Leaderboard

As mentioned in the previous entry, I promised to document the building of my next Roxey coach kit in a series of photos, so here goes. The first thing is to have a look at the contents of the kit, in this case an LSWR corridor third. Most of what's in the box is here, except for a few castings and bits related to the corridor connectors, which I won't be using. The etches are excellent and well laid out, with no issues encountered in separating any of the bits from the fret. Note the two bogie etches. I like to start with the bogies as they can be a bit repetitive to do, so good to get out of the way. In addition, it's nice to have the bogies good to go when the rest of the coach comes together. I separated one of the bogie etches and removed the etched washers included within the same component. I haven't found them necessary with these kits but they're useful enough to go into the spares box. Step one is to punch out the etched rivet detail on the bogie sides: In this exciting action shot I'm using my new riveting tool. It's a pin-point Gibson axle in a pin-chuck, being tapped lightly with a small hammer. Crude, but it works! The next step is to solder in top-hat bearings. I think the ones I'm using are Romfords - I bought a bulk pack of several hundred. The holes in the etch are perfecr as they come, so no need to ream them out at all. I just tin the area around the hole with sole 145 solder, drop the bearing in, apply some more flux, then touch the iron to the etch, adjacent to the bearing. The brass gets hot very quickly so a clothes peg comes in handy for manipulating the work. The next step is to fold up the etch. This is easily done using a small pair of pliers - no need for specialised bending tools (yet). The etched folds can be reinforced with more 145 solder. The Roxey bogie has brake shoes built into the etch that just need folding down - fine by me and a lot quicker than the Comet ones, where the brake shoes have to be soldered in separately. I dab a bit more solder onto the brakes to reinforce the folded joint. With the etch folded, I'm also tinning the outside (and part of the inside) in readiness for adding white metal castings. Hopefully you can see where I've smeared a layer of solder around the area where the axlebox castings will go. Onto the axleboxes! These are invariably a pain because I've yet to find a set of castings where the hole in the back of them is deep enough to sit over the protruding bearing. The hole needs therefore to be deepened, and possibly widened, which I find to be a fiddly job. I use a drill in a motor tool, not turning too quickly or it'll heat up the casting, and then just go at it carefully. With these Roxey castings, I always seem to break through the side of one or two of the axleboxes. However, it's easily attended to with a dab of filler later on. The castings with this coach were a bit better than some of the ones in the previous two, although I still needed to drill them out. I see no reason that the holes couldn't be cast to the adequate clearance to begin with, but it seems to be a universal thing that they're undersized or not there at all! On with the castings: For these, we're soldering white metal to brass. Provided we've tinned the brass with normal solder. there'll be no problems. I dial my Weller soldering iron down to 6 (its maximum) to 4, and then let it cool for a minute or so. Then - using the same flux, but low-melt solder - I can solder the castings to the tinned area. A spring casting has to go behind the bogie frame on each side, and the method is the same. A footboard has to be soldered on as well (not shown). In this case we're soldering a brass part to a white metal part but the methodology is the same - just make sure the contact area of the brass part is tinned. Switching between high and low temperature settings makes for inefficient modelling, so once you get into the swing of it, you soon try to do as many jobs at one temperature before dialling up/down. With the bogie completed, the appropriate wheelsets can be sprung in very easily. I prefer this to the all-white metal type of bogie where the wheels have to be trapped in the bogie as you're building it, and are then difficult to swap. I use bog-standard Hornby coach wheels, by the way. They roll really well, are affordable, and stay on the track! Hope this has been of interest. I'll try to post another installment soon.

