Nick Mitchell

It has been over a year since I posted any progress with my Jubilee body on this thread, having been side-tracked with other projects. A couple of weeks ago on a whim I fitted some wire handrails to replace the moulded on ones I had scraped off last year. These are made of 10 thou steel, with Association etched handrail knobs. I thought I would take a photo comparing where I was up to in transforming the PECO body with two current-generation Farish bodies. In the photo below, the red Jubilee is a long firebox body, and the green one a short firebox body. The PECO version was something of a hybrid - essentially a short firebox, but with dome and top-feed positioned as if it had a long firebox... as well as having a few other anomalies such as the whistle in the wrong place, too few washout plugs on the right hand side of the firebox, and other plugs missing altogether. I'm still impressed by how well the PECO body still stands up in general terms considering its antiquity. The fine-ness of the cab roof with those rivets (assuming they are in the right place!) is easily as good as the Farish version, although the rivets on the smokebox are much less fine. Interestingly, both generations of model have the same fault where the rivets seem to disappear at the top of the smokebox. Anyway, I was admiring how much finer the etched handrail knobs look than the chunky plastic ones on the Farish models, and thinking how I would have to replace those ones, when I realised I'd made a silly mistake. I have positioned the handrail knobs where they were originally moulded without checking if those positions were correct. The one nearest the dome looks too far forward - it is on the line of the boiler band. I guess they're going to have to come off again and get adjusted. At the same time as i made the handrails, I also made a replacement reverser reach rod from nickel silver. Continuing the comparison, I took the photo below of the front ends side by side, It is striking how much lower the PECO version sits on its replacement chassis. Originally there were rivets all around the smokebox ring, and I have carved most of them away. Those that remain are not in the correct zig-zag pattern, but give an impression. I suspect there may be spurious rivets on the footplate which will need replacing as well. Having removed the "lump under the chin", the gap now looks a bit on the large size, but it is better than it was. I think the Farish chimney captures the shape better from this angle, but one thing that is definitely wrong on the Farish front end is the shape of the cut-outs in the corners of the buffer beam. Once I have re-worked the handrails, the list of detailing jobs before I can start worrying about painting it isn't that long. I'm fairly confident that when I'm finished with it, it won't look "wrong" or un-refined at the side of a finescaled Farish loco.

Just thinking with my typing fingers, but a zoom workshop/tutorial on using one of the free packages would be really handy. If participants could be taken through the end-to-end process of designing and laying out something simple like a fold-up box, adding tabs, etc. by following along step-by-step somebody who was sharing their screen. I'm not the person to run such a session, but I would be an eager participant.

You can download the LokPilot Nano manual from ESU. The link is about half way down this page: http://www.esu.eu/en/downloads/instruction-manuals/digital-decoders/ The purple and green extra wires are for functions. The blue wire is common positive, and will attach to one end of a Stay Alive. It looks like you will need an additional wire from the 4th solder pad in line with the blue, green and purple wires to connect the StayAlive to the decoder's ground.

I would like to suggest Maskol as an alternative to masking tape. You can watch me cutting the shaft off one of these motors in Part 27 of my Jubilee odyssey here: https://youtu.be/6TU4kB4KfUo?t=427

Hi Simon, I used a kitchen blow torch. The solder was Carr's solder paint. My previous attempt had been an etched overlay to a brass tube for a Raithby 4F, which had dented very badly. I was terrified about ruining the Princess boiler, especially as the overlay for the coned section is not directly supported along most of its length. I took it along to a Missenden Abbey weekend, and Bob Alderman supervised the operation. Although I didn't tighten the wires anything like as much for this one, Bob told me afterwards that he had sneakily slackened them further while I was looking the other way. I have done a few others since without problems, but I still get nervous. The most recent was a 2-layer wrapper for one of Nigel's Fowler 2-6-4Ts. I took the following photos while I was doing it for the kit instructions: First layer wrapper sprung into position Immediately after soldering. The solder paint makes a real mess: Second layer soldered on and cleaned up with a Garryflex abrasive block: Firebox attached: A good chunk of the rear end subsequently needs cutting away to accommodate the motor and gears:

You don't need a lathe to make a plug like that, just a file. The reason mine looks like it has been turned is because I started off with 1/4" rod, not 6mm rod, and turned off the extra approx. 0.4mm at the end of the rod. I already had the lathe, so it was quickest to use the brass I had in stock. It would be quicker and cheaper to buy a bit of 6mm rod off eBay for a few pence than to buy a lathe and learn how to use it (unless you want to). If having it tomorrow is more important than how much it costs, your local B&Q will sell you a long piece of 6mm rod in brass or aluminium. Like all Nigel's kits, this one makes into a lovely model. When it comes to having the skills necessary to complete it, you take your time and practice them up as you go along. I bought my Princess kit in about 2008 when I had no lathe and few skills. I plucked up the courage to start building it in 2012, and I now have nearly all the skills I need to finish it! I'll admit the lathe has been used to make several of the parts: Chimney (the first one I successfully made); smokebox door (prior to this one I'd used drawing pins); cylinder and valve covers ; anti-vacuum valves; steam pipe flanges; flywheel. Most of these could be made with various sizes of telescoping tube or slices of rod.

That looks alright to me, John. You've done the really difficult bit, which is the firebox. When you come to solder the wrappers, do the smokebox on its own first, then add the boiler wrapper. You'll need something to hold them in place while you melt the solder with a flame. I use a twist of soft iron florists wire for this, but you have to be really careful not to tighten the wire, or else it will leave indentations in the wrapper. After soldering on the wrappers, you will need to fit the smokebox saddle to the footplate before you can know for sure that the boiler is sitting correctly. Once it is perfect, fit the splashers, and file them away as necessary so the boiler once again sits down correctly. In the two photos below, I have assembled the boiler/smokebox and firebox, but the two are not fixed permanently - just plugged together. The front of the cab has a round hole, and the back of the smokebox has a square hole a bit lower down. I made a plug from a length of 6mm brass rod to align the back end horizontally and vertically while I was doing all this fitting, and when it came to finally soldering the firebox in place. This is the plug: In the photo below, the boiler/firebox (still just plugged together) is resting on the footplate. I've added the splashers and also removed material from the bottom of the boiler (to clear the footplate cross-members) by this stage. You can see the aperture inside the cab where the alignment plug fits. In this last photo, I had soldered the firebox to the footplate and cab front, but the boiler/smokebox is still not soldered to the firebox yet - it is just held in place at the front end by the steam pipes

I make my cosmetic 3 links in a very similar way to Jim, but I use 0.25mm gunmetal coloured copper craft wire. You can by a reel of over 1000m here; https://www.wires.co.uk/acatalog/craft-col-0250.html In the photo below, the couplings hanging down from the Gannet hopper have been caught in the overspray from the black paint. The coupling between the Gannet and Grampus is in its natural gunmetal finish. It looks almost identical to Jim's tarnished phosphor bronze.

The Stoneacre box is switched out, signals cleared for both directions, and the staffs for the two sections Embsay - Stoneacre and Stoneacre - Bolton Abbey are padlocked together. At Embsay these will be exchanged for the Embsay - Bow Bridge staff, as running round at Embsay requires entering the section. Embsay box can close in-between the first and last trains of the day and we can run Bow Bridge - Bolton Abbey with all three staffs, but this doesn't happen very often. Without a signalman at Embsay, the loco can't access the shed or, more importantly, the water column. Whether we terminate and run round at Embsay or go the extra 1/4 mile to Bow Bridge and back again is determined by operational needs.

Hi Jerry, The eBay seller I bought them from is not currently listing any. A quick search found an alternative source - about double the price I paid, but hardly expensive: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/2PCS-7343-SMD-Chip-Tantalum-Capacitor-330UF-337C-16V-D-Case/123792119692?hash=item1cd295d78c:g:N8wAAOSwUwdc6I1q

