pete_mcfarlane

Progress is still rather too slow for my liking. I've added various bits of detail - (guard irons, washout plugs, handrails) and the chassis is now ready for the wheels once it has been given a coat of paint. The chimney and dome are only resting in holes drilled in the boiler. I think the dome is slightly on the high side, but I need to check against the drawing before taking a file to it!

http://www.snopes.com/college/exam/hell.asp I'd imagine that the fireman's compartment on the Leader was definitely a bit like Hell for the poor fireman.

But is Hell endothermic or exothermic?

The T1 is now painted, lined and lettered. It's slowly having detailed added - mostly stuff that would have been in the way whilst I lined it, such as the clack valves, tank fillers, whistle etc. The lettering is by HMRS, I also cheated and used their boiler bands. This photo shows the current state of play - sorry about the workbench clutter! The next step will be to weather it - then fit the handrails. The E2 is ready for priming - the last few days have seen endless pipes added under the footplate As I mentioned before, I struggled to find multiple pictures of the same loco in BR condition. So it's been done from several different photos of different engines, and isn't guaranteed to be 100% accurate (given that a lot of the pipework looks distinctly home made, especially the vacuum and heat pipes, which are later additions). It now looks very much like an E2, in a way that the Hornby original never did. It will have a coat of primer in the next couple of days, and then I'll see all of the imperfections, lumps of glue, dodgy filler etc.

Technically this one doesn't count, as it's on a preserved railway, but it's so unusal I thought it worth including. A recent trip to the Great Central turned up this grounded body, tucked in a corner at Rothley. This looks like a Palvan Shock - a little digging suggests it a diagram 1/219 and was built to carry biscuits.

Progress has slowed a little, mainly due to my modelling time being spent on my T1 and E2, but I do now have a motor and gearbox. A small Mashima 1020 and matching Comet 38:1 gearbox driving the front axle. This projects a little in to the cab, but this will be hidden by the backhead and side sheets. Some of the details have also been added - beading along the tank tops (brass L section on top of the side sheets), buffers and some of the handrails. I'm still waiting for wheels. The new major task is the cab. I've also sent off an order to SEF for some I3 spares - a raid on the spare box turned up a suitable chimney and dome which I think were leftover from my DJH C2x.

The E2 is coming along nicely - I'm currently working on the replacement steps. It also now has the Westinghouse pump, and a lot of the pipe work that Brighton locos seemed to be cover with at the end of their lives. I've also fitted the brake gear, using a Mainly trains etch. Still to do are the buffer beam fittings and the pipe work under the footplate. It should be ready for painting in a few weeks, but now finally looks like an E2. The T1 is mostly painted and lined. This was my first attempt at lining by hand, using acrylics and a cheap Jakar ruling pen. It's not perfect, and will benefit from some more tidying up before I add transfers and the remaining fittings. The real E75 was in a grubby state when H C Casserley took the photographs I'm working from in 1930, so the weathering should hide any imperfections in the lining. Not so filthy that you'd write a letter of complaint to the Times when it showed up to work your train, but it clearly hadn't been cleaned for several weeks.

That must have been fun to line out! The A12s (and O4 class) are lovely looking locomotives.

I'm tempted by 11001 - one day I'll do it. To cut a long story short, I've spent a bit too much time on building kits of obscure Southern classes, and not enough on detailing all of the more mainstream RTR models I've got in the cupboard. The 04 (and 03) are an attempt to rectify this. I guess it's part fo the problem of not having a layout at the moment.

The detailed 04 has been on the back burner for a while, whilst I work on my 2012 Challenge entry, but a burst of activity tonight saw it ready for painting. Since the last update it has been given the extra Southern region marker lights, and various other small details. The airtanks under the footplate were replaced by some larger ones made from evergreen tube, and the various front and rear end clutter added (including extra handrails, and the rackets that hold shunting poles). Now ready for some touching up and transfers.

