Ian H C

Thursday 17th March I think I'll return to the long ignored buffers. The body to chassis union can wait a bit longer. Chemically blacken the buffers. The buffer heads should be 1' 6" from the headstock, or 10.5mm in 7mm. The springs seem a bit stiff again with too much preload at the correct buffer length. With no experience of 7mm I'm guessing of course. Ages ago I bought one of those bags of 200 assorted springs, and by luck I have 4 matching springs that fit and have a lower spring rate. A quick experiment gives an acceptable result, so that's what I'll use. Getting the right length and soldering the retaining washer on without soldering everything solid will be a challenge. It would be handy to put a thread on the end of the buffer shank and use a small nut to secure the buffer. That would give adjustment for length, be easily fixed with thread lock, and removable if required. Alternatively I could drill through the shank 0.5mm at the right location (22.8mm from the buffer head) and use a wire pin to secure the buffer. Whatever you use to secure the buffer will run very close to the inside of the W iron. If it snags the W iron the buffer won't compress. Hmmm.... 1 hour of faffing, measuring and pondering. Not a buffer fixed. Total 84 hours. ------------- Friday 18th March Preparing the buffer housing castings. A bit of cleaning up and filing on the back to make them sit flat on the headstocks. Gently countersinking the holes in the headstocks helps. I'll fix the buffers to the chassis after the body is fixed to the chassis. The small tabs on the end of the stanchions don't quite line up across the width of the chassis. They're about half a thickness out. Not much, but enough to prevent the body sitting perfectly flat on the chassis. Almost certainly due to variation in my folding and fixing of the stanchions. Not a problem though, just file the tabs off flush with the end of the stanchions along one side of the body. Sits perfectly now. I'm going to solder the chassis to the body using the top flange of the stanchion support brackets on chassis part 1. I'll use the RSU to do this, otherwise there's a lot of brass to heat up with a soldering iron. The whole thing fits together so neatly there are no gaps between chassis and body or at the base of the stanchions. Now I can fit the lower door hinge supports to body and chassis. Side doors fitted. Looking the part now. Ultrasonic bath to purge the grubbiness, and that'll do for tonight. 2 hours. Total 86 hours. ---------- Saturday 19th March There's not much left to do now. A lot of little complete and tidy up jobs. Probably time to do a finishing list. I'm thinking that cutting a screw thread on the end of the buffer shank and using a small nut is the right way to go. I've ordered a BA die for the purpose, so while I wait impatiently for that I'll turn my attention to the axle boxes. There's a choice of axle boxes, cast steel and fabricated. The impression I have is that cast steel were the more common type, but fabricated axle boxes were certainly not uncommon. They were interchangeable and tended to be replaced and mixed indiscriminately during repairs. I'm going for the classic cast steel type. There naturally follows the compulsory chore of making a hole in the back of the axle box casting to accommodate the axle bearing. You have to wonder why they are not available with a hole cast in. Working in 7mm brings you closer to the detail of things. As a wagon geek I've always appreciated that there's a huge variety of axle box designs and that they are an important part of the character of a wagon. Comparatively few are available from the trade (so far as I can tell), and some of those are 'representative' at best. I'm waiting to get some 4mm spring and axle box units 3D printed by Modelu, and if they turn out OK then I might consider modelling and printing some of the often seen but rarely modelled types in 7mm. Anyway, a blob of 5 minute epoxy fixes the castings to the spring carriers. Incidentally, a good way of mixing and applying epoxy is with a cocktail stick and a beer bottle top. Both disposable. And you get green credits for reusing the beer bottle top. Of course, buying beer to get the bottle tops leaves me with the occasional problem of how to dispose of quantities of beer. Since starting this build I've been oscillating between 0F standards and S7. In 4mm I work to P4 standards; I prefer the look of the track and wheels, certainly compared with 00. The difference doesn't seem so obvious in 7mm, and I thought that going 0F would give me reasonable prototype appearance without having to pull on the hair shirt of authenticity and suffer from tight tolerances, locos that don't go round curves and availability of parts. There seems to be good support for S7 from the trade so maybe that's not a problem these days. I started with Slaters 0F wheels for this project, but I never quite settled. I recently ordered a set of S7 wheels, just to compare, and when I placed them alongside the 0F wheels my mind was made up. It will be S7. That leaves me with one potential problem. A long time ago I acquired an MMP 9F kit, and a set of excellent AGH wheels in 0F. I wonder if they can be reprofiled to S7? Virtually complete and on wheels it weighs in at 108g. With a target weight of 125g that leaves 27g to add. Rectangles of lead flashing cut to fit neatly in the pockets in the centre of the chassis inside the frame channels, and fixed with epoxy. End door hinge blocks fettled and manoeuvred into place. Hinge bar cut to length and threaded through the hinges. Since this will not be a working end door it can all be fixed in place with three tiny drops of low viscosity cyano. Side door catches fettled, split with a scalpel, fed into the brackets from each end and secured with a drop of low viscosity cyano. Tiny parts 79, 80 at the bottom of the end stanchions. That's another part of 1/108 I'd never noticed before. Make up the axle box keepers 29, 30. End of shift tonight. In the cleaner and tidy up. I'm getting close to the end of the build now, really just the buffers to install before it all goes together. Thoughts turn to painting and finishing. Usually when I'm painting and weathering wagons I work from a photo. It helps me to capture then distinctive patterns of use and dirt. Random, made up rust and muck rarely convinces. I guess it is even more necessary in 7mm, it's quite an intimate portrait of the wagon at that size. On this one I'm looking for a wagon that's seen some use (1957 to 1965 ish) but hasn't reached the state of decrepitude common later in the life of a 1/108. There will still be more paint than rust! Ive seen some impressive paint over corrosion effects on military models created by a salt weathering method. There's plenty of You Tube tuition available. So I guess the order of work will be - etch primer undercoat, rust colour base coat, salt deposition in rusty areas, top coat, and then removal of salt to reveal rust. While there's a pause in the build I'll paint up a trial panel to practice salt weathering. 5.5 hours. Total 91.5 hours.

