Nick Mitchell

On Wednesday, the postman delivered a package from Shop 2. Amongst the goodies contained therein was this beautiful etched fret for a pair of LMS pattern diamond frame bogies intended for the Rectank. I believe the genius of Stephen Harris is behind the design. There are comprehensive instructions available on the 2mm Association website, so I'll skip straight to the end of construction: So far so good, but what about the wheels? The Rectanks all had 4'8½" wheels, and the only type available to buy with the correct diameter (5.25mm) are solid disc wheels. On the bogie etch fret are some drilling templates to convert the solid disc wheels to 3-hole discs, but every photo of a Rectank I have seen has spoked wheels. With such a spindly bogie frame, disc wheels were going to look wrong, so there was only one thing to do - get hold of some 6mm spoked wheel plastic inserts, and somehow fit them to 5.25mm tyres. Having spent many happy hours assembling wagon and coach wheels for the Association, I thought something might be possible... and I also knew which dodgy corner of Bradford the components could be obtained from. Here are the ingredients: 5.25mm tyres, 12.25mm axles and 6mm spoked centres: After a couple of days head-scratching, I hit upon a method for modifying the centres. I made this little tool, turned on my lathe to be a sliding fit into the 5.25mm tyres. A hole 1.8mm,the size of the boss on the back of the wheel inserts was drilled up the centre, and slots filed to accommodate the wheel spokes. A wheel centre slots into the tool like this: The whole is then turned over, and the outside of the wheel centre can be trimmed away to the diameter of the brass part. The end result is a little "spider", nicely centred on the boss: This was then held in my lathe tailstock to be pressed into the tyre - both components being held in collets. Here are two such wheels fitted to an axle, for comparison with a shop-bought (although it could have been assembled by me!) 6mm wheel set. And here are two axles in the bogie. Well worth the effort I think, in capturing the spindly nature of the prototype. I should admit that one of these four wheels is not concentric, and I'll have to make another one. Also, the tyres are not terribly secure on the wheels. Maybe I should invest in some of the UHU Extra Strong epoxy that Bob Jones described using in the August 2019 2mm Magazine to cure his loose tyre problem. Just to give an impression of how the bogie will look in place, I've propped up one end of the Rectank body (which has progressed no further since my last update) and loosely balanced it in place. I think I'm going to have some clearance issues, but a project like this is just a series of problems to be solved - which is, after all, what makes it fun! Before I get to that problem, I'll have to work out the bogie mounting arrangements anyway...

I've not had much time over the last week, but in the odd moments I have been working my way slowly through a number of challenges with the Rectank. First off were the lightbulb-shaped securing rings - and the impossibly tiny brackets that they hang off. As usual with these things, the first one went surprisingly well, but the second one... Here's the first ring soldered in place. The first difficulty was that the top part of the ring hadn't etched through properly. All 10 are the same in this respect, but somehow I was able to clear out the cusp without distorting the shape of the fragile ring. The second difficulty was how to hold everything whilst getting the soldering iron in from behind the little hole through which the stem of the securing bracket pokes... The second ring went on, but the fixing was a bit wonky, and as I tried to adjust it, the bracket broke. Replacing the bracket with a length of 0.2mm copper wire, suitable flattened at the end made it very much easier to solder in place, and the appearance is ultimately almost indistinguishable. I will forget about these crazily small brackets and use wire for the remaining eight rings. Below is the broken bracket and its replacement wire: Here's the end result: Where the ends of the wagon bend up, the flanges of the main girders have a gap to be filled in with separate pieces. These fitted nicely(!) and soldered in place without any problems. These end sections will eventually need a planked covering. Next I decided to solder in the brake cross shaft. This may need to be removed again if I need access behind the buffer beams, but the little flanges that bend down to support this shaft felt quite vulnerable, and I wanted to give them a bit of protection. The holes were etched different sizes, and really rather too big - I used chunky 0.45mm wire, which may make fitting the handwheels interesting when the time comes... I looked at the framework for the screw jacks that fit to the buffer beams next. Some of the wagons had their jacks removed at some point, but some made it through to preservation with them in place. They're one of the interesting features of these wagons, so I couldn't build the model without them. Working out the best way to fold them up was fun. My "Bug" hold and fold proved to be a boon... Working out how to hold them in place while soldering them to the buffer beam was even more fun! I had to file a little bit at the sides to make sure they sat nicely between the rivets on the buffer beam. Here's the first one in position from a couple of different angles: I was checking that there was room for the buffer backing plates between the arms of the jack brackets (which there is!), when I realised that the holes in the buffer beam are relatively enormous. I'm intending to use 1'6" self-contained cast brass buffers from the Association range. The spigots on these buffers are 0.7mm diameter, and the holes about 1.2mm. After failing to find any suitable tube in my stash, I turned up some little brass collars on my lathe to fit over the buffer spigots. The only problem was, after parting them off, it was almost impossible to tell the difference between them and swarf! I eventually managed to locate 4 of the 6 I had to make...

Was the telegraph code for this BR wagon Serendipity by any chance?