Since they are 1:50 scale, I wonder if they are meant for architectural models of the latest Skyscraper designed for some tin-pot Middle Eastern dictator?

After I'd carefully unsoldered the left hand one and eased it out a bit, they are now nice and square. Sadly not. I'm also intruiged by that nickname. It seems to have been used for several other less than successful loco types, including the LSWR T14s.

Not much happened last week - but the last few days have seen a burst of activity on the bodywork, which now looks like this. The tanks were relatively straightforward to make. I cut a strip of metal to the correct height, put the nend in it and then cut and filed to shape It took a while to get the cut outs for the boilers in the tank front right. The bunker also needed a bit of trial and error to get the second bend in the right place. It doesn't show where it was straightened out and bent again! One advantage of living on your own is that nobody can object to you annealing bits of nickel silver on the cooker.... I'm half way through fitting the tops of the side tanks, and then there's the cab. It is starting to look like an I4 - they have a massive top heavy look to them due to the high pitched superheated boiler. A trip to Mr Humm's most excellent transport bookshop in Stamford the other week lead to me buying a copy of "The Locomotives of D.E.Marsh" by Charles Fryer, which gives some more information on the convoluted saga of the I1, I2 and I4 classes. I did wonder what had happened if these locos had been built before the first superheated I3, as seems to have been the original plan. The Brighton's first superheated locos would have been the useless I4s, rather than the spectacularly successful I3, and loco development in this country would have turned out very differently.

That's one of the more bizarre photos I've seen - an American Passenger car with a destination board for Pontypridd. Good luck with this - the domed ends look like they will be fun to make.

My current plan is to have the rear radial axle fixed and with no sideplay, with plenty of sideplay on the rear driver. In effect a 4-6-0, to try and avoid any tendency to waddle when running. Drive will need to be to the front coupled axle, and I've still not picked a gearbox. The bogie will probably need some kind of springing as you suggest. Of course, Mr Marsh would turn in his grave at the thought of one of his locomotives having a fixed trailing axle. Such things can only lead to disaster.

The last week has mostly been spent on the frames. The were slowly cut out of 15 thou nickel silver, with much swearing and braking of piercing saw blades, and the filed to shape. I made a plasticard template to ensure that they were the correct shape, but as the scribbling on it shows I got the bogie support wrong (this was corrected on the actual frames). After taking this picture, the pilot holes were opened up with increasing large drill bits and then a reamer. I then fitted bearings, and soldered the frames together using a Comet frame assembly jig and their spacers. Some spare (slightly too small) Romford drivers were fitted, and amazingly it's all sqare and level. The openings for the bogie wheels is a weak point (the real frames have the massive section above the footplate to strengthen this section) so I've yet to fully cut them out. I'll do this when I have the bogie built and fitted, so I only remove the metal I need. There is a continous stip of frame spacers above the opening, to give some extra strength. And lastly, the body was perched on the chassis for a photo. The next week or so will be spent fitting the two together properly and adding detail to the chassis.

I'd not thought of doing that. It won't work on the (Maunsell modified) I4 cab as the gutters don't extend to the edge of the roof. However I'll file it away for future reference.

This is the result of a weeks work. Most of the effort went in to the bits of the frame that project above the footplate. These took a while to shape correctly and get them at the right height. There are three parts of this model that I reckoned would be a bit tricky, and this was the first. The second was the smokebox saddle, but that was surprisingly easy to do, although still I need to fit the curved sides (as I've no brass shim thin enough to curve to shape to hand). The third and last will be the chassis, as the profile of the frames has lots of changes of height, and should be fun to cut out. The blanks are in front of the superstructure, ready for marking out on Sunday. Two more things are worth mentioning about the body. I used some 20mm brass tube from Eileen's Emporium for the boiler.And the slightly odd design of the cab and tanks on these locos means that they are being assembled round the boiler, with the cab removable (as the curved edges of the cab roof means that I can't make the roof removable). The plan for the next week or so is to cut the frames out and assemble them. I'm finding that scratchbuilding a loco in nickel silver is a lot easier than I expected, but a lot more time consuming. The biggest time killer is cutting out the parts, although that may get quicker as my metalwork skills improve.

