Caley Jim

I do hope so! I thought this was a model railway forum , not a political history one. Jim

Making up the tank was not as straightforward as it might have been. There was no top for this included on the original etch, only front and rear panels, so I added one to the last sheet I did, including holes for the handrail knobs. While bending up the curves on the cab sides/roof it occurred to me that it would have been a good idea to etch the top as half thickness as this would have made bending the tight curves at the bottom easier. I therefore filed down the the inner surface of the lower edges on a long taper to almost a knife edge. Even so, forming the various curves was not straightforward and I was almost on the point of abandoning it, printing out a template and making a new one in 5thou brass. Perseverance triumphed, however and, although it's far from perfect, it will have to do. Before attaching the tank to the smokebox I cut back the section of the latter which overhung the motor, leaving only a millimetre or so to make it easier to fit some lead sheet into the tank later. This can be seen in the underside view of the smokebox/tank/cab assembly below. The securing nut and the 'tails' of the handrail knobs can also be seen. And from the top :- With this in place it's beginning to look more like a loco. I found that the underside of the front panel was not a particularly good fit on the smokebox, however the gap was filled with a representation of the angle iron which covered this joint on the prototype, the vertical part of this being provided on the original etch and the horizontal part mead from a thin strip of copper shim. The trusty Black and Decker drill will have to come out now to turn the boiler fittings Jim

As I've said before, I would be delighted to achieve a finish like that. Look forward to seeing it in action at Aberdeen. Jim

Next to be tackled was the smokebox. The main body of this is a length of the same 9mmod tube as was used for the underside of the boiler/motor mount, cut away to sit over the front end of the motor. Around this was soldered the smokebox wrapper from the etch. With this held firmly in place on the footplate and chassis, a drill was passed up through the 12BA clearing hole in the front spacer and rotated a few time to mark where the hole lined up with the underside of the smokebox. A 1mm (12BA tapping) hole was then drilled and tapped and a screw passed up from below and tightened until the smokebox top was held level. My original plan was to solder a 12BA nut on the inside to make a more secure attachment and rely on the smokebox front to stop the whole thing tipping forward when the screw was tightened, however I found that a 12BA nut was exactly the right thickness to act a a spacer between the smokebox and the underframe (there is none of the footplate present in this area, the front splashers/sandboxes having been folded up from here) so one was soldered on underneath instead. The smokebox front from the etch was then soldered in place. The smokebox door was made by my usual Heath Robinson method of cutting a disc of copper shim using my dividers, placing it on a lead anvil with the ball of a ball peen hammer centred over it and whacking the head of the hammer with another one until the disc is domed to the required degree! The door was then reinforced on the inside with with a generous amount of solder and then secured centrally on the front. The door hinges were built up from fine copper wire with the straps cut from some long half-etched tags salvaged from one of my etches. The top and bottom fixings are short pieces of thicker copper wire. The last items to be added at this stage were the handrail knobs made by winding fine brass wire a couple of times round a 1/64" drill, twisting the ends together and cutting them off short enough to fit into the holes which had been drilled into the end of the tube, guided by the etched holes in the front. They were soldered into the holes while mounted on the drill to avoid them getting filled with solder. The door wheel and handle and lubricators (in the two lower holes) will not be added until after painting. The gaps on either side between the smokebox unit and the boiler underside will be covered by the saddle tank, which will be the next thing to be made up. Jim

On Connerburn the tape was stuck dirctly to ply, the sleepers laid and then it was ballasted with coarse sand before soldering on the rails. Jim

The track on my Connerburn layout was laid on d/s tape back in the early 1970's amid dire warnings from many that it would not hold for long. Nearly 50 years down the line it's still as secure as ever, so I wouldn't have any worries about it, Izzy! Jim

It's all very commendable to set yourself high standards, but if you set them too high, you'll never achieve anything. Jim

I employ very similar methods except, through not having the luxury of a lathe, I do the turning with my trusty old Black and Decker sitting on my knee! I start the curving of the underside by making a cut with a piercing saw across the middle of the base, then open this up with a triangular file followed by a half round one in order to try and keep it central and level. To attach them I first tin both the location on the boiler/smokebox and the underside of the fitting and then use low melt solder, but with the iron at a high temperature, to fix them. It won't be long before I'll be turning my attention to the boiler fittings for my Jubilee pug. Jim