At least it will leave you lots more time to focus on your Jubilee, @2mm Andy 🤪 Well, the 2mm version is certainly value for money - if you measure it by hours of fun per square inch of etch! Lest anyone think otherwise with my talk of devilish dealings and dastardly designs, I do actually enjoy the challenges of building this kind of kit... and managed to make a bit of progress yesterday. I bent up some .25mm phosphor bronze for the truss rods and soldered them in place. I was petrified of damaging the very vulnerable looking ends of the queen posts without the rods there to protect them. I still wasn't happy about the square-ness of everything, and there was a lot of flexibility sideways along the length of the thing. The bent up ends were flopping about alarmingly, and I'd lost a bit of flange from one end. I'd been working on the assumption that a plasticard floor would be added as the last stage of the assembly, but I changed my mind, and decided I wanted a floor that could be soldered in place. After some thought, I decided to use 0.25mm double-sided PCB rather than sheet metal for the floor. I made the floor out of three separate sections. The central, flat one being installed first. With this in place, everything felt so much more square and rigid. I did need to make a few more adjustments to some of the existing cross-pieces to get everything properly square - even though I thought it already was pretty good, but the presence of a true rectangle between the girders gave the lie to that notion! I also ended up re-fixing the truss rods more than once in the process. Thinking about it, it would probably have been better to assemble the sides around a floor rather than the cross-pieces as I had done. The end sections of floor were tricky to fit, as there was nothing really to align them against height-wise. I made two support brackets (bits of bent-up scrap etch) to hold the two floor sections in registration in the middle. By sliding one end of these under the bogie support stretchers, it allowed me to set the correct height of the middle of the floor section at its two extremities. (You will notice how the floor is soldered directly to two of the other cross members. Actually, the cross members were adjusted to sit on the floor!) The buffer beams (which fit over and around the side girders) were much easier to fit and make square with the floor sections in place. There were half-etched ends to the sole-bar inserts that are supposed to bend out and solder to the inside of the buffer beam channel. They didn't quite line up, so in the end, I decided to just cut these off. Given the thicker-than-scale buffer beam channel, I think it looks okay without the additional half etch anyway. I'm quite pleased with how this is coming along now...

Tony Wright observed that the pony wheels of my 9F had the wrong number of spokes - it nearly cost me the Groves Trophy in 2019!

Did somebody say ridiculous kit design? Oh, that was me! Well, here's another... One wintery night in Bradford, not very long ago, my friend @2mm Andy enticed me with one of the "mystery etches" he recently offered for sale to 2mm members. I don't know where he got them from - I suspect he did a deal with a fiddle-playing demon at a crossroads somewhere outside York, because it feels very much as though I've been thrust into a battle for my soul in the form of an etch-building contest with the devil. The kit in question is a "Rectank". No, not a rectangular tank wagon, but a first world war Railway Executive Committee Tank-carrying bogie machinery trolley. Here's the etch as inflicted on me: There's not a lot of it, which turns out to be a blessing, but it was initially quite fun trying to work out what the bits were for and guess how it was intended to be put together. It was only when the putting together started that the fun disappeared... As Andy noted, the etch is a reduction of the long out of production Connoisseur Models' kit. It was available as a 4mm scale Pocket Money Kit which was itself a reduction from their 7mm scale kit. I found a photo of an original 4mm kit for sale on W.M. Collectibles' website (a good source of imagery for obsolete kits)... the £55 price ticket being orders of magnitude more than any pocket money I ever received! The blurb on the back of the Connoisseur packet says it is a Great Western wagon, but several railway companies built examples of these wagons for the war effort. I've found good pictures of them in the L&Y (Coates) and MR (Essery) wagon books in my library, which helped with understanding how it should go together. Some of these wagons still exist, including an L&Y-built example owned by the Scottish Railway Preservation Society, albeit shorn of its screw jacks. Besides the etched fret, the 4mm version looks to have come with cast bogie sideframes and buffers. I'm struggling to tell if any other castings were provided - I'm wondering if the screw jacks were? The strip of brass in the packet looks intriguing. And I assume the rectangle of plasticard was for fashioning the timber deck. For the 2mm version, the etched LMS diamond frame bogies in the 2mm Association's range will fit the bill nicely, and for buffers I will identify an appropriate self-contained type also from the Association. I had a bit of spare time yesterday, so I decided to make a start and see what I could do with the etches. Being a photographic reduction from a much larger scale, there were always going to be challenges making the parts fit, and in that respect this kit hasn't disappointed me so far! Most parts that have under-etched, leading to a fair amount of cusp needing cleaning up... but on 7 thou. brass (!!!), under-etching is erring on the right side of caution, since too far the other way and there would be no parts at all! I suspect this is right on the limits of the production technology. The photo below shows in close-up that some of the parts haven't quite separated from each other. Also some of the half-etched pieces, like the inserts to the channel sections, have poorly-defined shape. Being very thin brass, cleaning them up is rather challenging. A further problem has been that fold-lines aren't deep and wide enough. in several places there are rivets to press out. These have worked out okay so far. Firm pressure into the dimple with a scriber on a hard surface has produced rivets comparable to the half-etched ones. (You may spot some I'd tried in the photo above.) Below is one of the main side girder pieces, seen from behind. Some of the marks are to align the cross-members (more of which anon) and there are five tabs to fold back which form the floor supports. These tabs hadn't etched through properly, and I needed to run round them on 3 sides with a knife blade - being careful not to cut through the fold line! I really struggled folding the top and bottom flanges over the length of these parts. Even after scraping out the half-etched fold line, and with the aid of a hold-and-fold, they were a right royal pain. As is usual with these things, the second one was much more difficult than the first, and getting the half-etched strip to sit inside it really tested my resolve. I don't like soldering brass at the best of times, but this was a nightmare. With the side girders prepared, I made a start with the cross members. The photo below shows half of these soldered to the first side. The ones in the centre were tricky, with the under-etched slots in the top and bottom flange pieces to clear out so they would fit over the vertical piece. The bogie supports were also ticklish. Although there are half-etched indentations to align them, one side of them fits mostly over a gap in the side girder, making it hard to get them perpendicular to said girder! Eventually I got all six cross-pieces reasonably straight and in roughly the right position, and was able to add the second girder. Unfortunately, the cross pieces turned out to be not all quite the same length! Maybe I'd been too enthusiastic removing some of the cusp - or maybe some had more cusp than I'd removed. Either way, I had to make a few adjustments. It's still not quite perfect, but I think it's close enough. Another problem that became evident was that not all the half-etched marks to align the cross members lined up with each other on opposite sides of the wagon, and I ended up with several cross pieces sitting at jaunty angles. In the photo below, you can see how far I needed to move the cross piece in the centre of the picture to the right of it's slot in order to get it to sit at right angles! Having spent some time adjusting everything to get the basic framework square and level, I called it a day. The two pictures below show from underneath and on top where I've got up to. I'm sure there will be a nice wagon emerging at some point that makes the pain worthwhile, but all I can say at this point is: "Jidenco, eat your heart out!"