Wednesday 16th March Coming back this evening and looking with fresh(er) eyes, the X21 rings don't look right. Too flat, where the prototype is a thin wire ring. I'll replace them with some rings made by winding 0.3mm wire round a 1.5mm drill bit. Here we go again, but it gets easier every time. A career in jewellery beckons. Yes, that looks much better. In cleaning up with a glass fibre brush I dislodged one of the grab handles. Better now than during painting. So make another and solder in place. The end door fits perfectly onto the pegs and in position. It won't be a working door, so it is soldered in position. Apart from the cast white metal hinge posts, which I'll fit later, that most distinctive piece of 1/108 architecture, the end door, is complete and fixed in position. And here's a photo to celebrate. 1 hour. Total 83 hours. Next episode: I can't postpone fitting body to chassis any longer.

Monday 14th March Doors again. When you think about it a lot of the detail in the body is around the doors. So it's not surprising that they suck up so much time. Still working on the end door tonight. The cast white metal pegs for the end door catches don't appeal to me. Not sure I can solder them effectively and not sure how robust they'll be. So I'll make replacements from 1mm brass wire. It is possible to drill a 0.5mm hole through 1mm brass wire. File a small flat where you want the hole.Make a centre mark with the point of a scriber, that'll be enough to start a 0.5mm drill. Hold the wire in a vice and drill vertically through. The flat can end up underneath when installed, you won't see it. Drill the hole first then get the length of the peg correct relative to the hole. They need to be about 1mm shorter than the white metal castings from hole to end, otherwise they stick out too far. Check photos. Taper one end and solder them, without fear of meltdown, into the end stanchions. Now, more bloody chain and etched rings, but mercifully the last lot. The cotter pin X22 is too wide to go through the 0.5mm hole in the peg. On the prototype the peg had a slot milled in it. We can't make a tiny slot but we can carefully thin down the cotter until it fits the hole. 6 links of the tiny chain looks about right. That's one side done, and it is possible to fit the cotter and turn the ring X21 over the peg, just. The chain and rings on the other side of the end door, and that's it done. That's it for tonight. One month since getting started! 2.5 hours. Total 82.5 hours. ----------- Digression - Thomas the Tank Engine. Naturally as a little boy I had my share of Thomas books. Gordon The Big Engine was the first. I still have it, a fifth edition from June 1966. a sixth birthday present. The foreword starts - "Dear Ian, You asked for a book about Gordon. Here it is. Gordon has been naughty, and then Fat Controller was stern with him. Gordon has now learned his lesson and is a Really Useful Engine again." The books were generally true to railway custom and practice of the time they were written, the fifties. Post war society is reflected in them too - Gordon is a bit aristocratic and one of the locomotive upper classes, James and Henry are aspiring middle class, and Thomas and Percy are working class tank engine oiks. You have your favourites. I never quite liked Gordon. Even at that age I knew he was supposed to be a Gresley pacific and I knew the rectangular buffers were bogus and he was an axle short on the tender. And he was a bit sniffy and patronising, wouldn't touch trucks, talked down to 'little Thomas'. Besides, I wasn't that keen on blue either. James? What was James supposed to be anyway? Never did work that out. And bright red wasn't the right colour for an engine. Thomas was OK even though he was pale blue, a bit cheeky and subversive. My favourite was Henry. Green was a favourite colour, and Henry seemed to be neat and well proportioned. A Black Five, as I subsequently found out. Henry always seemed to be getting a rough deal, you had to feel sorry for him. As kids and parents you had to know your railway lore to appreciate some of the stories. I remember one Percy episode where he runs through a signal and ends up in the water with the Fat Controller standing over him muttering dark oaths. The whole point of the story, the whole joke on Percy, was the difference between upper and lower quadrant semaphore signals and the misunderstanding that arose. Who'd get that today, apart from folk reading this blog? The yoof of today eh? Would it be a laugh to write a modern day Thomas? With Network Rail, the Rail Regulator, punctuality stats, RoSCos, franchises. Well, maybe not.

Saturday 12th March When the top doors are trial fitted over the door catch pegs in the body the top of the side door is slightly higher than the top of the body. Not much, but enough to be noticeable. It doesn't look right, and it isn't. Side elevation drawings of LMS D2134 (Official Drawings of LMS Wagons Vol 2 - Wild Swan) shows the top edges in line, and that's how it looks in photos. The brass tube supplied is true to prototype in that the prototype also had tube welded along the top edge of the door. I can't imagine why, but it did. The prototype tube looks to be a smaller diameter than the tube in the kit. I can't confirm it with dimensions but that's how it looks to me. I have the tube as tight in to the top of the door etching as it can go, so I've not goofed on assembly. I think the answer is to unsolder the tube and replace it with a length of wire of a suitable diameter. A trial with 1.0mm diameter brass wire looks much better. Parts 15, and the hinges for the top door. Tin the parts X14, X15 and clear the holes through to match the wires or pins while they're still on the fret. Bend the hoops to match (Bill Bedford handrail tool again). Pin the lot into a block of balsa for soldering. Photo. Parts X11 to top doors. Getting a bit bonkers, these parts are so small I can hardly pick them up with tweezers. Drill them through 0.5mm before cutting them off the fret. The fine chain is a bit over scale again, but it's probably better than fitting nothing. 4 links each this time. The link is cut with a sharp Stanley blade on a steel plate and teased back together with the point of a scalpel and the point of the triangular scraper. Very difficult, but gets easier with practice. Eventually there are 4 chain and ring assemblies fixed to the top doors. I guess that's how that guy felt after he'd arranged 35 Xenon atoms to spell out IBM, although he probably had smaller tweezers than mine. One top door and chains in place and soldered. And what a struggle that was. There's a photo and it's ugly this close up, but I just want somebody to congratulate me on getting that tiny chain in place. You have no idea... You can also see that the top of the top door is slightly lower than the body side. So the 1mm wire on the top of the door didn't work out quite right. Sorry. All I can say is that I didn't notice until I posted the photo. It really doesn't show in real life, certainly less obtrusive than standing above the top edge of the body. 1.2mm wire? 5 hours today. Total 75 hours. ------------ Sunday 13th March The other top door. New idea for keeping the chains and rings together on the model. The etched rings, X12 for example, are so soft that there's a risk of them opening up when installed, during cleaning or handling. They're also nigh impossible to solder without clogging up the fine detail and the chain. I'm manoeuvred them into position how I wanted them to look on the model, carefully apply a little solder paint to the rings and chain, then cook the area indirectly by applying the RSU nearby. The solder paint melts and fuses the whole chain and ring assembly solid in position with a thin film of solder. You need to take care not to unsolder anything else of course. It leaves an amount of flux and solder paint residue, but the ultrasonic cleaner will remove that without mechanically disturbing the components. Parts 26 didn't get a mention while we were building the main body, but it looks like they can go on now. Tin the back of 26 and sweat or RSU into position. End door next. I think the best order is sides 17, 18 first followed by 23 across the top. Then centre vertical rib 24 and then the diagonals 25 last. The door has a tendency to curl up as you heat it so make sure you keep it flat when you solder the ribs. I soldered it flat on the steel RSU base plate with the 40W iron and used magnets around the edge of the door to hold it flat. The temptation is to add ribs 20, 21 to the door at this point, and then the plate 22. It is difficult to get 20, 21 vertical and the right distance apart to accurately correspond with the half etched grooves in the back of 22. Better to fit 20, 21 to 22 first, then add that sub assembly to the door. Handles on, chain lugs X19 on. End door nearly finished. Clean up and tidy up for end of shift. 5 hours. Total 80 hours.