Firstly, I'll apologise for the slightly dodgy photo, showing the clutter of my work table. This is the current state of progress with my much modified Hornby E2. It now has buffer beams, buffers, and handrails. Various bits of beading have been added from Evergreen plastic strip, and and smokebox door fitted. The latter is from Mainly trains and was intended for a GWR 14XX tank. Progress is very slow, but steady. This might get finished at some point in 2012. Since taking the photo I've fitted a Westinghouse pump (a very nice cast whitemetal one, which I think came from D&P models). One of the big problems I found with this project was a lack of decent photos of the first 5 E2s. Most of the available photos of this class seem to be of the last 5, with the extended tanks. I'm mainly working from a photos of 32100 at Stewart's Lane in the early 1960s, so this is likely to end up as 32100. I'd like one of the extended tank batch as well, but I'm not modifying another Hornby model in a hurry.

Yes, it's going to have a good scrub and rub down before I paint it to remove any lumps of solder, glue and gunge. My soldering isn't the neatest.

I had a bit more free time than I'd expected today, so I made a start on the I4. First of all I produced some rough sketches showing how it's going to fit together, where the fixing screws will go etc. This show shows the general mayhem on my kitchen table. Having got that far, I started cutting metal. It took two goes to get a decent footplate with straight edges.. The footplate is 10 thou nickel silver, with 2mm square brass rod underneath to represent the valance. Buffer beams are from NS strip. I've decided that this will be number 2033, which had cutaway buffer beams, so these were carefully filed to shape once the beams were soldered in place. As per the advice in Guy Williams' book I've not yet cut the holes for the wheels and motor, leaving these until the footplate is a bit more rigid.

The T1 is now mostly complete. There's still a few details to be added to the chassis, and I'm in the process of assembling a cab interior out of plasticard. This is partly guesswork, being based on some slightly murky photos of T1s the show parts of the cab and some photos of the cab of the preserved O2. I'm guessing there's some similarities, since they are both Adams locos. Photos of the ca to follow when it's done. This is the current state of the loco. The main hold up was getting the dome to sit correctly. This took a lot of milliput, and sanding down, to get it correct. I'm not completely sure about the brake rodding. It's a bit flimsy, surprising given how robust the rest of the chassis was. The rest of the details - handrails, cab fillers, whistle etc will be fitted after painting.

Yes and no. I now have a big pile of bits - some of the wheels (still waiting on the drivers), some tubing for the boiler and a pile of nickel silver sheet, strip etc. I've also tracked down some photos of I4s which I have on order from the Transport Treasury. I'm hoping to start construction in about a week or so, once the Craftsman T1 is ready for painting. I'm still mulling over Portchullin Tatty's advice on gearboxes - I've not tried a High Level gearbox before, but they look interesting.

The T1 can move under it's own power. After the problems with the chassis on the J, it was something of a relief that it needed very little adjustment to run smoothly. Just some tweaking of the bogie pivots and some slight enlarging of the cutouts for the bogie wheels. The pickups are a bit non-standard due to the odd design of the chassis - a piece of PCB was bolted to the top of full length frame spacer between the frames. The do work. The main castings have now been added. I'm battling the base of the dome with filler to get it reasonably smooth. It wasn't the best casting ever. The inside of the cab, showing how far back the flywheel projects. I think the backhead will need to be slightly further back than it should be to hide this. And lastly, a quick update on the E2. It now has the correct smokebox saddle/cylinder covers, and I'm working on the tank top beading. The cab openings have been enlarged, and the tops of the tank and bunker adjusted to match the real thing. Why Hornby got these wrong I don't know - they are nothing to do with the dimensional compromises needed to fit their standard chassis.

I wasn't very impressed with some of the earlier Ayjay models EMUs, but this looks rather good. The separate jumper cables do help a lot.