No axleboxes in the kit, I'm afraid Kevin. The ones I'm opting for (based on photos) are shop item 2-440. I've only got one more in my "to do" pile... for now! I forgot to post this comparison picture in my previous post - the Catfish alongside the Gannet that began this thread - from the sublime to the ridiculous as far as kit designs go! I've got two more of those to wrestle with at some point. Looking at the two together, it becomes obvious why BR enlarged the Catfish to make the Dogfish design.

Earlier this month I spent a very nice weekend at The Christmas Model Railway Show in Manchester. On the Sunday, I spent the day with Edward on the Association Roadshow, with the fabulous Drws-y-Nant behind us. Edward was assembling wheels (which many people found fascinating) and I began assembly of a Stephen Harris wagon kit for a BR Catfish ballast hopper. These are right on the verge of being too modern for me, but if I can have a 9F (or two, eventually!) then I can have a Catfish or two too. Here is the "before" shot - quite a work of art: There are two distinguishing features of all Stephen's kits: Firstly there is no compromise on detail, no matter how fiddly that makes things (which is right up my street), and secondly, the design work is really clever. For example, here is the hopper in the process of being folded all from one piece: ...and the fit is atom-perfect: My soldering is a bit messy on the inside, but it will clean up easily enough. At the show I didn't make rapid progress, as people kept wanting to talk to me(!!!), but I did get as far as having the basic hopper with its side ribbing, and chassis with solebars assembled. Here they are slotted together to check the fit - which was perfect, even down to the little notches in the top of the sole bar to accept the legs of the hopper support ribs. Since Christmas, with the Loco department on holiday, I decided to finish off the Catfish. Here it is starting to come together, with the hopper joined to the chassis with more struts attached - including the "fiddly" (according to the instructions) separate angles on the uprights: Underneath is nice and open. I added self-contained buffers from the Association cast brass range. The vacuum cylinder is an ordinary association on, altered in the lathe to have a curved top. The handrails were fun to fit. The instructions recommended Phosphor Bronze for them, which I duly followed. They seem much more resilient that if they'd been made of nickel silver, and it is easier to work with than steel. The final details from the kit were added this afternoon - steps, brake wheels and yokes, chute, coupling hooks. I also added tubes for Electra couplings, and vacuum pipes from 0.6mm copper wire, I haven't fitted axleboxes and springs yet. Rather than some from my collection, the correct ones are now available in the new Association 3D printed range (BR welded heavy duty type) so I will order a set of those in due course. After that, there are two little pieces that slot into the brake rigging, but these can't be fitted before the wheels. They'll have to be glued in place after the wagon is painted. Here are some posed shots of the (almost) completed wagon with a set of wheels temporarily fitted before it goes to the paint shop:

24th December - So Close! There are still a few little jobs outstanding on my list, but I've come very close to meeting my Advent Challenge. Thank you to all those who have read my ramblings, commented and reacted, and generally spurred me on. Hopefully I'll be able to keep up some momentum after Christmas and get the thing properly finished and painted.

23rd December - Injector No. 9 Class H Exhaust Steam Injector to be precise! The injector is arguably the most important piece of equipment on a steam locomotive. Without any of the other gadgets, the worst that can happen is that people need to walk home. If the injectors fail, the worst case scenario is an express journey to the great model railway exhibition in the sky... The one which is visible on a Fowler 2-6-4T by the fireman's side footsteps is complicated by being able to use either live steam or exhaust steam, the latter supplied via a grease separator along the chunky pipe under the side tank. (The other live steam injector is smaller, and is hidden between the frames under the cab.) My model is a simplified version, featuring only the major pipes which are visible. I made the main body on my lathe, turning the various diameters. The central section, which is roughly cuboid, was turned as a cylinder then filed square by locking the lathe headstock in various orientations. I used the same technique to file a hexagon on the live steam inlet end of the injector, in order to represent the massive nut there... a bit of frivolity, but why not? I also centre-drilled this end of the injector while it was in the lathe to locate the pipe. To turn all the diameters, I finished one end, filed the mid-section square, then parted off and reversed the piece, holding it by the finished end in order to turn the other end down to the various sizes. In the picture below, the injector has been reversed ready for turning the second end: Something went wrong with the intermediate pictures, so We need to skip to the finished article. As already mentioned, the fat pipe (0.7mm nickel silver) is the exhaust steam supply pipe. There should be three other connections - live steam, water and delivery. Only one of these has been portrayed (reaching up then bending under the cab), because the others are so well hidden I couldn't see where they went in any photographs! The pipe descending from the injector is the overflow. The thin rod (0.25mm nickel silver) reaching up to the cab is actually an operating rod from the fireman's controls. The sequence of assembly was as follows: First I fitted the exhaust steam inlet pipe, which acted as a convenient handle. Next I drilled a hole in the flat top of the mid-section to accommodate the vertical pipe, and soldered that in place. The injector was then mounted on the loco by soldering the remote ends of the two pipes under the footplate behind the valance. Once the main body was in the correct place, I soldered a strengthening bracket (bent up from a bit of scrap etch) to the footplate behind the centre of the injector. The injector was then clamped against this with tweezers, and soldered to it, making everything much more rigid. The excess length of the bracket was then trimmed away, and it was filed flush with the bottom of the injector body. The photo below, taken from underneath, shows this strengthening bracket, and next to it the control rod, which was soldered in position immediately afterwards. The overflow pipe was the final addition. Made from 0.45mm nickel silver, this was bent to shape and soldered to the back of the footsteps first. It was then adjusted so that it touched the injector body in the right place, and a solder joint made. I didn't fancy my chances of being able to drill a hole accurately in the curved part of the injector, with it's diameter being so small. The flange is an etched crankpin cap washer. The exhaust steam pipe bends up under the tanks near the front, and in some photographs, it is possible to see it under the corner of the valance where the footplate changes height. I decided to solder an extra section of "pipe" in place to represent this: It is more visible from certain angles: The other thing I've done is to permanently attach the smokebox door, now that all the soldering round the smokebox is complete. There's a little bit of a gap around the front ring and the smokebox outer wrapper, so I have used Araldite to fix the door, hoping that this will fill the gap nicely as well.

