Gareth's Workbench: P4 and 2mmFS projects

[nick_bastable]

ah the typical I put it somewhere safe workbench which by the time you find it and half a dozen things you forgotten you had  alas any  desire to model has long gone so you lose it again 

 

Nick

[drduncan]

So whats the 2mm fs M7 for?

D

[garethashenden]

Hmm... yes, you seem to have lost the North London tank somewhere there...

Safely in its box, should be coming out again soon.

[garethashenden]

So whats the 2mm fs M7 for?

D

It's for me. I really like M7s and I wanted to build a 2mm engine. I'll probably get a Finney/Brassmasters kit as well when it gets rereleasd.

Edited January 24, 2017 by garethashenden

[garethashenden]

It's for me. I really like M7s and I wanted to build a 2mm engine. I'll probably get a Finney/Brassmasters kit as well when it gets rereleasd.

Although, a Southern Region 2mm layout may happen at some point...

[Horsetan]

.... I'll probably get a Finney/Brassmasters kit as well when it gets rereleasd.

Best move quickly, then. They only have a limited stock of whitemetal castings for it (and no prospect of making any more), so only a limited number of kits will be available.

[garethashenden]

I've been waiting for Ultrascale to deliver the gears for the M7. They arrived today and I'll try to get it powered up soon. In the mean time I started Mousa Model's newest kit, a Great Northern 4 plank. Between yesterday and today it is built. Tomorrow it will get paint and the buffers/couplings. I'm not sure how best to do the lettering. There may be transfers available but I may just try to do it by hand.

 

 

Can anyone tell me what these are? Are they labels or tags? Where do they go? I'm not seeing them in any of the pictures I have of these wagons.

Edited July 1, 2017 by garethashenden

[Western Star]

Fold through 180 degrees to make a wagon label clip?

[garethashenden]

Fold through 180 degrees to make a wagon label clip?

And now it's obvious. Thank you.

[garethashenden]

Back to the NLR Goods Tank. I fitted pickups and a DCC decoder and took the chassis for a test drive. It was highly unsuccessful an quite disappointing. After quite a bit of troubleshooting and help from Scalefour members I tracked the problem down to a couple of minor problems with crank pin squareness and a major problem with the joint in the gearbox. I had superglued it in position but the joint had failed. This greatly exasperated the tight spots in the rods caused by the pin problems. I fixed the gearbox and reassembled everything and there was a noted improvement. Unfortunately, the very low speed performance was still not up to snuff so on a whim I changed the motor for a larger one. I had been using a Mashima 1220 and I borrowed a 1432 from the still unfinished NLR 4-4-0T. They're both fitted with 54:1 gearboxes so it was a straight swap. With the bigger motor the performance for all speeds was very good. Unfortunately, this motor cannot stay long term, it doesn't fit. A 1428 will fit (just) and I will be using one of those, once I order it.

 

After I was happy with the performance I went back to the pickups. while fighting with the performance I had done two different arrangements, neither of which was entirely satisfactory. The first had copperclad sleeper strip glued inside the frames at the top with phosphor bronze wire reaching to the tops of the wheel treads. This worked, but it was kind of ugly and then one of the pieces of copperclad fell off. The second system had two bigger pieces of copperclad, gaped in the middle, glued to the frame spacers in between the axles. From there I ran a pair of wires to connect the two sections and short lengths of phosphor bronze to somewhere near the wheels. It looked like they all touched but I think only two of the eight did, and they acted as quite good brakes. Once I was happy with the mechanism this was obviously the next thing to fix. I used slightly thinner phosphor bronze, 0.25mm as opposed to the previous 0.31mm and wound it into short coils. I cut the pinpoint off an axle and then cut a slot in the end to help form the coils as described by Morgan Gilbert in a couple of places. These were then fitted. The coil is a very good idea, it springs the pickup against the wheel in such a way that it doesn't act as a brake.

