought I'd do that as its a bit different - more often it is level and can form part of a walkway, and the boards ran parallel to the lines rather transversely.

[31A]

2 hours ago, Neil said:

I like that a lot. I've often felt that understatement works well in the context of models. In the real world our eye's wouldn't be drawn to point rodding but we would be sort of aware that it was there. Your representation works a treat Steve.

Thanks Neil - a classic case of 'less is more'!

[31A]

So having got that far, I sprayed the whole thing with Halfords Grey Etching Primer, and thought about how to get the rods to cross the lines.

 

In the past I have done this by breaking the rodding runs, and making the bit in the 'four foot' from pieces of 0.5mm square section plastic rod, in order to avoid the risk of short circuits by running metal rodding under the rails, and also having to cut through the web of the Peco track.  You can see this at the bottom of one of the above pictures where I had done a section already, but I've never been very happy with it.  No matter how carefully I've tried to line up the bits, it always seems obvious that the rodding isn't continuous, although it may look better or worse depending on the point of view.

 

So I decided I should try and run the new rodding continuously across the lines.  I dug out the ballast from the sleeper bays and cut away the webbing between the sleepers, and insulated the underneath of the rails by glueing tiny pieces of black paper to the foot of the rail.  This was probably the most fiddly bit!  I tacked the paper in place with Evo Stick, then applied lashings of Cyano.

 

Then, I realised I wouldn't be able to solder up the rollers / stools / rods 'off site' as I wouldn't be able to thread them under the rails of I did.  Also, these runs would be either single or at most two rods, and I didn't think my method of making the rollers would be very easy if I was chasing tiny bits of wire / PCB around with a soldering iron.  So, I had a rummage and found I had some T Section Plastruct (2.4mm x 2.4mm) in stock, and set about using that to make the rollers.

 

To try and be consistent, I made a drilling jig from a bit of scrap tin, a bit like a big Peco rail joiner that would slide along the foot of the T Section, with holes in for a 0.55mm drill.  The holes are as close together as I thought I could get away with; nominally about 1mm apart.

 

 

The most I would need for this stage would be a double run of rods (and most are single runs), but the jig can be used for multiple runs by sliding it along and putting a spare drill bit through the last hole to hold it in place while drilling the next two.

 

 

Then I parted the rollers off from the styrene, and reduced the height slightly above the drilled holes.  This brought it very close to the height of the abortive Brassmasters rollers.

 

Then I sprayed some more lengths of the rodding wire with primer, and passed them through underneath the rails, and threaded the plastic rollers on as required.  It's surprising how much of the wire this uses up!

 

 

Cyano proved to be good at sticking the plastic rollers to the cork underlay, even if some look as though they're standing in puddles at the moment - this will be tidied up later.  I didn't represent stools on these sections; I think where rodding crosses the lines, the rollers are set lower, flush with the ballast.

 

 

In the above picture, I think the continuous rodding crossing the two left hand roads looks a lot better than the 'discontinuous' rodding on the right, even if it isn't always very straight - lining up the sleepers so that point rodding could run straight across wasn't really a consideration when I laid the track!

 

The main run of rodding on the right which I had completed previously, has now been toned down with some weathering (cranks painted black) and fixed down.

 

[Mallard60022]

19 hours ago, 31A said:

About time for an update!  I've spent a lot of time lately building stuff for others, but have been doing a bit on the layout as well.  

 

Having built the new signal box, I decided it looked a bit lonely plonked down on the baseboard on its own, and needed some rodding to go with it.  Ages ago I'd brought some of the Brassmasters etches for point rodding rollers.  They looked fine at first sight and quite an ingenious design but when I tried to put them together I found I just couldn't get on with them, so I looked for an alternative.

 

I think point rodding on layouts can be 'overdone', i.e. over scale really.  I wanted to give the impression that the rods are so close together that you wouldn't be able to reach between them, almost like patio decking.  I think the normal pitch for channel section rodding is something like 2.75 inches, i.e. less than a millimetre in 4mm scale.

 

So I decided to make rollers and stools myself using chunks of copper clad sleeper material for the stools and sections of square brass wire to represent the rollers.  Round wire would obviously have been more realistic but I found chasing bits of wire and PCB around with a hot soldering iron was slightly easier if some of the bits were square.  For the actual rodding I used the 0.45mm square nickel silver wire sold by Wizard Models for the purpose.

 

So here are some of the roller / stool assemblies on the bench.

 

And a section of rodding soldered up.  Both the rodding and the roller assemblies were trimmed to length afterwards.

 

 

I had ideas of using thin aluminium sheet as a distance gauge between the rods but didn't have enough fingers to make that work so just did it by eye.  After that, I soldered more, thin, wire across the top to represent the top rollers.  This was soldered on using low melt point solder in order not to disturb the existing work.  It was difficult to stop the solder from running in between the rods, but I think when painted and weathered that isn't too obvious.

 

I terminated the rods with Brassmasters point cranks at the points where they crossed under the rails.  Here the rodding run is just laid in place one the baseboard.

 

 

At the other end, I tried to make a lead off board to go in front of the signal box, but was unable to fit all the cranks in.

 

 

So I chickened out of that idea, and decided to cover over the area in front of the box with boarding, especially as the front of the box isn't really visible.  Some pictures I found of GN boxes which had the cranks etc. covered over had structures like this in front of the box.  I presume the boards could be removed to access the cranks etc as necessary, but it doesn't look as though it would be easy to walk on - perhaps that was the point!

 

 

And a couple more shots showing the completed run in place but still not fixed down.  I had made the run offs to the left at the bottom before.

 

 

 

Rodders looks brillo matey. Loads of Cranks, as is always on RMWeb!

Stay Cool and watch out for expansion.