22nd December - Ejector So, we come at last to the vacuum ejector - and a very ticklish job it proved to be. What you see as the "lump" on the side of the smokebox on Midland / early LMS locos, connected to several pipes, is the large ejector - used to "blow up" vacuum rapidly to release the brakes. The small ejector, used for maintaining vacuum as the train is running, is hidden in the cab. The large pipe alongside the boiler is the exhaust from the small ejector. The pipe which continues forwards alongside the smokebox is a combined exhaust from both ejectors. This pipe enters the smokebox about half way along, but a handrail continues from it to the front of the smokebox. The pipe descending from the ejector which disappears behind the side tank is the train pipe. I started with a cuboid of brass the basic dimensions of the large injector body, and drilled holes to locate the small ejector exhaust pipe, combined exhaust pipe, and train pipe, and then attempted to shape the brass. Below is the embryonic ejector, seen from underneath, with the combined exhaust pipe-cum-handrail attached. You may be able to make out the holes drilled for the train pipe and small ejector exhaust pipe. The pipes are all 0.5mm (representing 3" pipe). The exhaust pipe is brass tube, with 8 thou steel wire inserted for the handrail part. The other pipes will be nickel silver. Here the two exhaust pipes have been soldered to the injector body (it's the right way up this time), and the train pipe just balanced in place. Holding things becomes a problem once too many parts are joined together, as there is a high risk of existing parts moving or detaching when more parts are soldered on. To mitigate this while soldering the train pipe, I embedded the workpiece in blu-tac, which did the trick. The photo below shows the ejector loosely in place, allowing me to measure where to cut the rods, and also where to introduce bends and kinks etc. You can also see a small square of nickel silver soldered to the side of the smokebox to represent the flange where the exhaust pipe bends in. Once I was happy with the fit, the main parts were fixed to the loco. Three handrail knobs hold the small injector exhaust pipe. I soldered the ejector body to the front of the side-tank for rigidity. The front of the combined exhaust is soldered directly to the flange. I could have left things like that, with the main pipes and shapes captured, but there are a few more fiddly details that can add to the character and general "busy-ness" of these locos. There is a valve with some pipes that sits on top of the ejector body. This is controlled by an operating rod from the cab, which pulls a lever. I decided to see if I could make a representation of these details. The valve body is another length of 0.5mm tube, with 0.25mm rod protruding from it. To make the operating lever, I squashed the end of a piece of wire in the vice, and bent round the non-squashed end to make the curved pipe above the valve. I'm not sure of the function of the other pipe that sticks up and forms a square, but the pieces were held in alignment for soldering with my previously mentioned Pritt Stick trick, sticking them to a piece of copier paper. Soldering them to the ejector body was very difficult, and I did have things fall apart a couple of times. I tried supporting things with blu-tak again, bit that wasn't really successful on the side of the boiler. Using thin card and layers of paper to back things to the correct distance from the boiler and smokebox worked much better. A final detail is a small pipe (made from 0.2mm copper wire) that joins the train pipe to the exhaust. Although it was a bit of a pain to make and took me a very long time, it really adds to the character of the locomotive, and I'm pleased with the final result.

Not quite. This is "Cumbria", a Hunslet Austerity - big brother to Beatrice if you like (although younger). She's been "lent" (sorry!) to us by the Furness Railway Trust, and has been doing sterling service at Embsay for a number of years, on and off. (In fact, I had my first ever turn as a cleaner on her many years ago.) I think the engine you're thinking of is Wheldale - another Austerity and also painted red, so it's easy to confuse them. Wheldale belongs to the railway, and is currently under restoration. If all goes according to plan, she may be finally back in action in around 12 months time. As for making a model... I have no plans at the moment, but never say never! I took this photo of Cumbria tonight, in company with the other service loco (Bagnall 'New standard 18"' No. 401) ready to double-head some empty stock back to Embsay after switching out Stoneacre 'box. (Beatrice was standby loco today)