Inspired by the article in the latest MRJ, I had a go at making and fitting a Stay Alive module. There is only room in the bunker for 2 tantalum chips. I found some on eBay recently with 330uF capacitance in the same size package as the 220uF units I have been using up to now, so I have used a couple of these. It is still a very tight squeeze. The photos below show the set-up. The decoder is a cT Elektronik DCX77L. It sits nicely in the top of the tank. I've wrapped it in Kapton tape so there's no chance of any bit of it shorting against the inside of the loco body. You can still get these decoders, but you need to order them from Austria. Buying 3 or 4 decoders at once mitigates the high postage cost. For this installation, I removed the orange and grey motor wires and soldered the motor leads directly to the decoder (fewer connections, and therefore less chance of something shorting). The wires, where they emerge from the motor, were reinforced with epoxy. I also removed the yellow and white decoder wires, as the function outputs will not be used. The power feed wires are soldered to the inside of the frame extensions, and will be hidden within the firebox. The blue and black wires for the stay alive are routed round the gears and under the cab floor. The stay alive block is epoxied to the frames, and is leaning back at a jaunty angle to fit along the back of the bunker and avoid the shelf in the back of the cab. Once I'd tested everything to make sure it worked, I wrapped the stay alive block in Kapton tape before fitting the body. The capacitors come up to just below the top of the bunker. A good load of coal will render them invisible. A representation of the backhead, plus crew, will go some way to disguising the gears which protrude slightly into the cab. I've made a rough and ready video so you can see how she runs on DCC. So far I haven't altered any of the CVs on the decoder. (In case anyone is wondering, the pink post-it flag on the wall marks the spot where the roof of my Fowler 2-6-4T fell down the back of the book case, and is a reminder that I need to retrieve it!) Speaking of videos, somebody has put a really nice video on YouTube of Cumbria at Embsay - mostly shot on the same day as the photos I included at the end of my previous post. The "Clag!" in the title is unfortunate. When I arrived to light up at 6.30, I found half the brick arch on the floor next to the loco along with the remains of the previous days fire. In case you care, the brick arch lengthens the path of the air between the fire grate and the tube plate, giving the volatile gases more time to burn in the firebox. Half a brick arch means more un-burned particles going up the chimney (as black smoke) and less heat per lump of coal. Consequently, and with over 200 tons to shift, we were having to fire rather heavily. It looks good on film. Apologies if this sort of thing doesn't interest you... but if you like to see ex-industrial tank engines working hard and putting on a show, you might enjoy this. (The opening shots are from a different day, but for the most part it is me doing the firing. In the clip that starts at 5:26 I'm driving.)

I tend to solder the cylinders to the frames and not worry about it. Once the wheels are in, they're in forever. I may yet live to regret this approach, but I've never really understood why so many people want to be able to take their loco chassis apart. It makes sense for locos that run real miles on layouts like Copenhagen Fields, but I'll be surprised and delighted if any of mine have chance to wear their axles out!

I had a bit of spare time yesterday, so went back to the Railway Modeller drawing and re-measured the safety valves. I'm not sure what happened when I made the original ones. It wasn't a simple case of having forgotten to halve the 4mm dimensions. Maybe I used the wrong dimensioned sketch, possibly the one I made for the Coal Tank. Anyway, a new sketch was prepared, and new valves turned from nickel silver rod. Here is one of the new ones next to one of the old ones - quite a difference! And here they are installed on the loco - looking much better. Today I've been playing with full size trains.Not Beatrice this time, but Cumbria, a Hunslet Austerity. While similar in some respects, the Austerities are nothing like as refined. As pretty as she looks, Cumbria is not the best Austerity I have fired or driven. She certainly has the strength required to pull the long heavy trains at Embsay's Beer Festival today, but the limiting factor on the 2-mile 1-in-100 climb out of Bolton Abbey is the ability to get water into the boiler fast enough. The 16" locos have lifting injectors, but Austerities have the flooded type (visible under the cab).They are s.. l.. o.. w.. and use a lot of steam. My shift on the footplate finished at 4.30pm (only 10 hours), but as I type this, She's still out there, slogging away with a series of evening trains.

I've been feeling increasingly unhappy about the safety valves on my model. Comparing it side by side with the real thing, they seem too fat, too tall, and too far apart. So.. yesterday it was out with the soldering iron, with the large bit fitted, they were quickly removed. Hopefully they will find a more appropriate home on another locomotive one day: I had drilled holes for them using a centre-drill in the lathe (obviously off-set from the centre). This left quite big holes - as big as my smallest centre drill, but I needed to do it this way as the holes impinged on the steel rod up the centre of the dome. The hole to locate the whistle was just as large, but was lined with a short length of brass tube (approx. 0.8mm o/d, 0.4mm i/d) to hold the whistle stem centrally. Here's the dome after removal of the safety valves, with 0.8mm holes now in the wrong place: To re-position the valves closer to the centre, I couldn't use the same trick with tube. It would be necessary to plug the holes with a short length of 0.8mm rod, then re-drill smaller holes for more delicate valves on the inside edge of the plugs. Sounds easy? The first one went OK, but the second small hole drifted off the mark. I had to drill out the plug, solder in another one, and try again. Maybe Tim or Jim will tell me how much like restoring a tooth this is! The picture below was taken after I'd started drilling out the plug. Second time lucky, and I now have two 0.4mm holes in roughly the right place. "All" I have to do now is turn up some much smaller safety valves to plug into them. I hesitate to call this progress, but it is something, and at least I didn't break the whistle off!