 

Edited July 1, 2017 by garethashenden

[garethashenden]

Made a bit more progress with the GNR open. It's painted and I started the lettering. I decided to try hand lettering this one as there isn't a LNER constituent Pressfix sheet. There should be, but there isn't. Anyway, got a paintbrush and some white paint and set to starting with the N. I figured some nice straight lines would be a better place to start and I think it was a good idea. I'll need to go back and touch up a couple of spots but I'm pleased with how it's come out. I still need to fit the buffers and couplings and paint the underframe. Am I correct in thinking that the solebar and bellow are black while all the ironwork on the body is red?

 

Edited July 1, 2017 by garethashenden

[garethashenden]

9:30 on Sunday night after three glasses of wine and when in a bad mood usually is a bad time to start a new project. Nevertheless I have started another BR van, this one is a Panval. I started with the chassis, Rumney Models B.01 with clasp brakes. I haven't done much with clap brakes before so this will be an interesting experience. So far I have got the two main chassis pieces together and formed one of the solebars. More importantly, the kit is so well designed that I'm in a much better mood.

 

Edited July 1, 2017 by garethashenden

[garethashenden]

I haven't managed to get a great deal done this week. Nonetheless, progress on the Palvan chassis has continued. It's all gone together quite well aside from not having one of the needed sizes of wire (0.6mm) or the appropriate axlebox/spring combination. I hadn't expected J-hangers somehow. Mostly just the "greater brake levers" left to do.
Here is another badly lit photograph for your enjoyment.

 

 

Edited July 1, 2017 by garethashenden

[garethashenden]

Back to the Park tank!

Shortly after I made the new tank sides I made a pair of valances. These have remained stuck together until last night when they were parted and attached to the footplate. I have reached the conclusion that in order to actually get anything done on my layout I need to be able to "play trains". With that goal I need to get this engine completed enough that it can be used for shunting. At a bare minimum that is 1 bufferbeam, 1 coupling hook, and two buffer housings. I decided however to do both ends while I was at it. I'm using the kit's whitemetal bufferbeams, the thickness of the material is good here. I'm still waffling on the buffers. Both whitemetal solid buffers and brass/steel sprung buffers came with the kit. I feel that the detail is a little better on the wm ones and I'm kinda ambivalent about sprung buffers in general. I'll think it over for another day or so before fitting either. I am also expecting the postal service to deliver a new motor today. It is a Maxon coreless and should be a good addition to the mechanism.
 

Edited July 1, 2017 by garethashenden

[garethashenden]

Made some progress and then had a bit of a setback on the M7. I had decided to make a Watson style brass block to hold the worm shaft, positioning it in the firebox and the motor in the bunker. I got some appropriately sized brass bar, cut a bit to length, and drilled a hole through it. I really need to invest in some sort of drill press, because this hole was anything but square. It absolutely must be parallel with the sides of the block when viewed from above, and it would be good if it were parallel with the top of the block when viewed from the side. This block was neither. I tried again and got a hole that had a noticeable downward tilt but was parallel with the sides. Not great, but worth trying. The next problem was how to join the 1.5mm worm shaft with the 1mm motor shaft. I cut two short lengths of telescoping tube, one with a 1.5mm ID and one with a 1mm ID and soldered them together. This was probably quite eccentric, but I never found out because I ran into another problem. The combined length of the block, the coupling, and the motor were too long for the body and stuck out the back of the bunker. The obvious solution was to shorted the block, but at this point I decided to just mount the worm directly on the motor.

I tired to remove the axle shaft from the worm, but it seemed very happy where it was and didn't want to come out. I didn't want to damage the worm so I left it and "borrowed" the worm from another worm/gear set I had ordered at the same time. I had good luck with Ultrascale this time. The order has been placed for three sets of 38:1 worms and gears on New Years Eve. They arrived before January was out including the 10 or so days spent in international postage. Far better than the 8 months their website is currently advising. If I eventually decide that I can't work with the small bit of axle in that worm, I'll just order a new worm, they're less than £2.