Thursday 10th March Not much time tonight. Cut out and clean up the parts for the side doors. 30 mins. Total 65.5 hours. ----------- Friday 11th March Laminating side doors 13, 14. They end up a bit pringle due to heat distortion. Bend them carefully back flat, or as flat as your chosen prototype. I've decided at this point that I'm not going to make the side doors open so I don't need to bother about working parts. I don't fancy my chances of soldering parts 12 in place without melting the white metal door catch. I'll solder 12 in place then cut and insert the door catch from both sides later. Obviously you can't do that if you want the catches and doors to work. If I wanted the catches to work I'd probably make some catches from brass, graphite them up to make them solder proof, cross fingers and solder 12 on top of them. It helps to pre tin the ends of 12 before removing from the fret. The wire pegs for the upper side door catch. Solder a long piece of 0.8mm wire into the hole. Long enough for you to be able to hold the other end while soldering. Easy then to adjust the wire to get it perpendicular to the body while soldering. Cut it off and trim to length after soldering. The 'structions say to leave the wire 3mm proud. In reality the pegs for the top door projected about as far as the outside face of the vertical stanchions either side of the door. Again, I'm not going for a working top door so I'll stay as close to prototype appearance as possible. Top door parts X9, X10 and the brass tube. Tricky little job. Best to leave the tube over long each end for soldering and cut and file it back to length afterwards. Dump the body and door assemblies in the ultrasonic tank for a clean. 4.5 hours. Total 70 hours.

Monday 7th March More body detail. Won't fix the body to the chassis yet. Parts 5, 6 are the strangest, awkwardest little bits to fit. I'd never noticed them before, but a look at prototype photos shows them there. They required a little fettling to touch in all the right places. Solder paint and RSU to hold and zap them on. Corner caps 7. All easier with the body separate. That's all for tonight, and not worth a photo! 1.5 hours. Total 61.5 hours. ------------ Tuesday 8th March Looks like side doors coming up. This is the point where the body and chassis have to be united. But I'll kick that down the road a bit and do some door sub assemblies first. Tiny parts X17, X18. Check that you can get the pins through the etched holes and drill through if required before you cut them from the fret. They're almost too small to drill afterwards. The brass pins supplied turned out to be steel pins. I substituted some real brass 0.55mm pins as they're easier to work and solder. The pin heads look too big to me. Put them in a Dremel and turn the heads to a smaller profile with a file. X17, X18 are so small that when the pin is inserted they're hardly visible. You have to wonder if they're worth the effort. The wire hoops are easily bent to size using a Bill Bedford handrail bending jig E017, using the "7" setting. It's such a simple thing but it saves so much time a gives a consistency of handrail length you'd struggle to achieve by pliers alone. Eventually that's all the parts 8, 9, X17, X18, pins and hoops ready for soldering, but it's enough for tonight. Can't say I've enjoyed that session; fiddly, faffy, irritating work. Or maybe I'm not in the mood today? 1.5 hours. Total 63 hours. -------------- Wednesday 9th March More doors. On reflection, and having looked at more photos, the pin heads are too large, even when reduced. I'll use 0.5mm wire to represent the rivet / bolt. How to solder this lot together? The only way I can think of is to pin the lot into a piece of balsa. There's a photo. A pretty bad photo, but you get the point. Tin the pins and wire hoops to help the solder flow between the parts first time. Get the whole lot lined up, check the clearance under the wire hoops, apply some flux and go for it. I have to say it's a pain in the backside and, for such an insignificant part, the most difficult bit so far. A real test of patience. Pull the assembly out of the scorched balsa, cut off the wires and clean up. The photo shows the result. Far from perfect, but the best I can do. 2 difficult hours for not much progress. Total 65 hours. ------------- Digression- sort of. Today I received the ultrasonic cleaner I'd ordered from Maplin. Read about them often enough and wondered if they'd be useful for cleaning models under construction. Found a 'used' one on offer at Maplin, a JPL Ultra 8050D-H. The bath is big enough to get a few 4mm models in at once, a couple of 7mm wagons or a mid sized loco. Set it up after tea tonight. First thing in was my specs, and shazam, all the cruddy organic stuff that finds a home in odd corners of the frame came wafting out in a scummy cloud. 100% clean. Thus encouraged, in went the 1/108 chassis and springs previously cleaned by warm water and toothbrush. Interesting to see how much muck was coaxed out of the recesses of the chassis. I'm impressed - so thumbs up for ultrasonic cleaning.

S'pose. But there are enough photos of cloth cappies from the 30s and 40s, and even earlier, building wooden wagons and other routine railway hardware. There's probably enough politics, minutes of the Ideal Stock Committee and variation in the story of 1/108 and all its predecessors and variants to make a decent book. There are books about single locomotive classes, why not the iconic 1/108? Wild Swan following this blog? Anybody? Wonder if there's a market making 12" to 1ft scale replicas for preservation lines? Maybe I'm in the wrong job.

