Fastdax

Nice wagon! Looking forwards to seeing how this develops. And welcome to RMweb :-) Duncan

Retaining Wall I found a better* way of weathering the LCUT arches than I was trying out previously. I abandoned the ash method of making brickwork grimy as it was very messy and didn't stick well enough. They are still primed with Plasticote red oxide spray primer, but now have these steps applied on top: 1. Roughly paint with black emulsion (Wickes tester pot) and wipe off to leave black in the corners and in the mortar courses 2. Rub DAS White firmly into all the cracks and corners 3. Wipe off the DAS with a damp cloth, to leave it a bit patchy, adhering in some places but not others 4. Wash with dirty brown (diluted Jacobean Dark Oak wood stain) to take the brightness out of the remaining DAS. *Well, better for me. I don't claim to be an expert on any of this! I'm making it up as I go along, with the invaluable help of postings and advice from other RMWebbers. The DAS does want to create a "bloom" on the surface of the bricks, but downward wiping with a damp cloth removes as much of this as you want, leaving behind some surface efflorescence as on the right-hand arch here: The two leftmost arches are quite shallow, so these will be British Railways secure stores, next to the goods facility. I glued in a Plastruct RSJ in each of these arches and filled in above with Slaters brick plasticard. Under the RSJ will go some bars or fencing of some kind, with a gate for access to the stored goods. For now, all they contain are some nice resin barrels and crates from the Ten Commandments and Skytrex stands at the recent Peterborough exhibition. The RSJs need some rusting and weathering. I made a back board for the tunnel under the high-level area. This is just more Flemish-bond Slaters brick plasticard on a ply backing, with surplus LCUT brick columns to break up the run of brickwork. It's removable with a couple of hidden screws. Where the high-level track is carried over the tunnel entrance, I made a bridge girder from a bigger bit of Plastuct I-beam with some Wills 4mm scale Vari-girder planted on top. This is a separate unit which clips to the edge of the upper-level plywood. Some nice turned 10mm brass stanchions from a model boat supplier make good safety rail supports. 0.7mm brass rod completes the effect. I'll prime this whole unit and then weather it. Duncan

More Cobbling It's been slow progress lately as life things got in the way, plus I've been adding to the cobbled area under the retaining wall arches. This is a slow job but the big area to the right of the quay is done: The bit to the far right will be finished in either tarmac or concrete (I haven't decided yet) rather than setts, as if a later covering was applied in the heavier-traffic areas of this small industrial yard. The setts are now working their way along the quayside towards the dock crane. When all the setts are in, I'll start the colouring process. The kickback siding now has a buffer stop, made from a cut-down Peco item (I removed the rear-facing legs to make it shorter). I dug out the setts where it attaches to the rail. For now it's removable but it will get bedded in with plenty of weeds and rust. I intend to put a red LED in the lamp as well. More soon. Duncan

Brickwork for arches I'm using the LCUT Creative arch kits, which I sprayed with Plasticote red oxide primer from a rattle can. To simulate the mortar, I'm using a tub of ashes from the log burner. This is the primed brickwork: Here with ash liberally rubbed in: And with the excess ash wiped off: I thought this was a bit too "new build" so I wiped off all the ash and started again with a coat of heavy black acrylic paint (a tester pot from B&Q), smeared on and wiped off with a finger. When dry, the ash was re-applied and the excess wiped off again. This is getting more like the weathered, sooty appearance that I want.

More inset track If you thought ballasting was tedious, try cobbling! The picture below represents several sessions of smoothing out the DAS into one small area, then stamping with the home-made cobbler tool. The slightly darker area is still damp. I did inset some of the nice laser-cut drain grids by Giles of this parish. These will need priming and painting to represent old cast iron. Also from Giles is the sett-stamper, although I've only used it along the back edge of the cobbled area, just for a bit of variety. It produces long, thin setts whereas my home-made stamper produces squarer ones, which are a bit more to my taste.