So back to the M7. I fitted length of 1.5mm OD 1mm ID brass tube to the inside of the new worm. Then I used a small amount of Loctite 609 on the end of the motor shaft to hold the tube to the motor. Maybe this works, maybe I got lucky but the worm is still concentric. I while ago I had mounted a wormwheel to a muff, but yesterday I fitted the two wheels to the muff in the chassis. Everything went quite well and the axle spun quite freely. I superglued the motor to the frame spacer and applied a battery to the motor leads. Success! the wheels turned smoothly and quietly. I mounted the wheels for the front axle, made up the coupling rods and fitted them in position. Small lengths of wire insulation were used to hold the rods on the pins and the battery was once again applied. More success as the hole assembly worked smoothly in both directions. I had previously fitted a 12BA screw down through the frame spacer to mount the bogie on. The bogie needed a small spacer between the top of it and the underside of the frame spacer, again brass tube to the rescue. A little bit of filling followed by an offering to the floor gods and a bit more filling saw all 8 wheels sitting evenly on the track.

After this I went back to the body. A small scrap of lead was flattened from its previously crumbled state and then rolled to fit inside the boiler over the first axle, it pretty much fills the space in front of the side tanks. A second piece was formed to fit over the motor in the boiler. With these set aside the boiler was soldered to the smokebox front, the cab front, and the tank sides. This greatly increased the rigidity of the body, particularly of the footplate forward of the tanks.

Unfortunately, disaster struck soon after. With the previous plan of fitting a large brass block between the frames, a large gap had been left between the second and third axles, i.e. the rear driver and the bogie. This was compounded by the frame getting very thin as it passed over the bogie wheels and resulted in a weak spot. While trying to make a minor adjustment, I accidentally bent the chassis quite substantially. I should have taken a picture, but I didn't. I removed the rear spacer and cut a longer piece to suit, again fitting a screw for the bogie. This was gapped and soldered in place. Unforunatly, the chassis etch had by this point suffered so much that one side broke off where it had been bent. I stuck it back on anyway and checked the continuity. All was good. The motor was reinstalled and the motion was checked, again all was well. The chassis was reunited with the body and that's when I found the second problem. The chassis from the second driver back has a distinct bow to it, curving to the left. I did take a picture of this.

 

I think it would be best to start over with Chris Higgs' offering. I've learned a lot about chassis building from this project. Here's what I think is the most useful thing I've learned from this project; The Worsley etch has a fold up underframe. I removed the sides and discarded the middle. What I should have done was cut the chassis down the middle so that I would have two L shaped parts to work with. This would have given a much stronger assembly, and it would have helped to keep everything square. This will be important when I get to the T9 I have lined up next. There isn't an alternative chassis etch to rescue me if I mess that up.

 

Here are a few other pictures of the current state of affairs.

Edited July 1, 2017 by garethashenden

[garethashenden]

Made some progress with the GNR brake van. It's now painted and lettered. I also made a box to keep it safe on it's upcoming flight.

 

 

And with the M7.

 

I'm not thrilled with the lettering. The paint I used was far thinner than I expected...

Hopefully it will get to see some action at Ally Pally this weekend.

Edited July 1, 2017 by garethashenden

[Spitfire2865]

That box seems highly wasteful. You could probably get three of the things in there with packing to spare.

[garethashenden]

That box seems highly wasteful. You could probably get three of the things in there with packing to spare.

Two anyway. But I only have the one. I'm taking a short trip to the UK where I will be delivering this to its new layout, so better safe than sorry.

[Spitfire2865]

Two anyway. But I only have the one. I'm taking a short trip to the UK where I will be delivering this to its new layout, so better safe than sorry.

Makes sense. Was unaware of its delivery. that case would look nice lined with felt.