Sunday 6th March Body details. Folding up the stanchions X3-X9 took a bit of experimentation to find the easiest way. The Hold & Fold made it easier. I found the best method was to make one inside bend, and then the corresponding narrow outside bend, trying not to change the first bend while making the second. Then make the inside and outside bends on the other side. I found it easier with the Hold & Fold set to bend over the edge (if you have a Hold & Fold you'll know what I mean, and if you don't you really ought to buy one) , and position the part so that the whole half etch bend line is visible at the edge of the blade. The small profile template is useful, but you also need to get the overall width of the stanchion correct to fit the half etch locations in the main body. Ten stanchions, but they get quicker with practice. Pre tin the flanges of the stanchions and the locating grooves in the body. Body side stanchions are easy; just hold in position with the point a scalpel and apply iron. Be careful at the corners not unsolder the existing joint. The two end stanchions proved more difficult. There's a tendency for the end of the body to bow away from the stanchion when it gets hot. I persevered with the iron; I would probably have been better off using the RSU. All on now, so clean up any stray solder and scrub up. All the body detail gives a real insight into how the prototype was fabricated. There's an interesting thing; given how many 1/108s were made, and how many companies were involved in their manufacture I'm surprised that I've never seen a photo of them being made. Any ideas? 5 hours today. Total 60 hours.

Saturday 5th March The body. Wow! Part 1, the main body, is by far the largest single etched part I've ever had to work with. Folding over the top channels and the body sides and end is quite a challenge for the 5.5" hold & fold. Takes some work with steel parallels and careful thumbs to complete. Didn't need to score the top channel folds. There are supposed to be a couple of tiny tabs on the door end of the body to locate part 2. I filed them off thinking they were etch tabs. Duh! I'm electing to make up the door end beam assembly, parts 2, 3, 4 as a sub assembly before fitting it to the main body. Seems easier. Pre tin parts 4, and once cut off the fret and cleaned up they fit perfectly into the etched location grooves in 2. They stay obediently in position while you run a little solder round them. Accuracy of fit and location like that makes life so much easier. Thank you Mr Parkins. Top corners of 1 tacked and then the seams are soldered with a hot 40W iron. Door end beam assembly soldered across the open end taking care to keep it all square and level. The basic body shell is together. Can't resist placing it on the chassis for a photo. Starting to look like something now, and progress feels rapid with these big parts. 2.5 hours. Total 55 hours.

Brake levers. The wire pivot for the brake side lever isn't 0.5mm, the etched holes are too big. The holes aren't quite 0.8mm either. 0.8mm looks right to me, so drilled them through to take 0.8mm wire. Don't solder parts 53, 54, 55, 56 to the cross shaft yet. Fit the lever in position first, make sure the crank parts 48 is on the cross shaft, then align 56 et.al. with the pawl on the lever, then solder up. The brake lever on the brake side hinders access for fitting one of the spring retaining pins (previously fitted then removed). It should be possible to fit it from the inside. A right fiddle, but necessary if we want to keep the wheels removable at this stage. You'll need to tweak the bends in the lever a little to get clearance over the spring seat, and put a short bend on the pivot end to bring it back parallel with the face of the V hanger. On the non brake side it's easier. You may have to fettle the tiny parts 61 on the brake lever pivot end to get an interlocking fit with part 62. I love the tiny etched split pins. You can't do that in 4mm! Assemble the whole brake pushrod group with wire pins and adjust it into position before soldering anything. Make sure you have the push rods on the correct side of the crank. Check the sense of rotation or prototype photos. Dropping the lever should push the brakes on. Depending on the clearance you left between brake blocks and wheels you may need to use different holes in the push rods, and they'll need to be opened out with 0.5mm or 0.55mm drill. Don't file the spacer wires between the pushrods flush with the front face of the pushrod. Photos show them protruding a little, like a rivet or bolt head. The instructions say that the pushrods are angled out towards the V hanger. That doesn't seem to be true on Morton brake gear. At least all the drawings I've been able to check on other similar Morton brake vehicles shows the push rods and crank all in line. I can't say 100% that's the case for a 1/108 with Morton gear but I think it's highly probable. Safety loop under lower pushrod 49. I made it from a random scrap of copper wire found on the bench. About 0.3mm and easier to bend and coax into shape than 0.5mm brass. I think it's closer to scale too. Little things! I imagine you could make the whole brake linkage work if you were careful. Then you could pin the lever down to park it in a siding. It's a challenge I didn't rise to this time! Mustn't forget to put the door bash springs back on again now the brakes are finished. I found that I'd moved the brake blocks slightly during this process. Worth dropping the wheels back in to check, unless you've fixed them in already of course. That was easier than I'd expected. It's easier to assemble brakes this way in 7mm than in 4mm (Masokits !). 2 hours + 2 hours. Total 52.5 hours.

Oh yes! I missed that. Thanks Grumpy. Hope there's enough left for the top doors now!

What software are you using to model the building? That's some 3D model.

No metallurgist. Mechanical engineer. I'm really enjoying this build, and it's probably because it's more like an engineering project than 4mm. It's taken about 25 years of soldering apprenticeship to get here. But thanks for your kind comments; flattery always works. If I recall, your soldering ain't so bad either Mr Grumpy. My super power is that I'm quite shortsighted naturally. I wear contact lenses for 'real life' stuff, otherwise specs. And when I take the specs off I have excellent close vision. Laser surgery to correct short sight is fashionable these days, but my modelling would be sunk if I did that. And I've got some useful ideas off your blog too - high five - mutual backslapping - etc!