21st December - Quality Control In my grand plan, I was going to reveal the injector and ejector today - the last of the really fiddly details, before everything started to come together. I'm afraid you'll have to wait for those, while I catch up with some un-planned work to fix a problem that had become apparent recently. Sometimes when building a model, I slowly become aware of a problem, but try to convince myself it isn't really there. The issue festers, until eventually I come round to the idea that I can't live with it, and I need to sort it out before carrying on. Well, this is one of those occasions. The first thing that struck me recently was that the middle section of the footplate was bending up slightly, just in front of the side tanks. I'd been trying to convince myself this was an optical illusion, caused by the "set" in the valance, but eventually I had to admit the truth. The second realisation was that the smokebox and boiler were not in line with each other. In fact, neither were horizontal. The firebox sloped down and the boiler sloped up. In the picture below, with the top edge of the firebox/boiler lined up at front and rear with one of the lines on my cutting mat, the "dip" in the middle is subtle, but obvious. Also apparent in the picture is an unsightly gap between the firebox and cab front, caused in part by the firebox bending down. Who says I don't do cruel close-ups, Simon??? @65179 There is no support in the middle of the firebox/boiler unit, and I can only think that when I soldered on the dome, either I pressed down too hard and bent it where the firebox/boiler joint is, or else the heat from soldering the dome travelled along the boiler and softened the joint enough to allow it to sag. With the smokebox being fixed to the saddle, if the boiler tube was sloping upwards, it was now obvious why the front of the footplate was also bent upwards. The repair was something of an experiment, and turned out to be easier than I had feared. I fluxed, then heated the joint between the boiler and firebox from underneath with the largest bit I have for my soldering iron, and once the boiler tube was hot and the solder flowing, I pushed down on the crescent support that is pegged into the firebox front. I felt the whole thing move, and I was able to adjust it until the top was straight and level. The (posed) photo below shows how I propped up the front end so I could push down. It could all have gone so horribly wrong! After the adjustment, a gap appeared between the smokebox and boiler, which I tried to fill with solder. It made a bit of a mess... ...but it cleaned up okay: While I was in the mood for filling gaps, I attended to the joint between the firebox and cab front. This was an altogether neater procedure. I fluxed the joint, placed a small piece of solder on the cab front, heated it from the inside, and watched in wonder as the solder melted and flowed into the crack. No cleaning up required! The repair operation seems to have been a success, with the top of the boiler and smokebox once again straight and level. The tank stays became detached from the boiler and needed re-soldering, as did one of the mushroom vents, but that was a small price to pay, I feel. The positive side effect is that the previously bent up footplate sections are also once again straight. I ought to post some forward progress as well as details of the repair, so here are the first of the handrails on the smokebox sides. The "knobs" are etched, and the rails 8 thou. plain steel guitar string.

Apologies to those who are waiting impatiently to open today's "window". I wasn't organised enough to write it last night, so it will have to wait until I've finished playing with the big train set this evening...

20th December - Insanity Bites ( = Mechanical lubricators) Cast brass mechanical lubricators can be bought from N Brass in various styles. So of course I decided to make my own. Perhaps this isn't as crazy as it sounds. Okay, it is as crazy as it sounds. BUT my justification is that the Fowler tanks lubricators sat on little pedestals rather than being directly fitted to the footplate. Because the lubricators are in a prominent position, I wanted the oil delivery pipes to be a feature too, and they sweep backwards from the lubricator itself. All in all, it seemed it would be "easier" to make them myself. I started with the basic shape of the lubricator body. In an attempt to get two the same, I filed an approximation to the cross-section of the casing from a length of brass strip, and then sawed off two pieces the correct length. These were then soldered to two "pedestals" cut from another piece of brass strip with the correct cross-section. The pedestal was created with a lip around the bottom on three sides. Fortune smiled on me at this point, as included on the etch for the loco were some small discs with a hole in the centre. There were actually spares of the bases for the stays that join the boiler to the side tanks. But they were perfect for soldering to the front of the lubricator bodies. The hole in the middle of the disc, once soldered in place, acted as a guide for drilling a 0.3mm hole into the lubricator. The hole was for a 0.3mm wire, on which was mounted an etched handrail knob, designed to represent the operating arm of the lubricator. The photo below shows the stages of fixing the disc, then the arm: After soldering, the protruding rod was filed flush, and the sides of the handrail knob filed back so that nobody would know I'd not just soldered a strip of nickel silver onto the front of the disc. Maybe I should have just done that!?! The next stage was to saw a slot in the back of the lubricator body. I made the slots as deep as I dared, without risking the whole thing collapsing. The idea behind the slots was to be able to thread a bunch of oil delivery pipes into them. The pipes are made from 36swg (0.2mm) copper wire. To hold everything in place for soldering, and make sure the pipes exited the lubricator in line and at a right angle, I cut long lengths of wire, and glued them all to a piece of paper using Pritt stick. With plenty of flux, solder was introduced to the back of the slot, which wicked inside and fixed the wires: Here is the first "piped up" lubricator from the visible side, balanced on the end of my finger: When it came to fitting the lubricators to the footplate, I was concerned about them moving about and potentially falling apart. In the end I decided to peg them in place. This involved drilling a hole in the centre of the lubricator's pedestal from underneath, and soldering in a short length of nickel silver rod. Holes could then be marked and drilled in the footplate to accurately position the lubricators. I trimmed and bent the feed pipes to shape before fitting the lubricators. Then it was easy to hold them securely in the correct position on the footplate, and solder them from underneath. With flux between the lubricator and footplate, and solder introduced to the peg below the footplate, if enough heat is introduced (I used the big tip on my soldering iron) the solder gets drawn up into the joint, and a really neat joint can be made without needing to clean up on top. The protruding rod and any excess solder was subsequently filed away under the footplate.