Unfortunately this isn't a report on progress with my 2mm model - there hasn't been any! Instead, here is a photo of the prototype I took last night at Bolton Abbey, at the end of a "Sherlock Holmes Murder Mystery" evening. Our passengers were in the station buffet, finding out "whodunnit"... Thankfully I had managed to keep the smoke down and the pressure up, so the murder victim wasn't me! First coach behind the loco is the 12-wheel LNWR directors saloon, freshly repainted and looking fabulous.

The website says that the artwork can be used to produce their kits in any scale - email Allen and find out if he'll produce some for you.

I have turned more of the fittings for Beatrice: Dome, Safety valves, Tank filler and Smokebox door. I just have the whistle still to make. The smokebox door isn't fixed in place yet, as it needs further decorating with hinge, straps and locking handles. I decided to solder, rather than glue the other fittings to the tank / smoke box. The chimney especially sticks out a long way, and might be vulnerable. Here are a few pictures of where I'm up to. The character of the locomotive is really starting to come through now. The real "Beatrice" passed her steam test after overhaul earlier this week, and was due to be undergoing running trials at Embsay during the last couple of days... maybe one day later this year they will be able to meet "in steam"?

As a change from looking at photos taken in Gents toilets, I've been staring again at the enhanced exterior photo from a few posts ago. Tim - you suggested there might be a rack against the back wall of the room. Could this actually be a roll down security grille behind the windows? It would make sense in light of your comment that the location would not be very secure for a ticket office?

The version of the Halcrow report I gave a link to makes reference to an Appendix B - existing drawings. A chap called William Perrin was given access to the content of this appendix by TFL in 2008, and has put low resolution copies of the drawings on-line here: https://northkingscross.typepad.co.uk/photos/york_road_tube_drawings/index.html It was a post of his on the Kings Cross Environment community website that led me to the Halcrow report. These probably won't give you any additional useful information, but they are there for completeness. It appears that one of the drawings in the appendix was used as the basis for the re-drawn version included in the body of the report. I fully expect to see the toilet cubicles correctly modelled now you know how they were arranged... there's a nice reference photo of the Gent's urinals half way down this page: http://www.abandonedstations.org.uk/York_Road_station.html

The pre-feasibility study done in 2005 about potentially re-opening the station has a section on its original configuration. As well as a copy of the drawing you already have, there is also a good clear plan of the ground floor on page 9. The room in question is indeed a ticket office. You can download the report here: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/232988/response/579527/attach/3/Technical Pre feasibility Report revised april.pdf

You certainly can find 2mm bogies on a double pivot like that. I have some Association Black 5 kits to build in the (hopefully not-too-distant!) future, which feature this arrangement. With Bob Jones behind the design, I have no worries about their eventual running qualities.

Not sure what you mean by "fixed". I think you will always need some vertical and some sideways movement of the bogie. The way I have built loco bogies (3 so far, all from Nigel Hunt kits) uses a fixed stem as the pivot, with a spring-loaded washer pressing down on top of the bogie. The bogie has a slot, rather than a hole. Part 11 of my Jubilee video marathon (starting from about 10 minutes in) discusses in detail how this method works. Here are a few pictures of the most recent one one I've made while under construction - this time a Fowler 2-6-4 (Nigel's latest kit): The completed bogie, with a slot in the frame stretcher: On the left edge of the next picture, you can see the top of the bogie pivot, which has a 14BA nut embedded within it: Below are two turned pivots for this loco. The longer one is the bogie pivot. The other is the pony truck pivot (which is hidden from view in the picture above). The holes up the middle are clearance for 14BA bolts to pass through and engage in the nuts captive in the wider section at the top. Nigel sells a cast version of these pivots. In the case of the bogie pivot, a Farish old-style coupling spring (still available as spares) slides over the outside of the stem and provides down force. The pony truck on this particular loco is not sprung. It rotates around the outside of the turned pivot and is retained with a flanged bolt. I may have over-engineered this - a simpler solution would have been to have a 12BA stud as the pivot, but I prefer to have a smooth bearing surface rather than a something thin pivoting around a threaded section. This way also means the bolt can be done up tight. All these locos happily negotiate tight radius points (A6). The amount of movement required is actually quite small.