Evening all, Good lockdown progress has been made on the dries since the last update the end of April - a few hours at the weekends chipping away has certainly accelerated where I thought the layout would be at this stage. Aside from adding gutters and drain pipes to the first building, I wanted to make a start on the second one and get them both to the same status. Using the same build as previously a foam board base was formed onto which various plastic sheets have been applied. I moved a few holes so that the programming track remains hidden but have opened up two bays to give some depth. Again I have gone for construction ease on the roof, so no internal roof trusses have been modelled. For the roof I wanted to capture the slight randomness and not have everything perfect. To do this each of the panels have been cut and laid individually. Whilst it has taken more time I think it is worth it as it has given some slight relief which I can pick up on when I come to the painting and weathering. A slither of plastic sheet at the top of the sheet allows the slight sense of overlap on the sheets. The building was then sprayed grey to help flush out where more work is required and also give a base for the detail painting. At 2.2m long it’s quite some length of buildings! A few drain pipes need to be added to this building as well as glazing the two windows but aside from that it will be time to start adding paints. I think I will work these up off site and then bed them up before any final tweaking and weathering is added. As always, comments welcome and stay safe all, Thanks, Pete

Further work on the buildings continues with the 'new' sand dryer building, which from aerial photos in my my possession was built in the late 1940s . I found a stock of old Formcraft bricks which I decided to use to build the front with it's pillars and use slaters english bond sheet for the remainder. On reflection this was probably not my best idea as it took rather longer to build than anticipated. My first attempt at adding 'sand' by using talc did not convince so I raided that grand daughters covered sand pit - with permission - a borrowed a cup full. Next building project is to clad the arches of Barrow Road with Wills coarse stone........

At the end of the previous Part, I wrote that I intended to turn my attention to the chassis. Before that, I had broken off from work on the chassis, to give some thought to the problems posed by the curved splashers over the driving wheels. Now that I have proven the technique of ‘hybrid’ construction, combining traditional etched brass model-making with 3D-printing, I’ve decided to pursue similar methods for the chassis. For wheels, I recovered a spare set from a ‘Mainline’ Dean Goods that I converted into a 2-4-0 ‘Stella’ a few years ago. My conversion was described in the April 2013 issue of ‘Railway Modeller’, These wheels have larger flanges than are desirable, so I shall probably replace them at a later stage but they are useful for setting the clearances for the splashers. Rather than relying on measurements, I prefer to base my models on ‘templates’ that are derived from the actual components that I am using. In this case, I laid the chassis, with wheels attached, in my flat-bed scanner and made a scale image as the basis for my drawings Scanned image of mainframe and wheels I then ‘pasted’ this image as a background layer in my drawing program and drew the splasher outlines to fit around these wheels. I transferred my 2D drawing into ‘Fusion 360’, where I used the ‘push/pull’ tools to extrude the tops of the splashers so that they would ‘frame’ the wheels. The resulting 3D model only took a few minutes to print, so it was easy to run off a test-print and check the fit before proceeding any further. This proved worth while, since my first print was a little too shallow to leave clearance for the valance to fit in front of the wheels. While considering potential refinements to my initial print, I realised that some other features could be added to the footplate, including the tops of the springs, which appear from behind the splashers, and the sand-boxes, which are placed alongside the smoke-box. After adding these additional features, my 3D model appeared as shown below. 3D model of splashers with springs and sand-box I extended the backplane of the print slightly below the top of the chassis, to provide a ‘tab’, so that the splasher assembly could easily be glued to the back of the mainframe. One very welcome feature of 3D printing is that, in order to produce the splashers for the opposite side of the engine, it is only necessary to click on the ‘mirror’ command and the appropriate part is created automatically. Once both sides had been printed, I glued them to the sandwich mainframes and inserted the boiler assembly between the frames, as shown below: Hybrid brass / 3D-printed model of ‘Tantalus’ It was now time to turn back to brass construction and I cut out the etched valances provided in the BGS kit and glued them to the outer edges of the splashers to give the result shown below: ‘Tantalus’ after adding etched-brass valance There are still many details to be added but I think my model has reached the stage where it allows the rather ‘gawky’ appearance of these early Broad Gauge engines to be appreciated. This might seem to be a short post but most of the work was in the planning - the actual printing and assembly only took a few minutes