19th December - More turned fittings 1. Safety valves The bottom 3" of the safety valves have a round cover, which is provided for in the kit as two etched layers. These were soldered together, and the top edge rounded off. I turned the visible parts of the safety valves (dialling the dimensions in on the top-slide I have for my lathe, so that I could get two identical parts) such that they plugged in to the holes provided in the etched base/cover. The plugs were left slightly long, so they protruded below the base. The firebox wrapper has a hole to locate the centre of the safety valve base/cover. I marked and drilled 2 additional holes for the actual valves, so as to provide a positive location for the protruding valves on their base. Below are the valves finally soldered in place, with some cleaning up still to do. 2. Whistle The whistle is another turning, and was quite a bit more difficult than the safety valves, being on a long stem with a valve lower down the stem. The dimensions of the whistle itself are correct, but the lower part is a bit impressionistic. I think it looks okay. 3. Tank vents The Fowler tanks had 3 styles of mushroom vents on the side tanks over their lives. Short ones, tall straight ones, and tall cranked-in ones. For a post-war model, tall vents are the order of the day. The change-over from straight to cranked-in vents (to aid forward visibility) took place over a lengthy period either side of nationalisation. Having studied lots of photographs from around this time, I decided to go with straight vents. Again, these were turned so that they could be plugged into the etched bases already installed on the tank tops. Originally, the bunker tank had also had been fitted with cast mushroom vents, but breakages and blockages from being buried under coal on a daily basis led to their replacement with tall vent pipes, the open ends of which were tucked under the cab roof overhang to prevent the ingress of coal. Representations of these pipes were bent up from brass rod, and soldered to the cab back.

18th December - Chimney and Dome The dome has an interesting story, but I can't tell you most of it! At one point, I was planning to use an N Brass cast dome that I'd removed from a long-abandoned project to convert a Poole-made Farish Jinty. But then I found a similar-looking dome that was mounted on a length of 1.5mm steel. For the life of me, I can't remember where it came from or what it was originally for, but it looked Fowler-ish, and the curve of the base was just the right diameter for the boiler of the 2-6-4T. There were problems with the casting, so I decided to use this mystery dome instead. I measured it, and found it to be too fat and too tall, so I put it in the lathe and turned it down to the correct dimensions. A bit of work with a round file to tidy up the flare had it fit for purpose. The photo below aims to give a sense of scale... Despite it's forgotten provenance, it provided a useful short-cut. The picture below shows it placed on the boiler, not yet permanently fixed. The chimney, on the other hand, was made entirely from scratch. I started by cutting a length of 4mm dia. brass rod, and facing it off to the correct length in the lathe. I then filed the curve to fit on the smokebox. Once I was satisfied with this, I put it back in the lathe and centre-drilled a hole to mount it on a length of 1.5mm axle steel. The photo below shows the chimney "blank" fitted to its steel rod, test-fitted to the loco. The loco is standing on the dimensioned drawing I made ready for turning the shape of the chimney... I turned the shape of the chimney (according to the drawing) in the lathe, and drilled out the middle as far as I dared. The result is shown below. The flare at the bottom will need to be finished off by filing... ...and after a few minutes with the file, the flare was formed, and the finished chimney could be returned to the lathe to have the steel rod parted off to form a short mounting spigot: The chimney test-fitted on the loco (with the smokebox door again temporarily fitted to assess the "character" of the front end): Sometimes I use epoxy to fix boiler furniture in place, but this time I decided to use solder. When I'd fitted the chimney blank to the steel rod, I'd originally used Loctite to fix it, but unusually it came loose when I was doing the subsequent turning operations. Rather than re-gluing, I soldered the rod back in place, which had resulted in the base of the chimney being tinned, with a fillet of solder round the rod. When it came to fixing the chimney in place, It was easy enough to flux the smokebox top and apply heat to the chimney. It just melted itself in place, Having soldered the chimney, I did the same with the dome. These last few pictures show the results in cruel close-up.

17th December - Pipes, steps, roof, tank stays I've now reached the point of working my way through long lists of fiddly details to add to the locomotive. Quite a lot of work has gone into the details which have been added in the two photos below. Firstly, the outside steam pipes were fitted. These permanently join the smokebox to it's saddle, so the fixing bolt (which would prevent the body fitting onto the chassis) can be dispensed with. The pipes were formed from lengths of nickel silver rod of appropriate diameter. The bottom end of the rod can be seen digging into my finger, it having been sawn off under the valance. Later I will grind it flush with the underneath of the running plate using a small grinding wheel in my mini-drill. Secondly, the front footsteps have been fitted. The individual treads and the backing plates are provided as etched components as part of the kit. Lastly, the grab handles on top of the steps were added. These have been bent up from 0.25mm nickel silver wire, and soldered from underneath. I try to leave steps until late in the build process as they are quite vulnerable to being bent. After the front ones were added, more appeared under the cab doorways. I'm not sure why the ones under the bunker were added so much earlier... but they have survived unscathed thus far. Next I turned my attention to the cab roof. This is one of the reasons I've taken so long to get round to completing this loco. Not because it was particularly challenging, but because I managed to loose it down behind a bookcase, which was in the middle of a run of Ikea "Billy" bookcases joined to each other and also to the wall. It took a long time to summon the willpower to empty the shelves and take everything apart to retrieve the offending article, but here it is, bent to shape (using my swage block again) as close to the profile of the cab front/back as I could get it. I had toyed with the idea of making the cab roof removable, but in the end, decided to solder it in place at this stage - if nothing else to stop it from getting lost again! I'd previously soldered some scrap etch under the cab sides to support the edges of the roof. The underside of the roof was tinned round the four edges, and then it was sweated into place. There was a slight overhang at both front and rear, and these were gently filed flush with the bent-over cab sides. The ventilator "lid" is made from two layers of etch soldered together, with the edges rounded off. Sitting on the half-etched ribs on the roof gives a pleasing "raised" appearance. Rain strips were included on the fret, and once soldered in place these disguise the join between the sides and roof. Now that the boiler was permanently fixed in place, it was possible to fit the side-tank "stays", which join the tank to the boiler. There are three each side, fitting onto the previously installed wires and base-plates on the tank tops.

