JohnBateson

Its on the way - it requires two small slots or a lump of solder after filigng off the two tabs. Just put a length of 0.45 NiSi or brass in the centre hole to represent the pivot axle!

Mike, Would you care for a scoop (there is a made-up one in the picture to show what it looks like

The new etch overlay will be in the post tomorrow - there are two of them just in case🙂 make sure you get it the right way up!🙃 Just in time I remembered to use the old mesurements for the buffer mounts (on later designs I had eased them a little for the fixing boltsof 0.45 mm NiSi wire), These holes are lightly marked on the rear of the etch should you wish to model the fixing bolts.

Mike, Please see attached a quick drawing of the front buffer beam. The red parts are not part of the buffer beam, they are there to show positioning of the rivets only and will not form part of the etch. Most of these rivets are very close to edges so 'punching through' from the back would not be good and would seriously distort the part. I would suggest a half etch with 'bumps' on the front exactly as the rear buffer beam for your kit. From experience the rivets cannot be a lower diameter than shown since if they are slightly over etched all you will see will be a selection of pimples! Use your fibre glass brush to smooth them down. PS. You will have great fun trying to get 1482 numbering on this buffer beam. John

Mike, As noted by 65179/Simon, the front cover could vary. The original tailrods did not last into LNER days I believe. This left the front of the cylinder with a hole open to steam. Therefore, the so-called stuff box, which stopped steam leaking through had to be blocked and in some cases (it seems to me) were covered with a rounded front cover and in others a flat cover with a protrusion which also blocked up the end hole. As far as the rivets on the front buffer beam are concerned out of the 30 or so pictures available to me, only one had rivets showing and that was not "Immingham". So thanks for that picture. I hope I can add it to the library without offending any copyrights. I also note the door handle and additional rivets in places elsewhere - such as the door itself. I like to think that Robinson formed his abhorrence of rivets during his apprenticeship at Swindon with the GWR. Hence 'green without rivets' for the GCR. Conversation. LNER Apprentice Fitter: "Guv, where do I fit all these rivets, please Sir?" Bowler Hatted Foreman: "Anywhere you find a space, lad" later that day LNER Apprentice Fitter (slightly knackered after a 12 hour shift): Guv, I have fitted lots of rivets, Guv, but I have one left over. Where should I fit this last rivet, Guv?" Bowler Hatted Foreman (now late for the pub and with some asperity): "In the last hole, you stupid boy"🤨 Mike, And a little more seriously, I have a set of etches with space that may be ready to go to PPD in the next few weeks. If I could be sure of the positioning of the rivets I could add a couple of sets - same as the rear buffer beam cover half etch with bumps for the rivets. Up to you. John

The lack of a spigot with the chimney is to allow the potential of screwing the body to the chassis through the chimney rather than with the two nuts at the front. These domes and chimneys are turned after fly cutting the curve and then doing a lot of shaping and finishing - about 3 hours work for each. The chimney is shaped using a hand tool against an template which is on the etches for the body (Sheet 5 at the top). It is always a great excuse to hide in the shed and bend my head over the work for hours at a time. I am afraid that theflat shape of the dome shown I find is rather ugly, but that is the LNER for you. Much prefer the originals! John

Mike, A couple of things. Boiler hand rail knobs. The front one will need adjusting to the rear. From the front of the fire box these are 4' 4.75" (which is correct on the etch) and 10' 8.875" (which you may wish to correct). Simply done, fill the hole with a brass pin and drill a new hole in the correct position. Boiler bands. These are all but invisible, and no indication on the drawings I have or the GA. Basically one at each end (which hides the join) one centered on the dome and two more equidistant from the dome to the ends. On later designs I included 1/2 etch (2" equivalent) for these but they are, I feel, too intrusive. I go with the old Alan Gibson solution of very thin 2" (0.67 mm) sellotape strip and then spray the undercoat on top. On these engines I feel these bands were decorative not functional. Thirdly, on the drawing for the 8F/B4 you can see a 14XX motor and HiLevel gear box. You wondered recently whether one would fit. You will note that the cab design is such that there is spce there as the fire box intrudes into the cab by about 12" - this is a separate part on your etch. And lastly, I note that on the chassis where the brake axle is fitted you have the square supports fitted (see picture). In theory, P4 wheels should not touch these provided the axle slot is accurate but EM wheels will cause a problem. It all depends on the amount of sideplay you are building in. These can be put on the inside of the frames if needed and is probably where they were anyway! JB

A length of "L" under the platform will stop this lot bending while doing the heavy stuff. Only do the valences after the firebox, boiler and smoke box provide a good lock. Don't forget to remove the front support bracket , it is an assembly guide not a permanent fixture.