I know I promised a report on the final stages of the reworked NBL Type 2 , but a start has been made on the long- stalled Class 128 parcels unit , and it's getting a little frustrating... This posting has been sitting in draft for four years with the optimistic stub "Progress on the 128 has been slow, but like BR we're getting there" Very slow indeed... . However on closer inspection I find I am in no sense entering into the home straight with this one The project ground to a halt when I found that part of the bogie support at one end of the Replica chassis had sheered, and could not be stuck back together. This left one end of the chassis sitting lop-sided. I eventually found out that Replica could supply a replacement, I took it to Peterborough show the following year and they fitted the part .. and other things were higher priority and got in the way. Having finally got round to the 128 as a result of lockdown I started by trying to fix the mistakes that had begun to nag at me while the bodyshell sat gathering dust on the bookshelf. The lights didn't look right. I removed the whitemetal castings and found they'd been glued the wrong side round. They now look a good deal better, though not perfect. At the left hand end the cab handrail should be inboard of the door. With some trepidation I clipped out my first attempt at a handrail here and put in a new one in the correct place. There is a problem with door furniture. Two styles were fitted, one to the WR vehicles (of which my model will be one, as inherited by the LMR and modified without gangways) and one to the vehicles originally built for the LMR A good shot of the WR vehicles is here - M55993 - ex WR and an official photo of one of the LMR units adorns the relevant Railcar.co.uk page Railcar.co.uk - Class 128 page M55993 is going to be my "target unit" for this model:- the door furniture is visible if you blow up the photo - and I have absolutely no idea how to do the two small handrails either side of the handle , bearing in mind there would be 6 per side and they need to be exactly the same and in exactly the same places . The DC Kits instructions seem to indicate that there are two etched door handles to be applied , one on each door, and no handrails. That is definitely wrong for all units.. After several attempts I eventually got suitable door handles for the three parcels in place, using bits off an NNK/Phoenix etch for Bulleid coaches. As a fudge I've done a rendering of the LMR style handrail , using an etched grab rail from the fret. It is at least regular and neat and more or less the right side, though I had to clip out the first attempts and reposition when I found a good photo. I also added the vertical handrails beside the windows on the cab front. This brings me neatly to my big grumble and issue. What I bought from DC Kits was a package deal of 128 body and Replica chassis. The kit instructions are a little sparse and broad-brush. There were a couple of etches of detailing parts. Since what I'm trying to do deviates significantly from the original kit with floorpan and underframe the instructions are not always relevant anyway. There are some sketches but they are not always relevant either. And I'm finding that in a number of areas the parts needed are not included and there are parts included that may not be relevant. To be more specific - there are no bogie parts included . Since the Replica chassis requires bogie sideframes, I'm on my own. I've managed to find an unbuilt Kitmaster Mk1 coach kit in the cupboard with plastic sideframes that can be adapted to give a decent representation (I would use MJT bogies if actually building the coach , so the mouldings are spare) There were two fold up etched strips for the underframe equipment, but these were designed for the DC Kits floorpan moulding and the folds weren't in the right place to suit the Replica chassis. And after looking at it for several months I was certain that a fold up etched box with no detail on the face simply wouldn't convince . There are two plastic mouldings representing battery boxes in the bag of bits , so I've hacked away the etched box on each side and made good before fixing the plastic mouldings in place with superglue. But they are hollow, so I'll need to make a back from plasticard… The instructions refer to castings for engines, and two types of airtanks . No such castings are in the box. What lumps I have on the underframe look uncomfortably sparse (and thin) - certainly compared with photos. Golding's book of DMU drawings only shows one side of a 128 , so I'm left to guess if the other is the same , mirrored , or significantly different. The sketch in the kit instructions , and the two identical etched strips imply the two sides are the same but I'm not sure I trust that. Plastic buffer beams are provided as are etched brass detailing overlays. As I can't see anything on the etched brass overlays that isn't on the mouldings , I've just used the plastic moulded buffer beams. Plastic buffers are supplied but they are round , and by the 1980s M55993 had oval buffers . I found some MJT 1'8" Oleo buffers in the bits box and have substituted those. I butchered the etched brass coupling hooks to get them in, and left off the etched shackles as they would foul the Kadees (There's no diagram to show what the components on the etch actually are) And I'd already replaced the roof vents with MJT cast torpedo vents In short this is looking less and less like a 128 kit, and more and more like a scratch-aid for a 128 requiring the builder to conjour up much of the build from his own resources Progress to date is shown here. I can get a long way towards finishing this, but there are some parts of the underframe equipment where I am afraid I may find myself stumped. And I'm starting to wonder if I was a mug trying to build my own and I should just have paid £50 for a Heljan model out of the Bargains page of a boxshifter… Because I cannot finish this to the accuracy of the Heljan model.