Thanks Richard. This being a saddle tank, the smoke box, tank and cab will be a separate assembly which will slip over the top of the motor and be held in place by a screw coming up into the bottom of the smoke box. This can be removed to access the motor. At least that is the plan at the moment until some other unforseen issue makes a further change of plan necessary! As you will see from earlier posts it was my intention that the footplate etc would also be part of this until I realised that the clacks on the side of the boiler would not allow the footplate to drop past them. To remove the motor you need to first remove the chassis as the motor has to be angled up at the front to slide it out from under the top section of the motor mount. This makes the worm angle down, which it can't do because of the worm wheel while it's still attached to the chassis. Jim

Thanks for all the kind comments. A little more work last night. The bunker extensions have been added and a 'frame' of copper shim strips formed which will have tissue paper glued over it to which the coal load will then be glued. The extensions are made from some scrap 10 thou etch frame, scribed to represent planks. I wasn't too particular in getting them neat so as to emulate the rather makeshift nature of some of those in photos. I used 10thou in order not to interfere with the close fit of the stay-alive unit and indeed the lower inner edges are chamfered. In order to make the 'planks' look thicker some fine copper wire was soldered to the top inner edges with a generous amount of solder and the tops filed flat. Some thick copper wire had a small bit at one end filed to a square section and short pieces of this were soldered in the front corners to represent the bits of wood reinforcing these corners. Jim.

It was actually Wordie & Co (maybe they became part of Pickfords). Their flatbed carts had their name on the back and ' Caledonian Railway ' along the sides. Jim

The cab has now been assembled, though this was not without its problems! Getting the curves of the one-piece wrap-over roof and sides of the Stirling style cab to match the profile of the front took quite some time, then I found that the sides were a fraction too long and projected below the front, easily fixed with some judicious filing. A second issue was that the side of the cab entrances were about 1mm higher than those on the bunker. The drawing and all the photos I've seen show these as level with one another. This time a round file was used to effectively 'move' the curved section down the side by the required amount. The beading was then added in fine copper wire. I also fitted the spectacle window surrounds provided on the etch, though they should properly be in brass. The cab floor and internal splashers are provided as a one piece fold-up part. Some of the fold lines had not etched particularly well, but this can be an issue where the original artwork has been drawn for a larger scale, and the lines were improved by scrawking with the back of the tip of a craft knife. Once folded up, however it became clear that 1) the width across the splashers was less than that between the inner faces of the cab sides and 2) the tops of the splashers were too high. I therefore separated the splashers from the floor, fitted them separately with their bases flush with the bottom of the sides (which put them at the correct height) and then offered the floor in between them. With the section of the latter which goes between the cab and bunker aligned centrally with the cab sides the LH side was neatly against the splasher, but there was a ½mm gap between the floor and the splasher on the RH side. The floor was soldered in place and the gap filled with a small bit of scrap etch jammed into place and soldered from below. The reversing lever, again filed up from scrap etch surround, was then soldered to the inside of the LH splasher. The resultant assembly was a neat fit between the rear plate of the motor mount and the bunker, however there was a slight gap on either side between the cab front and the sides of the lower boiler and firebox. Bearing in mind that the cab/tank/smokebox was to be a separate unit, this was addressed by soldering some fine copper wire to the outer rear corners of the boiler and firebox with a generous amount of solder, filing it to the profile and then carefully filing back the rear until the cab front butted up neatly against them. something of a bodge, but it should be well hidden behind a coat or two of paint! You can just make out the copper showing at the edge in the photo below. Jim

If I could achieve this standard of finish I'd be delighted! But then maybe I'm too easily pleased. Jim