Sunday. The dog is walked, the dishwasher is emptied, the week's shirts are ironed, ashes out of the stove, laundry hung up, chores done. Back to business. Regarding the dog walk, it felt like spring was just around the corner this morning. Cool breeze, but you could feel the warmth of the sun on your shoulders for the first time. Ground gradually drying out as well. Summer's on the way. Don't fit parts 29, 30 yet unless you want the wheels captive for ever. I'm aiming to keep the wheels removable until late in the build. Looks like brakes are next. Nice to have a template for the brake shoes. Pencil lead it up before stacking and soldering the shoes. About 10mm long wires are ok. Make the three brake block wires slightly different lengths so you can thread the holes one at a time, and slightly chamfer the wire ends with a file. One thing about soldering brass wire; it sometimes seems to have a solder resistant coating on it so clean it with some wet & dry before you cut off the short lengths you need. Pre tin the parts on the etch ,trying not to get the holes blocked with solder, then all you need to do is heat up the pinned stack while pressing them together and the job's done. A little paste flux around the pins helps them to take solder. Keep solder off the template, you won't enjoy trying to unsolder it! Here's a caution that I missed; the lower hole in each brake block should be empty, it isn't pinned to anything. Check prototype photos. Take that wire out before soldering. I didn't figure this out until later on, and unfortunately it'll have to stay there now. That will irritate... You need to make an RH and LH assembly, but so far as I can tell they're the same unless you use part 35 on the back face, then they become handed. I'm not fitting a 34 or 35 on the back face in order to increase clearance to wheels. Saves me filing it off later when I need a bit more wheel clearance! In which case they are handed. Take care, it's so easy to make two of the same hand! "The brake shoes should all be fitted via lengths of 0.8mm wire through parts 36 & parts 41 (which were fitted to parts 2a & 2b earlier)." They were? No they weren't! Must have missed the 41s. See? Aren't you pleased you can still remove the wheels? The diagram shows the clevis on part 41 projecting out of the flange side of the cross channels 2. That doesn't seem right. A check with the chassis drawing for the LMS D2109 steel mineral (a predecessor for the BR 1/108) shows the clevis projecting on the wheel side, which makes more sense. There are plenty of differences between the D2109 and 1/108, but I'm guessing that's the same. Suspend the brake shoes from 41 with a short length of 0.8mm wire. Taper the end before you cut it off. With the wheels fitted turn the chassis the right way up, load it to the intended weight (125g) and move the brake shoes into position. Use a small blob of blutack to hold the shoes at the right distance from the wheels. Solder the pivots from above to secure the brakes. Brake linkage cranks 48, there's a mystery. The centre hole in them is about 1.5 mm. The brake cross shaft on which they sit is 1mm. That can't be right? There's also another mystery in the kit, a length of 1/16" brass tube. It's there in the contents list, but I can't find a mention of it in the instructions. I'm guessing that the parts 48 are laminated on this which then forms a collar to slide over the cross shaft. It would look more like the prototype that way. Here goes... Tin the 48s on the fret. Don't gum up the holes with solder. Chamfer the end of the tube and gently reduce the diameter for a few mm at the end by filing or emery, just enough to allow the 48s to push on. A gentle push fit helps hold them in place together while you solder them to the end of the tube. Clean up with a file while still on the tube. Open out the centre of the tube with a 1.0mm drill to just beyond the 48s. Clear through the small holes with a 0.5mm drill. Cut the part off the tube about 0.5mm beyond the 48s and clean up the tube ends. It'll now slide neatly on the brake cross shaft ready to be positioned for the brake push rods. Another photo... I'll call it done for today and tidy up the workbench a little. 7.5 hours today. Total 47 hours, a week's work with some overtime, and we have a rolling chassis with working suspension and the start of the brake gear. That's another learning; there's a lot more work in 7mm, although that might be because I've chosen to jump in at the deep end. ----------------------- A digression. Thinking back to the introduction to this blog, my Dad was a railway modeller and I suppose that's where I caught the bug. He was a die hard LNER enthusiast and I imagine him as a schoolboy, growing up in London between the wars, spending time at 'the cross', on the platform ends, watching the greatest free show on earth. He was an ardent supporter of everything Gresley and mention of the hated Thompson in the house was blasphemy. Inexplicable vitriol. I never understood that as a kid, but I read about the Thompson revolution years later. Back in the mid 60's modelling was different, as a look at copies of the Railway Modeller of the day will reveal. Dad was 00, and he had an extensive collection of stock that he ran at his model railway club, Church Gresley ironically! Often he'd clear the table after lunch on a Sunday, take his toolbox out from under the sideboard and get on with the latest project. I'd sit at the end of the table watching everything. Railway modelling as a spectator sport! I'd sit patiently through what seemed like endless faffing around waiting for something I'd consider real action. Back in the day that might involve an Isinglass blueprint, a ruler and a razor saw for a brutal conversion of a Triang B12 to an approximation of a D49. It might be repainting a Trix A4 into green livery. A4s, A3s, B12/3s, J39s, teak coaches from printed paper sides, a K3, but never a B1. There was a test track that was a few lengths of straight track on a plank of wood with buffer stops at each end. Watching locos on test with the old Hammant & Morgan controller was a highlight. Occasionally I'd be allowed to work the controller under stern direction not to hit the buffer stops. Once, briefly there appeared a...diesel. Bit odd that. I think it belonged to a friend or fellow club member. It was a Deltic in two tone green. The successor to Gresley's pacifics. What caught the eye (apart from it being a diesel of course) was that it was 'weathered'. I'd never seen a dirty locomotive or piece of rolling stock before. It just wasn't done. This Deltic had been weathered by somebody getting mucky grey brown paint on fingers and putting a barrage of dirty fingerprints all over it. That was weathering 1964 style. I remember the occasional trip to the Church Gresley club house at the weekend. Exciting and a bit intimidating with all those serious looking grown ups. Earnest blokes in shirt and tie or knitted pullover. GWR badges on tweedy lapels. Some with specs or beards. I'll always remember the smell of the place, damp, insulation board and stale fag smoke. Lots of talking went on, but as a kid I'd come to see the trains. Disappointingly they were less frequent than on the real railway. I always wanted Dad to build a layout at home. He had a number of layout planning books, notably those purple 'Plans for Small Layouts' type books by CJ Freezer, published by Peco. I spent hours reading them, scheming and daydreaming. I still have them. A start was once made on a garage layout. A big oval around the walls. Chipboard supported on angle brackets. there was going to be a station at one end and a big bridge on a removable section by the doors at the other end. Or that's how I imagined it. Never did see a plan. No track was ever laid. As time went by the layout became just a series of shelves for garage clutter. Under the big shelf at the station end there lived the largest spiders in England. Me and my brother never dared to go underneath, although we might poke the webs with a stick from a safe distance. The remains of the layout shelf are still there at Mum's house, like the trackbed of a Beechinged line about which Betjeman might have written.