Inset track I applied a few washes of a black/grey/brown acrylic paint mix to the DAS once it had set hard. Here's a few trials involving different numbers of washes, with and without wiping off the excess while still wet. I think the upper left patch is the effect I'm aiming for. I also PVA'd on more 5mm foamboard to complete the base for the cobbled area. The round thing is the base for a Peco yard crane. I'll make this removable. I also started making the canal basin walls using Slater's plasticard in Flemish bond bricks. I dunno if this is realistic (I suspect it varied from place to place) but it wouldn't have been stretcher bond. Then adding DAS could start, in small patches. Here's the narrow-gauge track infilled with DAS and stamped while still wet. This is the end of the dual-gauge siding, with the NG track continuing to the right. Some sort of buffer-stop will sit over the end of the standard gauge track, probably with plenty of weeds growing up between the cobbles!

Yes indeed. This topic has already been raised over on the LCUT Creative thread where, IIRC, the proprietor said that it allowed for finger-jointed ends. The backs of the parapet walls do have finger-jointed ends and can accurately be joined end-to-end, but probably the main front pieces should have English bond or something. Duncan

Setts for Inset Track Not a lot of progress on OQ lately, due to week-long activities like a trip to Malaysia on business, refurbing a flat for a new tenant and other life-maintenance events. But I did find time, while my brother Jim was visiting, to make up some test panels for the setts which will surround the inset track and provide the quayside edge. Here's Jim rolling a thin layer of DAS white onto pre-glued plywood squares. We used a cheapo Wickes seam-roller to get the DAS layer about 2mm thick, which is the height of the rail head above the foamboard surround. For stamping tools, I re-purposed a couple of old paintbrushes to be two different sizes of setts - one about 12 inches by 6 and the other 9 inches by 6. The round metal ferrules were tweaked into rectangular shapes with small pliers. I realised that if I didn't pull the bristles out, I could still use them for weathering powders (which is what I use these stiff white-bristled brushes for). I also have a dedicated sett-stamping tool from Giles of this parish, but as yet it's not made up. We stamped a variety of patterns onto the wet DAS, both square ... ... and curved. A bit of spare track was used to simulate the setts which butt up against the rail side. The rail head protrudes slightly above the surface of the setts to allow for cleaning. Here's one bit of ply with 4 different patterns embossed. When the DAS has dried thoroughly, I'll try some colour washes.

Not much progress for a week as I've been sweating in Malaysia on business. Now back home and I hope to press on a bit with the Deeley dock tank or Offerston Quay over the next week. In the meantime here's a video of the chassis, which had been sprayed with grey U-Pol Acid Etch #8 primer, then black Vallejo acrylic Surface Primer, attached to the body and running-in on the rolling road - backwards and forwards. The motion has been for a bit of a dip in Carr's nickel-silver black to give it a bit of colour ready for weathering. The loco has to be balanced on top of a roller or the sandpipes will drag. A heavy box and a tin of paint either end of the loco keeps it in place! At speed step 20 (out of 28) it draws about 80mA, which isn't bad. Sorry the video is a bit dark. You can see that the boiler and smokebox are in place. I'll post some more pictures of them when it's next disassembled. Duncan

Hi David, How much force is required to compress the springs? Will a normally-weighted wagon (1g per mm of length) make the springs operate or will it run "rigid"? I have an MMP mineral wagon in the queue and I'm wondering whether the real leaf springs are just a gimmick ... Thanks, Duncan

Body While the chassis is stripped, cleaned and painted, I made a start on the body. Here, the cab front (with window surrounds) and sides (with cabside beading, tank-stop beading and some handrails) have been added to the foot plate. Rivets have been bomped out. You can see the 4mm hole I installed in the cab front to allow a firebox-flicker LED to be added behind the backhead. So far, the fit of the bodywork etches has been very good, with minimal decusping and fettling required. Edit: I just noticed that the left-hand cab top seems to be a bit mangled. I'll have to tweak it back into shape before the cab rear and roof go on.