[garethashenden]

Lots of progress with the M7. The new chassis from shop 3 has been built and runs well. I used a direct 38:1 gearing rather than the as-designed gearing because I wanted to power the second axle, rather than the first. I've also made a bit more progress with the body, the smokebox wrapper and tank tops are now in place. There is a problem with the spashers though. They sit a bit lower than they should and short on the wheels, so those will need some attention in the morning.

 

Edited July 1, 2017 by garethashenden

[garethashenden]

Yet another project started before finishing the previous ones.

 

A Finney/Brassmasters Streamlined Non-Corridor Tender. Will eventually be mated to Wild Swan. I don't need an A4. They're about 35 years too new for my area of interest, but I've always liked them, so here we go.

 

Edited July 1, 2017 by garethashenden

[Horsetan]

Yet another project started before finishing the previous ones.

Don't we all?

 

A Finney/Brassmasters Streamlined Non-Corridor Tender.

I didn't necessarily need an A4 either, but the idea of "Sir Nigel Gresley" in BR blue, as preserved, proved to be a must. It's been fascinating keeping track of the overhaul; the photos of the dismantled bits are very useful.

 

One thing I have found so far with pressing the rivet detail is that it doesn't always show up cleanly.

[garethashenden]

I've made a small amount of further progress with this and I have encountered the first problem, which I think I've solved. The problem is that the wheels aren't really designed to be removable. There is a strip at the bottom of the axle guide that is designed to be folded over to retain the axle. That works, but it can only really be done once, do it too many times and the half etched line will break. The other thing obstructing the removal of the wheels are the brakes. The idea is that the wheels are fitted and used as a guide to place the brake shoes. Then the pull rods are fitted, again with the wheels in place. However, there are pull rods on both the outside and the inside of the wheels.
What I am planning on doing is the following. For the axle retaining strips I will remove them now and glue them in place once everything is put together after painting. The brakes are a little more complicated, but I think I should be able to make them as a separate assembly. Solder them together, but don't attach them to the chassis. That way, with a little care, they can be fitted and removed as needed.

I have also decided that now is as good a time as any to paint the wheels. The tender is less critical in this regard, but I don't want to have to paint the driving wheels after I've sorted out the mechanism. I want to fit them once and once only, so they need to be painted before I need them. I spent a few days struggling to get straight pieces of mashing tape to follow the curve on the edge of the wheel. Today I went to the local hobby shop and bought some liquid masking film. I had all the wheels done is less time than I had spent on one with the tape. I laid them out on cardboard (courtesy of Amazon) and held them down with double sided tape. I gave them a coat of red primer and when that was dry a coat of Precision P53 Crimson Lake. I smuggled this back to the US of A on the way back from trip to Ally Pally in March. Don't tell BA! I hadn't actually sprayed enamels with this compressor before and since it's pretty small I figured it would need thinning. As we all know, expensive models are the best place to experiment with painting techniques. I've found that "airbrush ready" paints need to be thinned almost 1:1 paint to thinner to get good results. The PP paints are thicker than the other paints I've used (Tru-Color), so I went with 1:2 paint:thinner. This worked fine, but 1:1 would have been better. I also managed to miss half the spokes, so another coat will be needed, probably tomorrow.
Wet paint and direct sunlight make these look quite light, but now that they're drying they look more like the colour they should be.
 

Edited June 30, 2017 by garethashenden

[garethashenden]

With a second coat of paint the wheels have now been reunited with their axles. I have also finished* the brake gear. Everything is soldered together firmly except the tops of the brake shoes and the brake cross shaft. This was I can still remove the brakes to allow the axles to be removed. I need to trim all the bits of wire as it's kinda a mess right now, that's a good project for tomorrow.

 

Edited June 30, 2017 by garethashenden

[garethashenden]

Well this photobucket mess is going to take a while to sort out. Sorry for the lack of images in the meantime.