So, the super stiff springs. I could modify the chassis and fit compensation; don't want to do that. I could try and incorporate an different kind of suspension: don't want to do that either. I want to retain the prototype fidelity of this model. So I'm left with the task of making the suspension work. I should add that on a different blog this subject has come up and Mr Parkins suggests that the springs are mostly cosmetic and the axleboxes allow the wheels to drop into depressions in the track providing a kind of compensation. Well, maybe. But I've set myself the challenge of making the springs work so that's what I'll do. Whereas parts scale down the physics doesn't. Could the springs be made from another material? I don't aim to get too far into the science, but what we'd want is a material with a lower Young's modulus, a spring that bends more for a given load. Of all the traditional spring materials phosphor bronze has by far the lowest modulus, so we already have the best easily available material. There are obviously materials that are more flexible but they don't make good springs, often because they have a correspondingly low yield strength and would be more likely to bend than spring back. Again avoiding the maths, the deflection of a spring made from a simple strip is proportional to the cube of the thickness. So reducing the thickness of the strip to a half (in this case to 0.2mm) would reduce the spring stiffness by a factor of 8. For a 125g wagon we'd then expect a spring deflection of about 0.65mm. That's close to being practical in 7mm I think. If we look at the actual spring we see that, just like the prototype, there are two leaves that span the distance between the spring seats on the chassis, and a number of shorter leaves that don't, but do increase the effective stiffness of the spring as it deflects more. The spring leaves only work together when they are in contact so if we can separate them they'll work in isolation until they touch. The plan then is to reduce then thickness of the top two leaves to one half of the original thickness and bend them carefully so that when loaded with their share of 125g they are slightly separate from the leaves below. That way we can have the wagon 'floating' on the top leaf and bending under load for short distance until it contacts the leaf below, also thinned to half, and from that point the spring progressively stiffens until it contacts the unmodified leaves and becomes effectively solid. The top two leaves will be less than scale thickness but material science doesn't care about this and I'll have to accept the compromise. Having got the fuzzy, low wattage science done it's back to making stuff. Or maybe not. I foresee another problem. It isn't possible to remove the wheels with the bearing holders in the W irons, and it isn't possible to remove the bearing holders from the W irons once the springs are fitted to the chassis. That would mean that from this point in the build the wheels are not removable. You'd want them in for positioning the brake shoes, but I'd want them removable for further work, cleaning up and probably painting. I should be clear that this a personal preference and not a 'mistake' in the instructions. Maybe keeping the wheels in from now on is viable in 7mm, I've no experience to guide me. It's not what I'd want to do in 4mm. I think the best solution is to have the spring retainer pins on the chassis removable, or at least fitted much later. These are the short lengths of wire that were soldered into parts 25 earlier in the build. I made a tidy job of fixing them and now they have to come out. Pants! And there are 8 of them. More pants! A relatively easy and accurate way of reducing the thickness of the top two leaves is to solder a couple of 0.2mm brass strips to a bigger lump of brass leaving enough space between them to solder in a spring leaf. There's a really sub-standard photo to illustrate. Then with a big flat file simply file away the phosphor bronze until the file skims the two flanking strips. Unsolder the spring leaf and clean it up. Quicker than it sounds. Be careful though, the thinner springs are more vulnerable to bending, particularly in the centre where the hole is. There is a spare of each of the leaves on the fret so you have insurance. Because we've thinned two leaves to half thickness we've effectively lost a leaf in the spring buckle. We need a tight fit. The cheat is to make a tiny spacer from 0.4mm etch scrap and solder it to the lower face of the smallest, lower leaf. It restores the depth of the assembly and it sort of vanishes when the spring is assembled. It is arrowed on one of the photos below. Ok, this time we really are back to making stuff. Thread the spring leaves through the spring holder and line up the holes. I found it easier to line the holes up with a pin first and then a piece of 1mm wire with a point filed on the end. Make a couple of temporary spring retainers for the chassis holes from 0.8mm wire, and long enough to push in and out easily. Drop the axle box into the W iron and rest the spring on the spring seats each side of the W iron. Insert the temporary retainer wires. Bend up the ends of the top 2 spring leaves to approx 90 degrees. They don't wrap around the retainer pins as much as the instructions suggest, check prototype photos for this. Leaf 2 will be slightly too long once bent, so mark where it needs to be cut. Either take it out and cut it now, or leave it until the next time the spring is out. To set the camber of the springs we need to know where the axle centre should be relative to the solebar with one quarter of the wagon weight on each spring. That should give us correct buffer and coupling heights and a prototypical gap between spring holder and bump stops 26. This works out as 15.5mm from top of solebar to centre of axle. Measuring from the top of the solebar is convenient since we're working with the chassis upside down on a flat surface. To weight the axles I'm using a steel parallel that weighs about 125g. Lucky coincidence. Lots of faffing now. Springs in and out and tweaked gently until the ride height comes right. Make sure the pin through the spring assembly isn't touching the bump stop on the chassis and preventing the proper spring deflection under load. Get the camber of the top two thinned down leaves correct first. The other unmodified, leaves will be flatter and don't have much influence. When you get the camber of the top leaves correct then take the spring apart and carefully tweak the camber of the unmodified leaves to nearly match the top ones. I say 'nearly match' because in normal running we don't want them in contact with the top two, otherwise we'd be back to very stiff suspension again. Leave them slightly less curved so there's a small gap between the thick and thin leaves. Hopefully a photo will make all this clear. Once happy with the spring setting I committed heresy and soldered the lower leaves to the spring holder, the 1mm pin and each other. Tiny amount of paste flux in the right place and a minimum of solder. It prevents the leaves rotating around the pin and shuffling around keeps the whole spring assembly stable and looking tidy. Be careful not to get any solder on the top two leaves. I covered them with graphite from a pencil before reassembly and soldering. Pencil lead graphite makes a very effective anti solder coating. Cut off and file the excess length of the 1mm pin. The top leaves need to be free to move on the spring seat as they change length under load, otherwise you end up with a very stiff spring again. Phew - finished one. Three more to do. And finally, there it is sitting on its wheels with working leaf springs. A quick roll along the workbench shows that it glides along smoothly and the wheels do move up and down to accommodate irregularities. Happy. Surely that's the most difficult bit over? I'm hoping that when complete, painted and weathered the thinner top leaves won't stand out. We'll see. 7 hours today. Total 39.5 hours.

