david65061

Yes the axles are running in brass bearings. The coal rails are made from brass wire and are soldered up before being attached to the model.

That is one impressive Duchess, makes my offerings pale in comparison. I would have never thought you could have made a coned boiler in plastic card. I must have a go some time, though the north eastern only had parallel boilers. As Horsetan is convinced a plastic chassis will not work and will be all floppy so I thought I would post some pictures of two other models of mine which have a plasticard chassis. My other J21 As you can see the chassis is well braced and the fire box is two layers which gives it strength and prototypical position between the frames. my j25 The chassis is yet to be motorised, but is built in the same way. though if the model duchess has not proved the versitility of modelling in plastic I don't know if my efforts will.

The boiler and smoke box are hollow so sheet lead will go in there. If it is then over heavy at the front a lead cab floor will hopefully do the trick.

The lamp irons on the front of the foot plate are made out of staples. One of the reasons that I scratch build is to keep costs down so I only buy in things that I absolutely have to. If I was to buy steps etc the cost would rise up and I might as well buy an etched kit. The dome, funnel and smoke box door have come from Alexander models. Hand rail knobs have come from Alan Gibson. The buffers were in my bits box. The tender will also be made from plastic again to save money. They are not too hard to build, the only difficult bits are the flair at the top of the sides and the beading round the edge. I make the flair from a plastic tube. It is cut length ways into four. A bit of a fiddly job but it does work. The 52F chassis looks to be good quality ( for which you have to pay for ) but building it as is pictured on the web site driving on the middle axle will leave the gear box / motor visible under the boiler. I like there to be space were there should be on a model on having already built a J21 I know there is enough space to put a motor in the fire box so it is invisible. So unless I utilise my nucast chassis it will also be a scratch built chassis. The nucast kit was built 20 years ago and I was never happy with it. So at present it is in bits awaiting a scratch built cab and boiler. Another job to join the many projects I have waiting to be started. David

Not much time for modelling last week but I have added some more detail. Funnel, dome, safety valves and various bits of detail I don't know the name of have all gone on. There is lots of small bits to add which once on you don't really notice but if they are left off the model looks wrong. I have put it on a chassis from my nucast j21 for the latest lot of photographs. The chassis is going to have to be started soon. , , If we get some nice weather at the weekend I might give it a coat of primer to see how it is going, but it depends on the weather as I have to spray out side in the garden. One job I am not looking forward to is the hand rail around the front of the boiler. They always take time to get right and I end up with lots of bent bits of wire which have no use what so ever.

Hi I managed to get quite a lot of modelling done this weekend which was nice, I don't usually get to do much at weekends and certainly won't the next two weekends. The sanding operating rod was added to the left side. A shoulder-less hand rail knob with ,out a base, used to keep it in position over the splasher. The rod it self should be a bar not round rod. One of the compromises one has to make. On the other side I put a lot of pipe work in place. Sholderless hand rail knobs doubling as the attachments for the westinghouse pump pipe along the boiler. I managed to fit the vacuum ejector pipe on too high originally so now have a couple of holes to fill in the smoke box and cab front. Abs sheet (20 thou or 0.5mm) was used to fabricate the frame for the westinghouse pump. the edges were then thinned down so it does not look too thick. Abs certainly glues together very wellwhen making fiddly components. Though it is not very visible behind the pump. , The steps have also been added again from ABS. Using solvent to attach them to the foot plate and super glue to the valence.

I would have said it was also a blob on the photo but it appears on every picture of 65061 I can find and 65061 is quite well represented in books. I have another 5 shots of it in books. Surely they can't all have blobs on the photo? David

Another picture of 65061 http://cumbrianrailways.zenfolio.com/p349676717/h930135e#h930135e the odd valve thing can also be seen in this view as well.

Hi The build has actually taken about six months to get this far due to my inability to concentrate on one modelling project at one time as well as the fact I wanted to see how the parts made in ABS behaved before I put too much time and effort in to the build. I did read somewhere that it was difficult to glue abs to styrene but after 6 months the joints appear strong and to have held so I am continuing with the build though posts will now relate to how quickly I can build the model. Working for a living and family life get in the way of my modelling time. I am modelling 65061 and as I have mentioned earlier there are a large number of detail differences between J21s. but there is one bit of detail I am not sure about so I thought I would ask those many knowledgeable people out there in RMweb world for help. Look at the picture of 65061 in the following link http://www.railbrit.co.uk/imageenlarge/imagecomplete.php?id=29326 Just below the dome on the right hand side of the loco is some sort of valve, does any one know what it is? It appears to be unique among j21s. In the many photos of j21s I have looked at no other seems to have it. In fact I have never seen a similar fitting on a picture of any other northeastern loco. To make matters worse I can not find a photo with a clear view of it so I can represent it correctly. David