Hi Simon, The ones I use are re-cycled from old-style n-gauge coupling springs. You can buy these as spares from a couple of places: https://www.farishnspares.co.uk/graham-farish/coupling-springs-gf0003-2.html https://www.petersspares.com/peters-spares-ps12-replacement-graham-farish-brush-coupling-springs-pk10-n-gauge.ir

16th December - Chassis finishing(?) touches The last little bits of the valve-gear are the lifting links. There were representations of these in the kit, but they weren't really suitable for the way I wanted to use them. Rather than have a folded L shape, I wanted to gave a separate link attached to the weigh shaft I'd preciously fitted. The arms were formed from scrap etch - I never throw old kit frets away. I found strips of a suitable width, and drilled hoes of 0.3mm at one end, and 0.5mm at the other end. Somehow I managed to solder a 0.3mm rod through the slot in the end of the radius rod without locking everything up solid. Here is the end result from a couple of different angles: The bogie and pony truck had already been assembled when I but the main frames together, but i still needed to fit them. Having fitted a pivot pin for the pony truck, I decided to beef up the pivot arm with the addition of a brass washer. As can be seen below, the pony truck is constructed along the same lines as the main frames, with the centre section electrically isolated. The rear bogie is similar: Below are the components for mounting the bogie and pony truck. The pivot on the left is a spare one I turned at the same time, but illustrates the concept. A 14BA nut will be soldered in the up on the top. Nigel sells cast versions of these. The short screw on the right secures the bony truck. The longer screw and the spring are for the bogie. The photo below attempts to illustrate how the spring fits over the pivot and the bolt up through the middle of it. The bearing attached to the spring engages in the slot in the bogie stretcher. Viewed from underneath, before the retaining bolt is fitted, the spring bearing can be seen in the bogie stretcher slot in the picture below, allowing the bogie to both rotate and slide sideways. With the motor bolted into place, the chassis is more or less compete and ready for testing. I'm thinking about fitting some form of centre springing to the pony truck, and DCC will eventually be fitted. I also need to think about fitting functional couplings, but for now I will put the chassis to one side and move on to detailing the body.

15th December - Cylinder valves and drains The valves on the bottom of the cylinders are quite distinctive on these Fowler tank engines. Distinctively chunky. Nigel has included some parts on the etch to represent these, with two layers to build up the details, including the drains. Flat etches to represent round things aren't always fully satisfying, so I decided not to use these components, and to see if I could make something that was more round and chunky. To be fair, on most photos, these bits are hidden away in shadow, so having something down there that is roughly the right shape to suggest their presence is a valuable short-cut if that is your inclination - and with the bits included the builder has that choice. I turned a batch of valves on my lathe, incorporating a short spigot - the idea being that I could mark and drill holes in the cylinders and then "plug" them in. Here are two of the initial turnings. The spigots are to the top left of the picture. The bottom of the valves (bottom left of picture) need to be tapered, but not yet... There's a bar that passes down the middle of these round things, so I sawed a 0.2mm slot (using a piercing saw) through the spigot and into the bodies. In the picture below, I'm holding the valve in a watchmaker's lathe collet (hence not having tapered the bottom of the valve), mounted in a collet holder. Here are two of the four slotted valves, after being put back in the lathe and having the tapers turned: I drilled two holes at the correct spacing in my work board to mount the valves, and soldered a thin strip of brass (scrap etch saved up from the fret of another kit) into the slots. In the picture below you can see a brass shim being used to pack the strip to the correct height. And here is the the first pair of valves when removed from the holes: The drains came next, and here I used the etching as a template to get the shape and spacing of the individual pipes right. The drains are made from strands of 0.2mm copper wire. I stuck the three individual wires to a piece of paper with Pritt Stick to hold them in place relative to each other, then soldered them together before trimming them to length. These assemblies were then carefully soldered to the back of the bars between the valves. Originally these cylinder drain pipes were quite long, and were fixed to the back of the front footsteps. After the war, they were cut back, which is fortunate, as the long versions may well have interfered with the swing of the front pony truck.

I'm more than slightly impressed. I may have suggested it as a bit of a wind up, but I should know better! I'm also impressed with how Kevin's put it together. I can't wait to have a go at building one. Now... what sort of tricky load could it be carrying?

14th December - Completing the valve gear assembly I mentioned yesterday that I needed to separate the chain of valve-gear parts in order to thread the radius rod through the motion bracket. There was some preparation to do to the motion bracket before this could happen - soldering a flange round the edges of the bracket, and installing pivot rods in the expansion link support brackets. In the picture below you can see the prepared motion bracket, with the right hand radius rod threaded through, and the two parts of the valve gear finally joined together. Eventually, the two ends of this "chain" of 8 parts (not counting the valve spindle, which dangles off the side) will join back together on the driven wheel's crankpin. Where I've joined the expansion link to the eccentric rod, I needed to file the front of the joint flush. Obviously, this would file all the solder away, so before soldering I countersank the hole in the expansion link slightly. This allowed a ring of solder to remain in the countersink. The next stage was to "hang" the rods off the motion bracket by the expansion link. In the photo below, the right hand side has been done, and the left hand side is about to be soldered. The extension of the 0.3mm pivot rod is inserted into a hole in my work board, and is holding the whole assembly in place for soldering. The usual cigarette paper sandwich is in place, with the etched securing washer on top. With the soldering complete and everything cleaned up, the assembly takes on the general appearance of a metallic drunken daddy longlegs, and is quite delicate... The next stage was to slide the piston and valve rods into the cylinder block, and using the loco chassis as a jig to hold the parts in alignment, solder the slide bars to the motion bracket. This traps the crossheads on the slide bars, and completes the "engine unit" as a demountable sub-assembly. Some people like to leave the engine unit demountable like this, but it the two halves need to be electrically isolated which could be achieved in various ways. The way I do things now, however, is to solder the unit to the frames and simply saw through it. I know that this means if I ever need to remove the wheels from the chassis, I have made life very difficult for myself, but my logic is that if I ever need to remove the wheels from the locomotive, I'll be in the territory of a full chassis re-build anyway. I don't envisage my locos running in an environment like Copenhagen Fields, and if I maintain the current rate of progress on my layout, removing the wheels from the frames to replace worn-out axles will be somebody else's problem long after I'm dead! Here is the end result after soldering and gapping (with a piercing saw for the cylinder block, which could be threaded through the chassis). The gap in the motion bracket was chapped out with etch scissors. In this view I've also soldered in and gapped the weigh shaft. I still need to fix the lifting arms to the weigh shaft. These won't be functional, as the radius rod is self supporting. But they are for another day. Obviously(?) everything was thoroughly tested for clearances and smooth movement before the cylinders and motion bracket were soldered in place, and the return cranks soldered to the crank pins and the latter trimmed to length. Only at this point could the chassis with the valve gear be properly assessed for smooth running. Fortunately, everything seemed to be okay...