Not wishing to subvert the thread... regarding MMP leaf springs, It is possible to make then work and have the wagon floating on the springs. I couldn't resist the challenge. Physics dictates a compromise as DJP says, but not a dramatic one. I'll post my solution on the Making Stuff blog when I get a mo. See what you think. You should be able to comment the blog.

For those wots interested I'm working through an MMP 1/108 build on the 'Making Stuff' blog. And if the MMP 08 appears I'll be in the queue. I'll need something to push the 1/108 around with.

You're a more accurate solder wizard than me I guess! I'm sure if I tried to slide the bearings in and solder them I'd struggle to get the 1.2mm offset accurate. Maybe I'll try that next time. I figure I can't get it wrong (much) with spacers. Mine are soldered, there's just not much solder showing. The springs. I did get them to work nicely at 125g, but it took some sorting out. There's a mammoth blog entry coming up soon that covers the springs. Again, I've no experience of 7mm so I was assuming that for consistency I ought to have all the rolling stock of comparable weight. I can calculate the weight I'd need to get a decent deflection on the springs (say 1mm), it's bonkers. You'd need a 9F just to nudge a few wagons round the yard. Reinforced concrete baseboards anybody?

Who remembers this? Inherited from my Dad many years ago. Never opened it so I've no idea what state the contents are in. The colour on the lid is brown. Just plain brown. The Humber Oil Company - that's why 'Humbrol'.

Having measured and pondered I think spacing the bearings inboard to eliminate side play is a better proposition than sleeving the axle ends. Side control will be on the point of the axle rather than rubbing on the wheel boss face, and it reduces the amount of material that will have to be removed from the inside of the axle box casting. To the lathe ! The lathe is an old Hobbymat I acquired many years ago. It's a bit 'amateur' as lathes go but it does what I need it to do and I've accumulated enough tooling to make things easy. The lathe lived indoors for a long time, but now it's outside in the workshop. That means an excursion in the 'fresh air'. There was a lot of measuring, drawing and calculating to make sure I knew what to make. I noted the details of Slaters axles and bearings for future reference. One thing worth noting is that the end of the axle is only 0.3mm from the outside face of the bearing cup, so no opportunity to file excess material off the end of the bearing like you often can in 4mm. For reference the bearing cup spacers need to be 1.2mm long, or if you wanted to make axle end spacer sleeves they'd need to be 2.5mm long. If you don't have a lathe then you could improvise with suitable washers or cut slices off a brass tube of the right diameter. Having survived UV light, oxygen and weather walking to and from the workshop it's time to unsolder the bearings and add the spacers. Photos should make the modification clear. Rebuilt axle boxes back in and it works perfectly with free rolling and no side play. Well worth the effort, and for the first time B560792 is standing on its four wheels. Feels like progress, but there's more hard work just up ahead. The springs are scale working leaf springs. Individual leaves are etched in 0.4mm phosphor bronze. Because I have no experience here in 7mm I'm going to use the rolling stock weight recommendations in the Gauge O Guild technical manual. That's about 125g.It's a chore cutting out and cleaning up all those spring leafs. They seem pretty stiff to me, and I'm not sure this is going to work out well. The spring leaves are close to scale, or as close as sheet thicknesses will allow. The prototype spring leaves are 4" x 1/2". Engineering calculations predict 0.08mm spring deflection for a wagon weighted to 125g just using the top leaf in simple bending. Almost no suspension. And it will be stiffer than that when the influence of the other leaves is added. So if we build as the instructions we'll have good looking cosmetic springs and effectively no suspension. Some rough experimenting with the suspension parts suggests the calcs are about right. Some thinking required before we go any further. 4 hours today. Total 29.5 hours.

When you fit the spring seats 25 to the chassis don't fit the 0.8mm wire spring retaining pins at this point. Spoiler alert - you'll wish you didn't when we get to setting up the springs! More solebar detail. Bump stops 26. The location marking and rivet spacing on the underside of the solebar is incorrect for the folded up 26, but not a big deal. Fold them up ignoring the 'dink' in the middle. Bend the 'dink' after they're soldered on. Parts 42, 43, make sure they're on the correct sides relative to the end door. Check with detail on parts 2a, 2b from earlier. Again, the instructions show the assembly the right way up and you'll be working on it upside down. Look at photos if unsure which side the brakes are on. Fine chain and brake pin 65. That's so tiny, it's approaching the limit of what I can do. One pin on the floor, don't think I'll be seeing that again. There's a spare on the fret. Just the one spare! Good photos show 9 links. Split the links with a scalpel. Thread through holes in pin and the brake lever guide. Close up with tweezers and solder. Take a breath. The fine chain supplied for this looks very slightly over scale so the pin hangs down a little further than the prototype. But only just. You could use just 8 links, and that's probably what I'll do next time. There's no way I'm taking these off and removing a link! It's a reflection of the level of detail in this kit that we're counting brake pin chain links. Brake guide stays 47 aren't any easier to fit in 7mm than in 4mm. I'd recommend you fit them later, after you've finished setting up the springs. They do get in the way of fitting and removing the springs. Bearing carriers, wheels and side play. The bearing carriers are a clever fold up lamination. Virtually no fettling required to get a good fit in the W irons. Be economical with the solder or else you'll spend time digging it out of the slots where the W irons run. The instructions suggest using thin paper as a spacer during assembly to provide clearance in the slot when soldered up. I didn't find the need for that. Here's where things start to get interesting. With the bearing carriers fitting nicely in the W irons and the Slaters bearing cups soldered in, the first trial of the wheel and bearing assembly in the chassis showed lots of side play, just over 2mm side to side. The supplied etched washers that are intended to fit over the axle ends don't even reach from the bearing flange to the face of the wheel, so no use. We'd need a stack more washers, buts that's not good engineering. We can either space the bearing cups inboard by 1mm each side, or make a sleeve of the correct length to replace the hoards of washers. I decided to unsolder the bearing cups and make spacers to move them inboard. A job to do on the lathe tomorrow after measuring things. The sometimes dysfunctional relationship between the distance between the inside of W irons and the distance over axles and bearing cups is quite usual in my experience in 4mm. Axle lengths and bearing detail, although similar, don't seem to be standardised. Faffing around with spacers, shims and washers to eliminate axle side play is routine. I'm new to 7mm so I'm wondering if that's the case in 7mm too. Slaters wheels seem to be ubiquitous so I wonder why kits don't accommodate them? 10 hours today, that's a full shift. Total 25.5 hours.

