Chas Levin

And as Quentin Crisp remarked, "vice is its own reward"! 😉 I'm impressed Mick that you use this piece of kit on your lap: it's pretty hefty and I find it a little unwieldy because of its weight and length and irregular shape, so I found securing it in something made it much easier to use. That vice that you see in the photos is the type on a posable ball joint which has to be done up tightly to keep it stable and it's not really designed for anything as long and heavy as these rollers so a little care is needed. I'm guessing that you've been using your rollers for quite a few years and that you've used them on a considerable number of models, so you're very practised with them? Give me a few years and perhaps I too will manage handheld rolling! 😄

Aha - delighted to hear you have the chance to try out a set: there's nothing so useful as being able to test-drive something like this. Assuming you have some to hand, I'd also suggest running as many pieces of scrap through them as you can, at different bar height settings, to get the feel of it. A workmate I'd think would be ideal, as it would grip the vertical piece beneath the rollers right along its lngth, better than my relatively narrow vice does.

Ha - I actually didn't think of using the allen key as a marker Rich, because once I found that the adjustment screws have knurled rims and turn by hand, I put the allen key away and forgot about it. We'll see; like most things I'll probably change the procedure with further use. I also thought about using feeler gauges to match the rollers' separation at ech end...

Having gained a little confidence with the GW Mini-roller, I turned to the Worsley Works etched sides for the Sentinel 'car. These are still within the outer frames of the full etch and leaving them there provides additional support and helps feed the actual sides into the rollers, so I left them in place - here's the result: This took more than one go and it also took some creative use of thin card sandwiching, to counteract another thing I'd read about, where the rollers themselves deform, bending outwards ever so slightly at the centre, particularly with a long workpiece. I found this did happen a tiny amount, so that the first run on both sides showed ever so slightly less curvature towards the middle of the piece. I therefore tried inserting card sandwich pieces at the middle of the etch lengths to fill the minute gaps where the rollers were deforming slightly, bringing them back into contact with the card pieces and therefore, through them, with the nickel silver and this worked perfectly: I also found that one of the sides didn't bend quite as evenly and uniformly as the other - for no reason that I could see, as they were done one after the other, with no roller adjustment, at the same point along the roller length - but I found that inserting the card pieces at a section where I wanted more pressure allowed just that section to be bent a little more, without further curving of areas I was already happy with: (I also recommend Sultana Bran as an aid to the digestion by the way - no connection with the cereal industry, just a satisfied customer!) I spent some time looking at the profile of the prototypes' curve and I think these results are close enough to pass muster: they're a little too tightly curved towards the bottom of the sides, but in the course of soldering them to partitions, floor-pans, doors and so forth I think it'll be easier to reduce the excess radius by a few degrees than it would be to increase it: The etches have pretty evenly curved along the whole length too, which is very pleasing, though in the course of looking at prototype photos I came across one of those ones that shows how far from truly flat steel panelling often was:

Well, a somewhat longer interval between postings for the start of this year, due to other things taking up what would have been modelling time. A couple of them are related activities though: what started out as a minor re-organisation of my work room (a former 2m by 2m box bedroom) turned into a full re-location into our largely unsued dining room (with the agreement of Mrs Joint Stock, of course!) so while that took a lot of time and energy, it's resulted in my having a much bigger room to work in, with almost everything I use or need in the same room (no more running up and down stairs every five minutes for a slightly differently shaped file 😁) and the space to have my small layout out and operational all the time, instead of only weekends and holidays. Also, much better light and a new (well, pretty old actually, from Ebay) desk to work on, with lots of small shelves and deep drawers! Meanwhile, in other news, I have taken up the post of Interim Secretary of the Great Northern Railway Society, which is very exciting! My appointment is 'Interim' at the moment as it has to be voted on and approved at the next suitable Society meeting in April, but I've already been organising forthcoming meetings, getting to know the other committee members and so forth and it's great to be involved in things. Getting back to the Sentinel railcar build, I'd been dividing my time between designing and making a frame for the motor bogie and creating the turnunder curve in the sides and I'd postponed the turnunder while I awaited my 10" Mini-roller from GW models. This duly arrived but has been on one side along with everything else. With apologies in particular to @Compound2632 (who asked me how I was geting on with it) and anyone else who wondered after I'd trailed it, here's what you get for your money: It's a very substantial 1.8Kg piece of kit, well desigined and well made and I wish I'd bought one years ago! It needs mounting in a vice or if you have the space, it could be permanently set up somewhere in a workshop: I was keen to see what it could do so I fed in the first piece of scrap etch to hand and as you can see, it produces a beautifully even curvature: The degree of curvature is increased or decreased by using the adjustment screws at each end to raise or lower the upper middle bar in relation to the two lower ones. The lower ones are geared together and are turned by means of the cranked handle at one end. Friction between them, the workpiece and the upper bar draws the workpiece through the rollers. I'd read of some users finding this problematic and having to push the workpiece through with hand pressure and I did find there was a need for some manual help when the upper bar was far enough away from the two lower ones for there to be almost no friction, but where the bars are closer (or the workpiece is thicker) friction did the job. Having independent adjustment screws at each end to raise and lower the upper bar means you can roll tapered pieces by having the upper bar closer at one end than at the other - very useful for certain boiler shapes - but it also means that if you're not after a taper, you need to take care to adjust the two screws equally and keep the upper bar truly parallel to the lower ones. The instructions say that doing this by eye is sufficiently accurate, but I wanted some way of making scaled or graduated and repeatable adjustments. I first thought about putting tiny paint dots on the heads of the adjustment screws but immediately saw that wouldn't be accurate enough; I wiped off the freshly applied paint and found it had very neatly filled the letting that's stamped into the screws' upper surfaces... which is accurate enough: I dismantled the screws - something that's explained in the instructions, as it's how you remove a fully circular rolled piece for soemthing like a boiler - and using a ruling pen I painted thin white lines from each corner to the centre hole: Re-assembled, I can then line up any of the letters - or the full stop, which I'm finding is the most accurate to use - with one of the white lines and know that I'm turning the screw a quarter, half or full turn, to match the screw on the other side: I then spent some time practising on various pieces of scrap and I also experimented with sandwiching pieces between thin card or thin brass sheet, to get the curve to the edge of the workpiece, though as you can see in my first attempt above, that isn't necessarily a problem even without sandwich pieces. All in all, a terrific pieces of kit and so much easier than wrestling with metal bars and foam! I'll do a fresh post with the results on the Worsley Works Sentinel etches, as this post's almost at the photo limit.