Well, progress has been rather slow over the past few weeks for a number of reasons. First, as i noted in an earlier post, I discovered that I had omitted to include the cosmetic frames in the etch on which I included all the other parts. Fortunately I had a number of etched things which I had been asked for and also a couple of ideas I wanted to try, so I had to spend some time getting all the artwork together and sending it off to PPD. The footplate which came with the original body etch required a lot of it cut away in order for the mechanism to fit through it and so one of the parts i got etched was a layer to go below this which has the buffer beams folding down from either end and fits between the valences. The splasher sides fold up from the original footplate with the tops of the front sand boxes, and the front splashers, folding down from the former. This didn't produce a very sharp angle between the top and the sides, so I separated the former and soldered them on as a separate part. I also soldered a little piece of scrap etch into the front as the front of the smokebox will be part of the smokebox/tank/cab assembly, with the front fitting between the front of the sandboxes and the rear of the 'piano front' valve chest cover. The footplate assembly was attached to the firebox sides and a couple of strips of scrap etch soldered in to brace the front of the footplate against the motor mount front. Then came two steps back! I discovered that the chip was blown, registering as a short and getting very hot! The stay-alive/chip assembly was only held by the wires and the chip was only held in place on this by the PTFE tape wrapped around it. During checking the opening below where the bunker would be to see that this fitted through it had been waggling about. The wire I had used to link to the stay-alive was very fine cotton covered, multi strand, enamelled wire which was difficult to solder and I can only assume that one or two strands had come adrift and touched something else on the chip, shorting it. I tried to source a replacement chip, but it would appear that CTelektronik chips are all but unobtainable at the moment. I therefore looked around for an alternative and settled on a Zimo MX616 which is only slightly larger, but has the advantage of having relatively generous pads in one corner to which to attache the stay-alive wiring. In fact, the way it sits, i was able to connect the +ve pad directly to the circuitry via a wee piece of copper shim, with a piece of the decoder wire making the -ve connection. Meanwhile I assembled the bunker onto the footplate and then discovered that the capacitors were a fraction too big to fit lengthwise into the bunker as intended. Yet another change of plan! I worked out that the whole assembly, with the new chip, could sit vertically in the bunker, albeit projecting a couple of mm above the sides. This is not too much of a problem,however, as most photos of these locos show them with a variety of makeshift extensions to the bunker sides to increase the capacity. So, the new chip has been fitted and tested and all seems to be well. This time a small piece of blu-tack attaches it to the capacitors and the whole thing is again wrapped in PTFE tape. In addition the inside rear of the bunker has been lined with tissue paper attached with cyano as additional insulation. Here we have the footplate/bunker/ motor mount assembly with the frames sitting in front and below shows the footplate mounted on the frames. The wiring will be hidden under the cab floor. Jim

Thank, Nick. I've sent a sample to the Association Products Officer to see whether he would see it as a shop item. If not I will add it to my Buchanan Kits range.

I agree with everything Izzy says. As has been said, it's difficult to diagnose the fault without having the chassis in your hand to study closely. Sometimes you never get to the bottom of the problem and it just works its way out as the chassis runs in. Can you lubricate it and then sit it wired up and just let it run for an hour or so and then see what it's like after that? Jim

Note also that in the photo the arms are alternately long and short. A common feature in the late c19th. This was to avoid interference in the telegraph signal if the wires in one circuit were close to those in another. Jim

Once it's glued to the end it will be OK. Jim

You could shellac the card after assembly and then paint it, either that or give it a thin coat of watered down pva. Jim

That should have been ".....wae a teardrap......" Jim (b****y predictive text again!)

A wedding wish: May the best you've ever seen be the worst you'll ever see May the moos ne'er leave yer girnal was a teardrop in its e'e May yer lum keep blithely reekin' til you're auld enough tae dee An' may ye aye be just as happy as I wish ye now tae be. Translations on receipt of distillary products! Jim

It also looks to me as though the motor could be moved forward a couple of mms and still be clear of the final drive gear. Jim

One certainly wouldn't want to get them mixed up! Jim

The CR had several diagrams of meat vans, including some refrigerated, all of which were passenger rated. they also had a number of 6-wheeled fish fruit and milk vans which were of similar construction to luggage vans and also fully fitted for running in passenger trains. Jim

Surely you could have made it the Vital Spark! Jim