I missed out on the 309s. I went up to Essex university in October '94, not long after they'd gone. Ironically, I'd occasionally glimpse one of the survivors round South Manchester when I was travelling home by train for holidays. The layout really captures the atmosphere of St Botolph's as I remember it from the late 90s / early 00s, and evokes happy memories. For me, the class 312s hold the fondest memories. When I was commuting into London from Wivenhoe, on the way home I'd try and time it so that I could catch the 12 car set at Liverpool Street that was diagrammed through to Clacton at that time. More often than not, I would sit in the dark on the fold-down seat inside the luggage cage in the brake coach. Nice and quiet so I could work on my PhD thesis until the battery of my laptop ran out...

I know Richard has done some lovely 3D CAD artwork for potential manufacture of fittings, but making things is something I really enjoy. Some I know would decry this as wasting my time, but we all derive pleasure form different things. Anyway, I had a go at making a chimney, to see if I could come close to Richard's renderings on page 1 of this thread. A little time was spent last night with a half-round file to make the curved bottom in a length of 4mm diameter brass rod, then onto the lathe to centre drill the hole up the middle before gluing in (with Loctite 603 retainer) a length of 1.5mm axle steel to act as a mandrel. This morning once the loctite had gone off, I spent a happy hour or so with gravers and files forming the shape by hand. I don't think it has come out too badly. Don't tell Tony Wright, but the hole only goes half way down! The dome with its safety valves and whistle, and the tank filler are next on the list of things to make.

I have fitted the wheels into the chassis. Because I had already fitted the footplate support brackets and brake hangers (to facilitate painting and lining the frames prior to installing the wheels) I was unable to employ the 2mm Association quartering jig that I would normally use. To press the wheels home, I couldn't touch the centres and ruin my transfers, so I turned some pieces of tube to push against the wheel rims. They needed to be just longer than the crank pins. The wheels were quartered by eye when they were partially inserted in the muffs, then fully pressed home in the vice. For the picture below, I have temporarily removed the etched spacers I use (which came with the quartering tool) for ensuring equal gaps between the chassis and wheel backs. I will confess that I did have a bit of a disaster. In a moment of incompetence, I installed one of the centre drivers on the rear axle. Removing it was ridiculously difficult, and I ended up bending the frame a bit. Also, the bearing became detached form the frame. Fortunately I managed to make repairs without damaging the lining on the frames... Once the wheels were on I could fit the brake gear. If you recall, the shoes are from the kit, and the hangers cannibalised from another kit, as the originals were too fragile. The operating cranks are included in the kit. As well as the brakes, you can see in the photo below how I have temporarily fitted the motor (secured with blu-tak) for testing. The kit provides prototypical stretcher bars. As supplied they are two layers, with half-etched recesses to accommodate the pull rods. To make them split-frame, I used a single layer of the etch and soldered on a layer of thin PCB before gapping the etched part with a razor saw. I oriented the parts with the half-etched recesses on the bottom side, this just gave enough clearance for the pull rods (0.3mm nickel silver rod) to pass the axle muffs. The right hand pull rod had to be cranked round the gear on the rear axle. In the photo below, the stretcher bars are quite wonky, but this is not visible when the chassis is the right way up. They had to fit between the brake hangers, and this is just how they ended up. From low down at the front, the stretcher bar is visible and looks good. In the past I have only ever used wire with a cut in the middle to represent the stretchers. The fact that this kit has such fine details is pushing me to go the extra mile with little things like this. The coupling rods caused a bit of head scratching. In the instructions, mention is made of the rods on the main etch only being suitable for the first produced 16" loco, subsequent production having the knuckle joint on the other side of the centre crank pin. The 4mm kit has a supplementary etch with alternate rods, but I do not have a 2mm version of that. After laminating the 2 layers of the coupling rods, I decided to file off the raised detail in the centre of the rods. Original and filed-down rods are shown below for comparison: I then found some half-etched overlays spare from another kit (a Bob Jones Jinty chassis I believe) and soldered these on the other way round. In the photo below, the top rod is original, with the modifies one below. The separate overlay for the other rod is in the top right corner. As you can see, it is much more "chunky", and needed carefully filing down to match the rods once it had been soldered in place. I needed to fiddle about elongating a couple of the holes on the left hand rod to get the chassis to run acceptably. This is probably a consequence of having mangled the frame. I also soldered Association crankpin cap washers to the rear of the coupling rod bosses to space them slightly further away from the wheels and stop them either catching on the centre balance weights or scratching off the transfers. I made a short video showing how it now runs on DC before I fit the electonics. I need to remove the motor again and paint the break gear before that happens though.