31 415 is now finished - I've done rather more modelling than blog-posting in recent months. Much of the finishing seemed to be a question of paint I made a serious mistake with the noses and used Railmatch pre1984 yellow acrylic for the first coats. Nothing wrong with the shade , but I got a dreadful tar-brush result. Much careful/desperate rubbing down resulted , with fine emery boards and a little nail block someone directed me to , that has 4 different surfaces on a block and retails for about a pound in Superdrug. The file , ridge-remover, and buff surfaces were all used , and a vast improvement has been made . It's still not as good as if I'd used enamels from the start. After multiple coats of Railmatch yellow enamel well rubbed down between coats, I got a decent result. There is a very noticeable notch or recess under the nose door area which Airfix did not model - this was carefully chopped out using a narrow chisel blade in the X-Acto between two cut lines. As mentioned in my original posting on the 31 , the locos have a little wing plate on either side of the shoulder of the cab door. They are noticeable but I couldn't think how to represent them neatly and robustly so they've not been added The Airfix buffer beam is very bare indeed: there isn't even a moulded coupling hook. I use Kadees, and the loco is required to couple at both ends on a terminus to fiddle yard layout, so the scope for buffer beam detailing is limited. But after looking at various photos of 31s in Diesel Retrospective - Class 31, I felt something needed to be done to give the cluttered coloured lumps and pipes effect of the real thing. I made use of some spare whitemetal castings from an old detailing pack for a class 20 , which were not used on that model because they fouled the couplings... The effect is frankly representational but a good deal better than nothing. To avoid them fouling the Kadees, the pipe below buffer beam level was cut off with my Xurons One detail improvement that has a big effect is to paint the raised rim of the cab front windows black , to represent the rubber seal - this instantly enlarges the window and improves the proportions substantially, though it needs a very careful hand and a 00 or 000 brush (and quite possibly a little "wipe away and try again" in the odd place when you attempt it) Flush glaze is SE Finecast - Shawplan don't , so far as I'm aware, do Lazerglaze for such an old model Transfers are a mix of HMRS and Fox (flashes, blue stars etc) . The ETH box came out of the Howes buffer detail pack. Roof weathering is Revell anthracite, because that was a suitable shade I had to hand. Cleaning away any black paint that got where it shouldn't have sufficed as weathering on the nose, main radiator grills got a wash of anthracite, and other grills a mid grey wash. Beyond that I chickened out on bodyside weathering , other than a sealing coat of matt varnish - the reference photo of 31 415 at Skegness shows her quite clean The whitemetal castings representing internal pipework were fitted with Superglue on one side and UHU on the other (to prevent differential expansion cracking the Superglue) . The bottom parts of several of the castings had to be cut away to avoid fouling the chassis - needless to say I found this on a trial fitting after initially fixing them in place , so off they came. I also found that pure white made the pipe runs all too visible through the side windows, so a weathering wash (Humbrol blue/grey) was applied to those castings not irretrevably fixed . The others got a very dilute weathering wash over the windows themselves As an interesting contrast , here is the finished body shell next to the unmodified body I removed from the model: And as a final "as released to traffic" view here are some shots on the layout during a trial running session: and show 31415 side by side with my Hornby 31 174 (thankfully showing no signs of any mazak problems) - an interesting comparision between two models 20 years apart. And as I now have 2 x 31, an attempt was made for the first time to operate LHS1 (the loco hauled substituted set) in place of one DMU 31 415 ran well and I'm pleased with the results