Superbly accurate word!

Sanding Pipes and DCC Electrics Here are the two rear sanding pipes with support brackets (in brass shim) and steam pipes (5A fuse wire). The sand pipes are all on here, together with a bit of PCB soldered across the bottom of the chassis and 0.3mm phosphor-bronze flange wipers made up, with a coil to add some springing. Eventually this loco will have DCC sound, but for now I attached a basic DCC Concepts TS4SAP decoder + stay-alive that I happened to have lying around unused. Red-and-black - to the track. Orange-and-grey - t'other way. I added the footplate and a bit of weight in the form of some solder and a pin chuck. After a bit of tweaking, it runs nicely in both direction (minus any valve gear at the moment).

Thanks David, and your turned buffer heads do look very nice! After I posted, I found these on Ebay and I've ordered the 13mm ones: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/321452151320?_trksid=p2060353.m2749.l2649&var=510348167692&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT I'll post the results of trying to use them as overlays to the supplied buffers, as was the case on the prototype. If it all goes TU, I'll be in touch. Duncan

One thing I want to source is the correct 22" buffer heads. These were additional dished discs of steel added to the normal-size buffer heads to help avoid buffer-locking on tight industrial docks. The buffer heads in the kit are 9.5mm dia (16" or so) so I need either 22" (13mm) plant-on buffer faces or replacement 22" buffers. A quick search has turned up no results, so does anyone know where I can get such items? Thanks, Duncan

More valve gear In the ABS kit there's no provision for the valve spindle crosshead. The instructions ask you to add cosmetic bits of wire for the valve spindle gear, but nothing more detailed than that. The top of the Combination Lever is left just waggling around in free space. So I made up a valve spindle from 0.9mm nickel-silver rod and fashioned a bracket from strip brass shim to hold it in the slot in the valve guide casting. I reversed the 12BA screw holding the Combination Lever so that it is screwed in from the back and a touch of solder (for now) holds the tip of the screw to the Combination Lever. This allows sufficient clearance to the new valve crosshead to allow it to slide back and forth. It resembles the prototype valve gear, which has a noticeable strap across the top of the Combination Lever. There's not much movement of the valve spindle - about 1mm - but at least it does now move. Of course, I have got to do all this to t'other side now :-)

I had to look up "trilobe thread forming screws" :-) I assume this is what you're talking about ... ? They look very useful although if I found one lying around, I'd probably think it was a setscrew and throw it away as a malformed 'un! Duncan

Yes, I know they are really screws, not bolts. I thought the use of the word "bolt" was perhaps clearer for those who are not so familiar with the gritty details of engineering. To many, a "screw" is a pointy thing that you drive into wood. I've had this misunderstanding before. The screw I drove into the whitemetal wasn't a traditional self-tapper (it had no cutting flutes) but was a normal 12BA steel screw. It self-tapped because whitemetal has the consistency of elderly cheddar. I did work it through slowly though, backing it off every so often.