The next task is to fit the W irons to the chassis. The W irons themselves are a straightforward lamination job. There are rivets to press out on the inside of the W iron laminations. You'll never see the rivets so you can save a few minutes if you want. Look very carefully at how they are located on the solebars. The area of the W iron that attaches to the solebar is tinned to ease soldering. I found that a very little fettling was required to get them fitting perfectly. They're not easy to hold in place while you solder them. I ended up using a small toolmaker's clamp while I tack soldered them, and removed it to complete the job. Check with a square that the W irons are aligned across the chassis - parallel axles would be good! The thing to watch out for here is the position of the rope holes in the W irons. It's all explained in the instructions, but check before you solder. Add the solebar details. Label clips X1 are tiny and a bit of fun, you might actually be able to clip a label in them. Etch lines are on the outside of the fold on 11 and X1 by the way. I used a little solder paint and the RSU to fit some of the small items to face of the solebar. Choose a number plate and it has an identity, B560792. Lot 2917, R Y Pickering, 1957. So it's a Scottish 1/108. That's it for tonight. 3 hours. Total 15.5 hours.

White metal buffer housing castings are supplied with then kit. They're pretty average and there's a bit of damage to most of them. I think it's been done when the castings were drilled out for then buffer shanks. You get 5 so can choose the best 4. Its a shame because the best white metal castings can be excellent, take for example the 4mm buffer castings from Lanarkshire Model Supplies (LMS). Think I'll leave adding the castings until all the soldering on the chassis is finished. The coupling hooks are a lamination job. Pre-tin all the coupling hook parts and parts 14 while still on the fret. Easy to get them together with the RSU. Sculpt the resulting hook with a file and emery. Compared with photos and drawings the hooks look slightly chunky but they look much better than a flat etch. You wonder if brass cast draw hooks are available? Coupling links are supplied and they look OK. The best way to open links for assembly is to twist them slightly, then it's easy to close them up by twisting them back without changing the shape of the link. The compression on the drawbar springs is so high that they're almost solid. They'll certainly have no effect at this scale. Plus soldering the spring keepers 18 to the drawbar while trying to hold the whole thing together looks very difficult. I guess you could shorten the springs. I decided to simply solder the drawbar solid to the chassis. I've since found the coupling links can be a nuisance when working with the chassis inverted on a flat surface. They keep getting under the chassis. I'd consider fitting them later next time, probably when I fit the buffers. Parts 81, 82, the coupling link hook plates. Never seen them fitted to an unfitted wagon. At least I can't see them on any photos, and I have lots of decent photos. I suspect they're for fitted wagons only so I'm missing them off. 12.5 hours total so far.

Further work on the chassis of the MMP 1/108 etched kit. Parts 7, 8, 9, 10 into the chassis. Again, if you remove the etch cusp, fold accurately and don't gum up the half etch locating grooves with solder the fit up of these parts is perfect. I found it easier to put 9,10 into the buffer beam before fitting 7, 8. Make sure you get 7, 8 located accurately on the inside of solebar 4. They form the basis for the location of the axle guards later on. Parts 13. Note that the rectangular hole for the drawbar isn't on the vertical centre line of the part. It should be fitted with the hole towards the upper side of chassis to match the coupling hook and drawbar. Just check then shape of the coupling hook and drawbar and it'll be obvious. If you have tiny solder fillets between the longitudinal chassis members 3 and the inside of the buffer beam you can chamfer the corners of 13 for a snug fit. They're a fiddle to fold and fit. All those little reinforcing plates in the corner of the etch, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, tin one side of them before you remove them from the etch. Much easier! Cut them from the etch with a sharp knife onto lead sheet as close to the part as you can to save filing off all the etch tabs. Easy to Zap them into position on the chassis with an RSU. You could equally sweat them into place with a hot iron and some flux; don't hang about though, you don't want to get anything else to melting point. What we now have is a square, flat, strong chassis that's true to the prototype construction. So far I've learned that the design of the kit is very good. There are some clever design features that improve the accuracy of the model. The fit up of the parts has so far been exemplary provided attention is paid to accurate assembly. The soldering so far hasn't been difficult, but the method of locating parts often relies on half etch grooves. Tidy and economical soldering avoids filling in the location grooves and makes life a lot easier. I guess a lot has been written about the difficulty or otherwise of soldering. For me the key to success is absolute cleanliness of the parts to be joined. I'll usually scrub up parts on the fret with a glass fibre brush before I cut them out. I'll give them a wipe with IPA (iso propyl alcohol in case you were wondering) to remove finger prints and other gak before soldering. Clean parts, enough heat, decent flux and the right amount of solder in then right place and it's then hard to NOT make a good joint. Enough heat is important too. A lot of the problems I used to have with soldering early days were due to not having an iron with enough thermal capacity. It would take ages for the joint to heat up and flux would be driven off, oxidisation of surface and solder would begin and I'd end up with a messy and structurally poor joint. There are loads of tactics for soldering depending on circumstances, maybe I'll cover some of the less orthodox ones I've found useful. What's also pleasing is that the construction of the prototype is followed so faithfully. That dimensional fidelity brings a few problems that I'll cover later in the build. I've learned a few things about 1/108 already that I'd never have worked out from photos. Mr Parkin either has a complete GA drawing of the underframe or he's spent some time underneath one with a tape measure. So far I'm really happy with it all. 4 hours split over two evenings. Total so far 8 hours. That's a day's work. I won't be earning a living this way obviously. Next entry will have a go at couplings and buffers.

Sure, that's the plan. I'm interested in the time taken myself. I think I'm quite efficient when I'm on the job. Easily distracted though. Time passes. I never have any idea how long things took. Then again it's starting to sound like ...'planning' ... which feels a bit like...'work'. 8-[