Nearly all of the items weathered in this blog have been attacked by one or more of the following brushes: Comb 1/2" flat shader Rigger Filbert The use of these brushes is detailed below, in the sequence they appear in the accompanying photograph. The comb brush is used to work on paint that has already been applied in order to create uneven streaking. The combination of long and short bristles, when dampened with or dipped in thinners, will unevenly remove or displace more or less paint with each stroke, depending on the pressure applied. Strokes are usually vertical from the top to the bottom of the subject to replicate the runs and streaks created by falling precipitation taking some of the accumulated grime with it on its journey rail-wards. Used mostly on boilers and tender sides. The 1/2" flat shader is used to manipulate areas of paint into corners, remove excess should it have been inadvertently applied, applying an overall wash for subsequent partial removal and creating regular vertical streaking where relevant. The rigger has long bristles but a thin point, and this configuration helps with the application of pin-washes, the so-called process of applying a wash to corners and edges of panels and detail to replicate built-up grime or to highlight detail. Capillary action will take a suitably thinned wash into all the detailed areas that are connected to the contact point. The filbert brush has soft but firm bristles with a rounded end and is used for the application and manipulation of pigments, applied in small quantities at a time. With the possible exception of the comb brush, the use of these brushes has been mentioned in many of the topics in this blog.

I'm completely baffled by the interface of this website these days. Navigation seems like a challenge game. Anyway, here is some progress on the engine shed I'm building for my O.16.5 engine. It's modelled loosely on the shed at Maespoeth on the Corris Railway. Painting the stone blocks is a slow process and it'll take a while before I can move on to building the roof.

I had previously made the cylinders and motion but not actually mounted them to the chassis. After pondering how to do this for some time, I settled on the idea of a removable unit to mount both cylinders. As you see in the first picture, this is made from a piece of thin PCB, which will be horizontal on top of the chassis block, held in place by the body fixing screw. At each end I soldered pieces of brass tube that will hold the previously-made cylinders, increasing them to something like the correct diameter at the same time. Usually the cylinders would be mounted in a vertical plate going across the chassis, but this wasn't possible with my solid chassis block design. This photo shows the unit before drilling the fixing hole: As you see in the next photo, I filed a recess in the top of the chassis block to locate the PCB: And here is a view of the underside. Note the gaps to maintain electrical isolation. The cylinders are just held in here by friction, but I subsequently glued them in with Araldite. The cylinders in place with the motion attached: They're not actually fixed in place until you screw on the body: Now it's beginning to look like an engine! The pistons still need trimming to length at the front, and I need to tidy up the fronts of the cylinders somehow - perhaps with some thin discs stuck on. It was very satisfying to find that (with the motor detached) the loco rolls freely up and down a tilted length of track. But I have to admit that this wasn't achieved without a bit of effort. Firstly, the coupling rods were too tight, and I had to gradually open out the holes until the chassis would run freely. Then I found that there wasn't quite enough clearance between the slide bars and the rods, so I had to unsolder the brass tubes from the ends of the PCB and shift them outwards a bit further. Luckily there's no scale drawing looking at the loco front-on, so I had some freedom in the side-to-side positioning of the cylinders. Even so, I won't be able to fit crankpin washers on the front wheels. In fact, it still won't run up and down with the body properly in place, because the other crankpins haven't yet been trimmed and just foul the bottom of the valance. But it's getting there! The next job is to sort out the motor.