Valve gear Here are the parts for the left-hand valve gear. And removed from the fret and laid out in approximate position. Perhaps some terminology would be appropriate at this point. Here's a diagram of Walschaerts Valve Gear from my Grandad's "Handbook For Steam Locomotive Enginemen". This is the 3-layer Union Link, which took a bit of head-scratching to put together. The instructions merely say "assemble" and the drawing of it isn't much use. I figured out that the end with the fork connects to the Combination Lever and the end with the single hole attaches to the bottom of the Crosshead. Most of the bits are 2- or 3-layer nickel-silver laminations, which I won't bore you with the assembly details of. The first bit I added was the Radius Rod, as this is captive to the chassis at both ends and never moves. This represents the loco in "mid-gear" which is a compromise between forwards and reverse, one of which would be wrong when travelling the other way. The instructions tell you to use a wire pin at the valve spindle end, but I chose to use a 12BA bolt, self-tapped into the whitemetal guide block. This will allow me to remove the valve gear in two parts and not have the two bolt-on WM blocks held loosely together with the Radius Rod. This is the 2-layer Return Crank, being tapped 10BA. Once this was done, I added a 10BA brass nut to the back of the crank, as per the instructions. This allows the crank to be tightened onto the rear crankpin. If it (inevitably) comes to rest in the wrong position, a light file of the back of the nut, a bit at a time, allows it to be adjusted until it tightens up in the right place. Here's the Return Crank, bolted (12BA) with washer and nut to the Return Crank Rod, which is jointed to the two halves of the Expansion Link using one of the valve gear rivets supplied. The moving bits behind the Radius Rod could now be bolted and pinned in place, and tested; Here's the Combination Lever and Union Link. Both ends of the Union Link are jointed with soldered rivets. To stop the joint being soldered up solid, I blacken the moving bit of the joint with permanent marker pen and get in and out very quickly with the iron on the tail of the rivet. The top of the Combination Lever is held by the same 12BA bolt that holds the Radius Rod. I filed flats top and bottom of this bolt head, to make it resemble the real thing a bit more. Then the full motion could be tested on the rolling road. It was a bit sticky at first, but with a bit of sanding of the Slide Bar and lubrication on all joints, it freed up a lot. There are still several jobs remaining on the valve gear, but this feels like a good start.

Seconded - tasty metalwork there.

Tethered Bearings One thing that became apparent while running-in the 0-4-0 chassis with rods is that the front bearings were rotating in their elongated chassis holes. This isn't necessarily a Really Bad Thing but I wanted to stop them turning so that there's no chance of the chassis frames cutting into the sides of the bushes. So I used a technique that I gleaned from Jazz of this parish and stopped each bush rotating by holding it with a length of wire rod that rides in a hole in the bush. I drilled out a 0.6mm hole in each bush, to lie just inside the frames. Then I made up two 0.5mm nickel-silver wires with a small L-bend at one end, which locates into the hole in each bush. The wires are soldered to the inside of the frames and are as long as practical. They are fixed in place with a small amount of spring holding the bush at the bottom of its travel. This way, the wires shouldn't come out of the holes when the axle tips to its maximum deflection, but the springing of a 0.5mm wire isn't enough to lift the body up off the pivot bolt. Another view, this time from above. Now the bushes don't rotate and there's the added benefit that they stay in place when the axle is removed, which makes re-assembly easier. It only took an hour or so to do this and well worth it, I think.

Cross-heads and Connecting Rods The crossheads and their covers are nice lost-wax brass castings. A soak in Barkeeper's Friend brought them up quite shiny. That's not my best toothbrush. The two items on the left have been cleaned up with assorted needle files to remove flash. The piston rod on the right shows the "before" state with moulding lines top and bottom. The connecting rods are 3 layers of nickel-silver, soldered together just like the coupling rods. A 12BA steel bolt inserted from the back holds the connrod into the crosshead. The nut on the front has been cropped and filed flush. It doesn't resemble the real thing much, which had a horizontal strap across this area. I may add something later to represent this. It's a shame that the hole in the front cover was already too big to tap 12BA as this would have removed the need for a nut. While bolted up, I ran a bit of solder into the front cover joints to hold the crossheads together permanently. The conrods can still be removed by unbolting the pivot screw.. I added a "set" to the connrods to allow them to drive the crossheads which are a bit further out than the wheel crankpins. While this was going on, I ran-in the motor using this extremely high-tech rig: Half-an hour in each direction on 6V then 9V should see it nicely bedded in. Then I repeated this with the gears in place in the gearbox and a little ceramic grease on the teeth. Of course, then it was just a quick bit of assembly away from being able to try out all the bits together. The instructions suggest using two crankpin bushes on the rear pins but I found that a single bush screwed on gave enough depth for the coupling rod, connecting rod and a tiny bit of side-play. The front crankpins had to be cropped and filed flush to the bushes to provide clearance behind the crossheads. There's just the proverbial fag-paper's thickness between the two but luckily this seems to be fine as neither crossheads nor wheels have any side-play. So I arrived at this happy point: Sorry about the intrusive Jessie J soundtrack in the background! Funny what you only spot later ... It shows the motor running on 9V and being gradually turned down. It finally stopped at about 1.8V. The big brown bottle of glue is to provide a bit of counterweight for the whitemetal cylinders, which have a tendency to tip the loco forwards in this state. I'll do a bit of running-in while I get on with the rest of the valve-gear.