Dear All The boiler has been attached to the foot plate. The dome and funnel are not yet glued on. A bit of work will be required around the fire box front and splashers to get the right shape and to fill the gaps which are left. One of the good things about plasticard is that is easy to add extra bit s on and fill gaps. , Now on to detailing the body. First thing is the handrail knobs. They have to be done so the hand rail is perfectly straight other wise the model will look terrible. The prototype may get a bend hand rail but I have never seen it done convincingly on a model. So I take my time checking the fit of all the knobs together, removing one at a time to glue it in. Occasionally I end up with a slight bend and then I use a very small broach to make the hole in the knob bigger so the hand rail wire will go through perfectly straight. Hand rails are a bit of a thing for me as it really annoys me that people can ruin an other wise perfect model by having bent hand rail wire when a couple of minutes work could have sorted it out. Perhaps other people look at other aspects of my models and think for a couple of minutes work it could have been so much better. I am sure some one out there will tell me now that I am sharing my work on the web. I have just notice I have left on the hand rail wire an extra large knob which is on the wire for safe keeping. This knob came from djh and makes a hand rail look like it has footballs threaded on it, but they do make a nice representation of some of the pipe work on the boiler immediately in front of the cab and on the left side of the smoke box. The reversing leaver has now been added. This has to be done fairly early on as it goes behind the westinghouse pump. I have decided to model 56061 the only one with a super heated boiler to have westinghouse pump in british railways days. There are so many variations on a J21 it is important to choose your prototype early on as I have found in the past I have had to trawl books looking for an individual which is in the same condition as the model I built. My J71 has got a permutation of boiler, brakes and buffers which no member of the class actually carried. Lesson learned or perhaps not. This is how the model is at present so posts will now be dependent on my progress with the model. Here is a shot of the cab. The roof is built up from two layers of plasticard which have been curved with boiling water then laminated together to form a very strong piece which will hopefully not warp. Inside the cab I also built up a frame (over scale) to stick it onto and hold the top of the cab to shape. I am not sure if I have the boiler on with the fire box ever so slightly high or if it is just an optical illusion due to the smoke box being larger. Sometimes I think this other times I am sure it is level. If itis not level I do not know if it can be corrected. Time will tell.

Dear Nelson, That is a very impressive model I am very impressed, I certainly could not have built models of that standard while I was at school. It has taken years of practice for me to get some half decent models. You will have realised what a good material plasticard is for building models and I hope we will be seeing another scratch built model from you soon. Keep up the good work. David

Hi Thank you for your kind comments I hope I will not disappoint. I usually use plastic card for the chassis and find if it is cross braced it builds up to form a very stiff structure, though I do use brass bearings. My locos not not get much running so I might find a plastic card chassis is not suitable once I build a layout and will have to replace them with brass. If I was a sensible sort though I would have built the chassis first as it is a lot easier to get the body to fit the chassis than the other way round. But I get over taken by enthusiasm and like to see tangible results as soon as possible and any way building the body is the best bit. David

I have decided to start a topic showing my progress in scratch building an ex LNER J21 ( NER class C). I do not suppose that progress will be that rapid and I could quite possibly go off on another modelling whim, like I usually do. So I expect it will be quite some time before I get to the completed loco. I usually build loco,s in plasticard I like to use evergreen scale models sheet styrene and strips glued together with 2-Butanone. But in this build I am also using some ABS sheet in an experiment to see if it is suitable to use. On first impressions it appears stronger than styrene. Time will tell if it is a good material to use. I have cut out some basic parts in abs plastic using a scalpel. I photocopied a drawing from the February 1996. edition of Railway Modeller.. Copies of this drawing are then stuck on the plastic sheet with pritt stick. The pieces are then cut out by cutting through the drawing and the plastic sheet. I have used 20thou sheet for the main parts. To give the footplate strength I have used 1mm square brass rod to represent the valence along the edge of the footplate. Glued on with super glue which the the abs took very well. I only have a sheet of 20 thou abs so when I need thinner sheet I have used styrene sheet which is white unlike the grey abs. Some more progress. The boiler is made on an abs tube. Like a fool I bough a 16mm tube rather than an 18mm tube so I have had roll 10 thou styrene sheet round to bring it up to 18mm diameter. The out side of the smoke box has a wrapper of 3thou brass sheet so rivits can be represented. The boiler bands are 10 thou by 30 thou strips and need to be wrapped around a brass tube of similar size then put into boiling water before removing and running under cold water. This means they now hold their shape n more importantly do not break up when solvent is added to stick them on.