The Fowler tank has been mostly completed, just needing a few details to be added/reinstated and then further testing before the addition of DCC control. The bodywork needed some attention. I reworked the entire rear bunker/cab-cutout to get a better/neater finish than had been on the original model. This entailed respraying and relining the bunker, and since I was about it, i also attended to some areas of bad or missing lining on the tank sides. I'd used HMRS pressfix lining when I did this original conversion in the 90s, and for consistency (and since it was all I had in stock) I carried on with it. I also took the opportunity to put on the earlier BR emblem, and when I redid the bunker numbers, i went up a size compared the originals, as they were slightly too small. Still to be added are wheel balance weights, sandpipes, cylinder drain cocks, and the usual buffer beam gubbins. Summary: a fun, satisfying updating of an older model, and one that now runs nicely, thanks to the good design of the Comet chassis and the effortless performance of the DJH motor and gearbox. Going back in time to pre-nationalisation days, I've also been revisiting a loco that was mostly built last year, but still needed to be lined and finished. This SE&CR E1 class was made from the DJH kit and coincidentally uses the same gearbox/motor as the Fowler tank. The basic body colour was airbrushed last year, but I didn't have the mojo to tackle the lining until I'd got my eye back in by doing the Fowler. Having lined locos using a bow-pen, I'm still not where I'd like to be in terms of neatness and consistency, so for Southern lining of this type I fall back on the cheat of using LNER waterslide lining. This comes in white-black-white stripes (at least on the Modelmaster sheets I use) so is fine for boiler bands but not for cab. tender and so on. But, it can be easily adapted by applying it as it is, and then cutting back the unwanted extra white line by use of a fine brush loaded with black, a bow-pen (easier than doing the main lining) or even a permanent marker. There are still a few things to do on the E1, such as front guard irons, and I've only numbered it on one side as my HMRS sheet ran out! But at least it's on the way to looking finished. I've since added lamp irons and buffer beam detailing. Finally, progress on a short rake of LSWR corridor coaches, from the Roxey Mouldings kits. I've got three to build, and then the option of buying a second, ,mirror-image brake to form a typical LSWR 4-coach fixed formation. These will be in unlined malachite as I simply don't have the skill to do Southern passenger lining to my satisfaction, much as they would look nice in olive. But, hey, malachite looks nice as well. Cheers, all.

I really love photographing my layouts and my ultimate aim is to make the locos and settings as realistic as its possible in 00 Gauge. Getting as much as possible in focus has always been a bug bear of mine. The relationship between F-Stop, shutter speed and ISO is complex to understand and I should imagine professional photographers spend a long time to master it. I haven't quite managed this and have always found that the higher the F-Stop then the yellower the image simply because the more depth of field (or more in focus you want) then the smaller the aperture. In addition, my camera will only stop up to F8. A medium aperture but one that still restricts the amount of light you need. This always spoils the photo and no matter how long you keep open the shutter you can never get rid of the yellowing effect. Camera's therefore love loads of light where this is concerned so I decided to cobble together my own powerful lighting rig. It had to be on the cheap because professional lighting rigs are an astronomical cost. The above shot under the rig. F8 at ISO 400. The camera sets the shutter speed itself and I set a two second timer delay to defeat any camera shake. The 'Heath Robinson' style lighting rig. I found an old overhead projector at my local tip and took it apart. I put the fan and bulb assembly into a wooden box, created a reflective direction device out of hangers and mounting card and put the whole thing on top of a stand that I bought secondhand from a builder for a fiver. It was really cheap to construct and it works quite well. Mind you, despite the fan it gets very hot so I don't leave it on too long in case the whole thing falls apart! The rig is about as good as it gets in creating artificial sunlight. It's either that or lug the layout down from the loft and wait for the sun to come out and you could wait a long time over here for that! Now to get rid of those pesky shadows on the backdrop! This is my take on a smashing prototype picture in Hornby's latest mag regarding coloured light signalling on the Southern. The picture was of a Class 33 double heading with a BR Standard 5MT out of Waterloo in 1966. A summer afternoon at Folgate Street. Note how the light rig casts realistic shadows under the signal box gantry. Light and shade. Notice how the focus drops away and yet this is the best my Fuji Bridge can do. It's a lot better than my other smaller 'snap' Panasonic Lumix which has a much narrower field of focus. The only other route is photo stacking, but this seems like a magic trick far beyond my capabilities. I guess I'll always be an analogue fuddy duddy!