I would leave the lifting arms in a fixed position so that they fix throught the bottom half of the link - there is just not enough strength in tne reversing arm to get the whole lot to move - if you have you have a reverser in the cab complete with turning handle and it operates the lifting axle that would really be an acheivement. That was a step too far for me. Way too far!

Availability of these designs (Classes 8, 8B, 8C, 8F) which had spacers for P4 and EM and further designs (8A, 8G, 11B) which are P4 only plus there are tender designs, one of which will do for P4/EM/00, the other two are for P4 only.These were handed to Jeremy Suter of the Scalefour Society during 2017 - 2019 for long term preservation along with the rights to use as he thought fit. All the instructions are with Jeremy, some of these stretch to 40+ pages. As Mike has said, these are not kits for the inexperienced - see posts above! Producing these kits left me with no free time among all the other tasks I had at that time. This left me able to concentrate on newer work as and when I had spare time and more to the point, when I had the wherewithall. Jeremy has etches for most of the above designs and should be contacted if there is interest. John

I should have pointed out in my drawing from 8 Feb that the eccentrics as shown are simply done with a "copy by centre" so appear to be a mirror image. Of course the right hand set should be leading by 90 degrees, I just didn't want to go through the hassle of redrawing the full set at a different angle and position!🙄 I am sure Mike has spotted this anyway... John

MM asks a question on driver gear. The motor and gearbox I have always thought should be up to the builder since there are so many variations possible. The best I have seen is driven from the tender with a couple of UJs but this is something I have not attempted. The crux of the matter in deciding whether to mount the gearbox on the driver or the two coupled axles is driven by several factors. Note that I draw at full scale in the section below. 1. The spacing of the valve rod - these are 30" centres, or 15" each side. To this must be subtracted one side of the eccentric assembly, i.e. 12" each side which is 4 mm. So the maximum width of the gearbox is 24" or 8 mm. 2. In the gearbox profiles from HighLevel the only gearbox that meets this specification is the SlimLiner at 7.3 mm or the HiFlier and the RoadRunner, which at 7.8 mm is extremely marginal. 3. While there is some flexibility in the valve rods to mount them slightly out, or there is no requirement to have the internal gear (barely visible - see picture), or the inner valve plate is thinned down to less than 0.5 mm, the choice is varied. I bought a couple of Exactoscale boxes that were expensive but would have done the job nicely. 4. Note that HighLevel now have all sorts of new motors and I suspect some of the gearboxes have been altered slightly to suit. While the motor is free to spring up and down, there is also a turning force at the axle. A simple omega loop soldered between the gearbox side and the top bracket at the firebox will sort this out. I think. So, I chose the rear coupled axle and High Level Gear Box HighFlier 40:1. A 12XX motor would be fine although if the firebox front is filed back to allow a little extra sideplay, then a 14XX should fit, which I did for 1098. (Note to self - this has been ready for painting for far too long and I now have a tender for it - no excuse really!) I have qty 4 of these in various states of disrepair, the absence of one of the bodies explains the lump hammer with the red ribbon that I posted earlier. Another question earlier. I use Nealetin extensively, a liquid solder with its own flux. I only use real rosin solder where a stronger joint is needed such as a wedge at a right angle joint. John

Mike, There is not a lot of space behind the cross head. I did not add the overlays to the coupled and driver wheels, either at the rear of the front. As is general practice, I think, the front axle should not normally have side play and the Markits axle boxes should therefore slide against the frame directly. The knuckle on the coupling rod should be loose. I also file off the front of the markits axle box to get rid of the rim, noting that this fits with the thicker side within the frame, this gives a small increment in the centre and rear sideplay. Most of my frames have been16.05mm. The front wheels, if using the AG bushes and nuts, should be inset in reverse in the coupling rod, I believe this is common practice. Below I have highlighted the areas of concern - this has been a dig into the archives from 2012! A long time since I designed this one.