Yes, that's right and Sentinel supplied the chassis, but there's still a lot of interesting info on this site I think, from the point of view of the chassis, the underframe fittings and so forth - perhaps also cab fittings?

Thanks for posting this Andy, fascinating site that I hadn't heard of before. That's quite a list of drawings too; searching under both 'railcoach' and 'railcar' brings up a great deal - some further study needed!

Aha - please excuse me, I read the post but didn't think about the possible consequences of reducing the gauge and that sounds absolutely right! 🤭

I wonder why they made that change? Was it something practical or operational, or just a case of what they had to hand during assembly?

Nice job Mark!

That's something on my to-do list as well; they're quite low-profile (literally and figuratively) so they often pass unnoticed on both full size and model railways but the moment they're added to a model you find yourself wondering why I hadn't noticed their absence!

Splendid pics of what was clearly a splendid day Steve - thank you for posting them! It's a great railway and I'm especially fond of it as a did a Driver Experience there a few years back and drove that 9F in one of your pictures - it left me with an enormous feeling of gratitude towards an organisation that would let me actually drive a machine like that!!!

Actually Jonathan, Tom Jones refers to precisely this problem in a early draft of a fourth verse, which was eventually dropped from the song before its release: It’s not unusual to make noise on any run It’s not unusual to run back as well as front But when I hear a different noise on any run It’s not unusual to see me cry I wanna die…

That sentence makes me feel so much better! 😅

"I'm placing all the right despatch notes, but not necessarily with the right orders..."

What a fascinating series, thanks for posting! I noticed that quite a few wagons in various shots appeared to have unsecured loads - the very first photo, for instance, where the nearest three wagons don't seem to have any ropes. The further pair in that first photo look like they're in the process of being sheeted over, so were the nearest three perhaps yet to be fully roped and/or sheeted? I also thought perhaps the various other unsecured ones might be either awaiting securing or awaiting unloading, given that these photos are in goods yards: does that sound right?

Nice work Mick - always nice to see a photo with blurred wheels!

Nice work on those sides, Stephen. I've started trying out the GW mini rollers btw and am currently working out a way to calibrate the two adjustment screws for accuracy and repeatability: more to follow. For your table edge problem, if you sandwich a small piece of wood or plastic (or metal) that's slightly thicker than the bar or rib underneath the table and up against the rib, you can then position the vice's lower clamp face onto the wood/plastic/metal. If the clamp part of the vice is too shallow to allow that, but you can find a piece of something the same thickness as the bar/rib, you can clamp the vice over the bar/rib and inserted piece simultaneously. Hope that's of help.

Thanks Mark - they both look like nice jobs. Is that trailing bogie from the re-launched Sentinel railcar kit then? I thought it looked familiar. Clearly excess weight won't be an issue for you given the model's main constituent material - if anything, will you in fact be adding weight? Very interesting model - not sure I've seen anyone else doing one.

Probably what a (late lamented) DJH kit of one might now cost, had there been one... Nice job saving it from the bin, Tony.

Very nice looking vehicle Mark! What/how/which/why are the bogies please?

Well spotted, I think that's right. I'd been puzzling over the cabside marking and of course it's not a number at all!

Morning all, my first thought was 4472 going off to Australia but I can't distibuish the number. Terrific looking photo though, great composition with all the girders, the crane and the ship dwarfing a loco we're used to seeing as the largest thing in the picture!

Hello Mark and Stephen, I'm about to undertake some turnunder rolling myself and read of an interesting technique over on Western Thunder, where using two pieces of thinner material (either very thin brass or thin cardboard) to sandwich the edge of the side and continue out well past that edge allows the bend to be maintained up to the workpiece's own edge. This was being done using rolling bars but could equally well work in other scenarios. I thought it a very useful idea and plan to test it for myself...

Hm; your main problem there I'd say is how to assure a ready supply of similar empty dessert wines bottles for the future... 🤔