I'm surprised to see how long it's been since I've posted a blog update - doesn't time fly? Thinking back, a lot of the modelling I've done in the last few months either hasn't been very exciting (wiring, ballasting, tidying up fascias, that kind of thing) or hasn't been relevant to the blog (Mustangs, radio control etc). Not that that's stopped me before! As an attempt at something vaguely relevant, I thought I'd post a few shots of the current project, which is the provision of a new Comet chassis for an elderly Hornby Fowler 2-6-4T 4P locomotive, to be followed by some remedial work on the loco body. The story behind this model is that I've had it for about 40 years, since its original release in around 1980. Mine never ran terribly well, alas, being grindy and prone to stalling, and with a pronounced waddle. It was in LMS red livery which was very well applied, but when I returned to the hobby in the 90s, I set about updating all my older models to BR condition, and so the 4P was modified and repainted and relined in black. The mods consisted of filling in the rear cab cutout,, which was altered on the real locos under Stanier's tenure, adding outside steam pipes, and a few other details. I also added extra pickups to the chassis, but it was still not a great runner. With the old-style open frame motor, I considered it not a good candidate for DCC (aside from the running qualities) so a few years ago I acquired a Comet chassis kit for this class of engine. Getting the wheels then took another year or two as there has been a problem with Markit's supply. Last week I made a start on the basic chassis: It looks very weird without the other wheels and gubbins but importantly it works and was already a better, quieter runner than the original! The motorgearbox, by the way, is a DJH AM10 with 50:1 gearing. It's more than enough for my layout but as these things could get up to 80 MPH, a 40::1 gearset might also be appropriate. The next step was to add pony and bogie wheels - already looking a bit more presentable: In this condition I did some extensive testing and found that the model ran quite reliably once I had a bit of weight in the body. A slight tendency to derail was cured by adding more weight in the smokebox. It was then time to start adding cylinders and motion: In this picture, the cylinder etches are in place, with slidebars added, but nothing else. However, it's enough to establish that there aren't going to be any clearance issues with the moving parts. There's ample room for the crossheads not to foul the coupling rods, and the bogie swing is unaffected by the cylinders. One thing I did do, to help with clearance, is to file a rebate into the front of the double-later coupling rod, so that the first crankpin washer is able to sit a bit nearer to the wheels than the second and third one. Once soldered on, the crankpin washer was also filed down as far as II dared, while still enabling it do its job. However, as mentioned, the clearance turned out to be generous. As a note, I also added one fibre washer to the front axle to restrict the side-play to the minimum. Then into the fun zone! Connecting rod and cross-head (with drop link) fitted. I do this one side at a time and test thoroughly before carrying on. With these Comet slide bars, I make up the slide bars as per the instructions, then do a minimum of fettling on the slidebars themselves. The crosshead, instead, gets all the major attention with files, until it's free to move the entire length of the necessary travel with no resistance. Any slight stickiness at this point tends to vanish with a drop of lubrication. Note that the connecting rod is unconstrained on the center axle, but the model runs quite happily in this condition. The lost wax crossheads are supplied over-long so need to be trimmed to length. I've learned the hard way to take this slowly, nibbling away a bit at a time, rather than ending up with a crosshead that's too short! Onward: In this image, the front bit of the valve gear has been fitted and tested, but the return crank is still be assembled. Again, it's a question of testing one bit at a time. Valve gear isn't that hard to assemble, compared to its reputation. The trickiest bit is settling on a preferred method to articulate the moving bits, be it rivets or soldered pins. My first two sets of valve gear were rivetted, because I couldn't get to grips with the pin method (mostly because I was being thick - see footnote below!, but the pin method turns out to be much quicker, easier and is more easily reversed if a problem occurs. With Comet gear. as here. there shouldn't be any snags because it's all well designed and works as intended. I didn't have to adjust, shorten, lengthen or do much more than adding a few subtle bends to aid clearances. The only thing where valve gear can cause a little trouble, I've found (and bear in mind I've only done five sets) is that the connecting rod can snag on the ends of the slidebars when