13th December - Starting to assemble the valve gear I mentioned previously that the valve spindle would be made from 0.45mm brass rod. A short section at one end of the rod was squashed in my vice, and a small washer (with a 0.3mm hole) soldered onto the flat end. The washer could then be used as a jig to drill a hole through the brass. Below you can see the brass rod and washer ready to be fitted: The valve spindle and radius rod pivot from pins inserted into the adjacent holes at the top of the combination lever. The procedure to make the pivot joints is the same as any valve gear pivot - making a multi-layer sandwich with oiled cigarette paper - but two at once. The two pivot wires were soldered to the combination lever first, then the long ends protruding from the front could be held in the vice while the sandwich was built up on the rear: The "washer" being soldered on the rear in the picture above is a special double washer, made using the combination lever itself as a drilling template. Here's another view, with the crosshead also attached: The connecting rod is joined to the crosshead next, using a flanged crankpin with a turned-down flange as the pivot at the little end. I made an attempt to file a hexagon on the visible protruding stub of the crankpin (using the dividing head on my lathe) but it can't really be seen in the pictures. When all the the wires are trimmed and everything cleaned up, the first sub-assembly of the valve gear looks like this: At each stage, I was constantly testing that everything pivoted and slid freely as it should. The photo below was taken slightly earlier (before I fitted the valve chest end covers), while testing that the piston and valve spindle slid freely, and also (very importantly!) that the crosshead could pass behind the combination lever without catching. Some people (Graham Farish included) put double bends into the combination levers to crank them out round crossheads etc. but I usually find this is not necessary. There's not much clearance, as can be seen in the photo below - especially if the slidebars have been set outside the cylinder centre line - a common ruse to make room for the wheels to have some side play. But on the real thing, you often can't even fit your finger between the moving parts. The view below looking along the slide bars shows there is just enough clearance. I filed a chamfer on the front end of the cross heads just in case, however... To complete this sub-assembly, I had earlier added the expansion link and eccentric rod to the chain of parts, but this wasn't the smartest move, as it made threading it onto the motion bracket impossible, so I ended up having to take them off again! Still, they look nice in this photo: With the left side largely complete, here are all the parts laid out ready to build the right side valve-gear.

12th December - Modified valve-gear parts Seen below are the etched combination levers. The top is to the right of the picture. Nigel, it seems, had the incredible foresight to put two holes in the top end of these parts, as if he knew what I had in mind... These bits, and the union links, are rather on the chunky side. Actually, this is a smart design move when it comes to etching, as chunky parts can be slimmed down far more easily than over-etched parts (which sometimes do happen) can be beefed up. A case in point - I was building a Stephen Harris wagon kit on the Association Roadshow stand at Manchester yesterday, and he provided 3 "chunkinesses" of hand-wheels to mitigate the vagaries of the etching process... a handwheel being much more tricky to slim down than a combination lever. Anyway, the photo below compares the combination levers and union links before and after receiving the treatment... The combination lever is slimmed to about 0.3mm. Fortunately my watchmaker's vice is able to grip the tiny edges, so by inserting .3mm rods in the holes to adjust the height of the part in the vice, I used a piece of nickel silver as a guide to file down to. Turning next to the radius rods, these needed more drastic modification. As supplied, there is a fold-up representation of the valve-spindle guide attached to the front end, but these needed to be removed since the radius rod is no longer going to be static. The plan is to have valve spindle guides attached to the loco body, dangling from behind the valances. Also, at the rear end, the long slots (where the lifting arm would connect) need to be made functional. In the picture below, I've attacked the dimple in the upper rod and started opening the a hole to the diameter of the slot width - as a precursor to cutting out the webs and filing it smooth. And here are the finished articles: Next come the expansion links. The upper hole is the pivot point of the expansion link. In mid-gear, the radius rods pass through the same point, and everything can be pivoted together as intended by the kit design. For forward gear, the radius rods are lowered in the expansion links, so a new pivot joint needed to be drilled. The position of this will "fix" the gear. I mentioned beefing up parts earlier, and I decided to add an extra half-etch thickness to the expansion links. I did this in such a way as to suggest the bottom extensions (which will join to the eccentric rods) appear set back as in real life. I soldered the two existing parts to a piece of 5 thou shim, as seen below, and then drilled through the holes before cuting them out. Here are the parts I've prepared so far for the left hand valve-gear, laid out roughly as they will be joined together, along with the crosshead/piston.