Thanks for the correction David - I've edited my post to change 14BA to 12BA. I take your point about 10BA brass being no stronger than 12BA steel. For me, the point of changing is mostly that I can tap the Slater's crankpin bushes and screw them onto 10BA pins with no need for extra washers or nuts. In cases with restricted clearence, like on the front wheels of this dock tank, the few extra thou is very useful. Duncan

Rods and Wheels The coupling rods are made up of 2 layers of nickel-silver. I opened up the end holes with a taper broach until they just fitted over the pins on my axle jig. While they were in place, a tack solder held them together. They could then be removed from the jig and edge-soldered. Here are both coupling rods on the jig, soldered and cleaned up: In my Jinty build, I replaced the Slaters 12BA crankpins with 10BA brass countersunk screws. I wanted to do this again for the dock tank. However, the instructions suggest that the front crankpins are inserted from the outside to a captive nut on the back of the wheel. Looking at the diagram, it seems that this arrangement has, sitting on the surface of the wheel: the combined thickness of a bush, a washer and the screw head. So I decided to turn things round and insert the 10BA screw from behind, as usual, and screw on a reversed, tapped bush. This should save the depth of the screw head in the tight space between wheel and crosshead. The instructions do say that you may need to move the cylinders outwards using packing shims if this is a problem. For comparison, the instructions have the crankpins on the rear wheels inserted from the inside as is normal. I cleaned up the backs of the wheels and drilled the wheel crankpin holes 1.2mm in the pillar drill. Then I tapped the holes 10BA and countersunk the back to take the heads of the screws. A bit if superglue holds them in place. To help get the bushes on and off, and to give something to grip while tapping them, I filed a couple of flats on the bush flange. These shouldn't be noticeable on the finished model as the rears will be hidden under the eccentric crank and the fronts are behind all the motion. Once "flatted", I could grip the bushes in small pliers and work a 10BA taper tap through. So, now I could assemble the basic 0-4-0 rolling chassis. The rods were a tight fit over the bushes and, initially, showed a tight spot. A little gentle broaching of the holes produced a free-running chassis. Like this: Edited to change 14BA to 12BA.

Inset Narrow-Gauge Track I started to add check-rails to the standard-gauge and narrow-gauge lines where they will be inset into setts/cobbles. This is just leftover EM Gauge code 75 bullhead rail and I simply superglued it to the foamboard packing pieces, using C&L track gauges to set the gap. It sits just a British Standard Gnat's below the main standard gauge rails, which should help with smooth running and track cleaning. Later, I'll daub on some more heavyweight glue before adding the DAS surface. Before I can lay down some setts/cobbles in the area in front of the arches, I needed to install some (non-working) narrow gauge (18.2mm EM Gauge) track. I packed the trackbed up with cork strip and cardboard until the rail tops were level with the existing track. The NG track will originally have served several of the under-arch stores and may have wandered off to who knows where. On Offerston Quay, it will be long-disused but visible as far as the first working arch (the one to the left of this one has almost no depth due to the track just behind it). After the arch, the NG track will disappear under layers of later yard coverings. A small wagon turntable serves the line into the arch, so I knocked up a simple representation using cardboard and wooden coffee stirrers. It's stained with Colron Dark Jacobean Oak wood dye (the spirit-based stuff that you used to be able to buy) as a creosote base coat. More weathering will be needed.