the wheels are at 6 or 12 o'clock, or indeed both. This can be solved by a combination of adding a slight but barely detectable bend to the connecting rod, near the crosshead joint and/or filing or very slightly bending the ends of the slidebars. The desired clearance only has to be a tiny, so sometimes only a tweak is needed to get it all running smoothly. In this case I added a slight bend and then filed the backs of the skidebars - but really only minimal work. What's the white thing at the front? It was pointed out on Wright Writes that the ride height appeared to be somewhat high. So I made a jig set for the 8'6" boiler pitch, and the lower edge of the horizontal bit should line up with the midline of the boiler -- which is doesn't! After some discussion, it appeared to be the case that the Comet frames make life a bit difficult in this regard, so some modification needed to be done to lower the cylinders a smidge and get the body sitting as low as possible. Over the next couple of days I worked to reduce the body height as much as possible, within my means, while also plugging on with the rest of the valve gear: The valve gear is now complete and working. No hitches were encountered, but as always, the last major bit - fixing the return crank. rod and associated gubbins to the motion bracket, was a pain! It's not hard, just fiddly and swear-inducing. At least with this loco, the return crank doesn't get anywhere near the other moving parts, so no further tweaking was required and I was pleased with how smoothly the valve gear worked as assembled. And finally, a coat of paint begins to help it all look a bit better: However, we're not done! Work now turns to the body. When I upgraded this model to late LMS/BR condition about 25 years ago, I didn't do a great job of filling in the rear cab cutout or of applying the lining, so some remedial work is needed. Whether it will amount to a complete repaint and relining--job is up for grabs but at the moment I'm hoping to do some patch repairs, as the BR black is nicely applied. Compared to the earlier photos, you'll notice how the entire outer layer of varnish and weathering has been largely removed - mostly because it was coming away anyway, just by handling! I removed the rest with a cotton bud and alcohol. I've no idea which varnish brand I used at the time, but it obviously wasn't very durable. Hiwever, no bad thing in the long run... Hope this has been of interest so far and I'll aim to post an update on the body mods in due course. Cheers! Footnote: regarding rivets versus pins, I couldn't get pins to work for the following reason. I was thinking of forming the joint between two moving parts in an analogous manner to a rivet, which retains the two pieces but isn't fixed to either of them. What i didn't realise was that a pinned joint can (and must!) be soldered to one of the two moving parts. As soon as as I got my head around that, and stopped trying to form a soldered blob onto the pin without it being attached to either moving part, it all became a lot easier! Just use a paper space between the two bits of valve gear, plenty of flux, a hot iron, a dab of solder, and get in and out fast, and it works! The pins need to be genuine brass dressmaker's pins - I got a lifetime's supply from ebay for a few quid.

Just back from St Ruth's first 'real' outing at the Nottingham show. I really enjoyed myself and I think the rest of the team did too. It was really nice to be in a 2mm finescale 'ghetto' surrounded on three sides by Fencehouses, Brafferton and Annedale Town. At times the number of 2mm Association faces in attendance made me wonder if we weren't at a 2mm Expo. The quality of the whole show was well up to its usual standard - this is a show that I attend as a 'punter' pretty much every year but this was my first time on the other side of the barrier. The layout behaved itself very well, in large part due to the two test days that we spent knocking the rough edges off its reliability. There were some gremlins, however - mainly in the guise of annoying derailments, vertical alignment on the baseboard joint nearest the fiddle yard and the joint onto the fiddle yard traverser being probably the worst offenders. We also had the branch junction point fail on Sunday lunchtime and had to spend the rest of the day with the point fixed in the branch direction. Happily the east crossover allowed us to bypass the problem and carry on as normal. On the whole I'm just glad that the layout and stock all kept working for two days (not to mention the operators) and slightly relieved that the mad scramble to get everything ready is over. No doubt all of our better halves have a list of household activities saved up for us. I didn't have time to spend on posed photos, but here are a few pics from the weekend. I'm sure there's room for a few more things in there. Serious business, this playing trains. The goods yard looking less congested than it did at some points of the day.