Good morning Mike, I do remember the discussions about the LNER 4-6-0s, initially during Committee meetings in London, where I, perhaps not understanding the size of the problem, made the comment "why not make all of them?" At the time I meant the GCR engines, but at a later date there was also a conversation in a car park at Wakefield in which I believe you indicated that all the LNER 4-6-0s could be achieved. That conversation ended as a 'car-boot sale' I think! I also recall you saying that these kits were not for the faint-hearted. In your earlier post a slight typo, this kit is the 8F not the 8K (which is a 2-8-0 somebody else was later working on). As a CAD design, I believe that chassis jigs should not be necessary, although their value for both older kits and those where the builder decides to produce his or her own spacers is inestimable. I also like to design slightly on the tight side. This is for two reasons, the first of which is beyond the control of the designer. This is the etching process issue. From run to run there is often a difference in the process, very slight, but noticeable, where the cusp formed by the process may cause some tightness if under-cooked or some looseness if over-cooked. Ths accoounts for the slight tightness on things like the Markits Hornblocks. The secon reason stems from the first. It is always possible to open out a tight hole or slot, fixing a loose hole or slot may result in some inaccuracy. This is the best thing about CAD designs, they can be accurate to several places of decimals, which again goes back to the question of the need for a chassis jig. Cylinders. Drawing 5 on Page 15 of the instructions is incorrect - well not exactly incorrect - but better if the circular supports are between the cross pieces, since it gives slight more room to fit the cylinder covers. I enclose a picture one of my earlier test builds with some later modifications. You will note that I have chopped off the top under the smoke box. This gets around an issue of fitting the chassis to the body. The chopped off part the is solder up as part of the body, between the smokebox and the platform. This has the effect that the shape of the smokebox is easier to finish.

I have not seen this thread before but find it of interest since I produced the early designs. I was not expecting much interest in them. Production of the kits started to overwhelm the design process and a combination of multiple family care issues and funerals and associated legal fights put a complete stop to both design and kit productions. In 2015 it seemed reasonable to close down the associated limited company as we were both exhausted. A period of stability has brought a new paradigm to the situation. I was aware that a number of suppliers and associated skills were ceasing to trade and in a number of cases all the experience was being lost. I decided to re-start the design process on my target range but avoid the production of kits. The Scalefour Society very kindly offered to take all the drawings and tools off my hands for the original set of designs and any new ones I might complete. At present several of these older designs are just awaiting castings but again real work (not to mention COVID) has intervened. The web site that has the curent details is https://www.greatcentralmodels.co.uk although the target dates and some pictures do need revision. This new web site replaces the one held on the Scalefour Society web site which was essentially a repository just to preserve it when I mislaid the registration for it and it became a Chinese shoe shop! - careless of me. Now I have the registration back I have noted in it that I will no longer be doing the production of kits but will continue with designs for my own collection. Once I am satisfied with those designs I will send the drawings and tools to Jeremy Suter of the Scalefour Society who is updating the designs mainly by producing castings whereas I used a lathe for things like chimneys and domes. This should happen in the not too distant future. A contributor to these pages has noted that these kits are not for the faint hearted and I agree that they can be a challenge. I saw an end result of a 'fish' engine at Wakefield a year or so ago and it looked really good. As for the 'spat' all those years ago, I came rather late to the discussion as it was, I understand, on a different forum to this. As far as I am concerned that is history and that is where it stays. John

Jol, Noting your sub-message tag, may I offer an amendment Support the British economy, buy a kit. Better still, buy two kits! John

If there is any interest please just use the message facility on this forum to ask for details - there are nearly 20 of these available. John

These any good?

I can confirm from my set of GAs for various GC locomotives that joggles and simple bends on the front frames were common on GC locos from 1900 so this practice would have stretched back quite a number of years. Joggles and bends could co-exist on the same set of frames. This is to allow the bogies to move slightly on curves, although for the usual modelling in 4 mm, the practice would be to cut into the frames so the bogie could effectively 'go through' the frames and thus allow for small radius running. 1.5" frame equates at 4mm to 0.38 mm (which is actually 1.25 mm) and is a standard brass or NiSi thickness.

It always surprised me just how many of the bigger engines turned left towards Denbigh. Coming down Kinnerton Bank must have been quite exciting with a load on. I just about saw the end of traffic here when I moved into the area in '68 How much of Mold Junction are you planning? The plan in Page 90 of the Chester to Denbigh Railway would seem ambitious.