Caley Jim

tender body coming along slowly. The openings in the footplate and tank top needed a wee bit of fettling to clear the motor etc, but otherwise most bits fitted rather well. This side has the 'temporary' coupling rod. the extra weight is keeping the tender a bit steadier, but there is a slight stiff spot which causes it to wobble slightly. I think that's in the gears somewhere and will hopefully 'run out' once it gets a bit of lubrication. It's already been run with some toothpaste to polish the gears. Front plates/cab doors and toolboxes next, then I'll start on the bogie outside frames. Jim

Yes, indeed. The CR had some early similar asymmetrical ones with a raised centre section. Jim

Magnificent as always! Jim

that's got mair pipes and tubes than a plumber's van! Jim

Hi Adam. It's just that I have a'thing'about not wanting to have a drive shaft flailing about between the low tender and relatively open cab of my tender locos. I've no objection to other folk doing it, that's their choice. It does make things a bit more complicated with the extra gears on the tender and the need for a lay gear in the loco, but for me it's worth it to get the drive shaft out of sight. Purely a personal thing and not something I would necessarily encourage folk to do unless they are similarly minded. Jim

My daughter is working in a University post where she was dealing with postgraduate students, almost all from overseas. It was their fees that are paying her salary! If the number of overseas students is reduced then the Universities are going to suffer financially. Forgive me if I'm missing a point here, but I cannot get my head round the logic that the threat of shipping immigrants off to Rwanda is somehow or other going to stop the illegal gangs taking oodles of money from them and dispatching them from the beaches of France! Why aren't the French getting on top of the gangs? I'll tell you why, they're only too happy to see the back of the poor souls and don't give a sou what happens to them after they are out of their hair! Jim

If it's Zinc, it should be possible to solder it. Jim

At least we don't have someone standing for election who thinks Al Capone 'was the greatest' (it takes one to know one) and says he will only act as a dictator on the first day of his presidency! that will probably involve making himself President for life and abolishing all opposition parties! Small comfort. Jim

Another addition would be to drill a pair of holes vertically into both parts, from the underside, and fit a couple of wire staples in them, spanning the joint, to not only reinforce the joint, but also hold the parts together firmly while the Araldite suggested by @WFPettigrew sets. That would be the most secure way of doing that. Getting the staples the correct size between the legs will be the trickiest part and may need a few goes to get them right. Jim

After removing the sacrificial tabs etc., adding the springs carrying current from loco frames to tender and masking off the gearbox with tape, the chassis was given a quick blast with rattle can black. The wheels were then fitted along with the gears. At this point there was one of those 'b****r it!' moments when I found I only had a set of layers for one coupling rod when I was absolutely certain I had put two on the sheet! Close examination of the artwork showed that I hadn't put any tags on the second set attaching it to the parts around it so there was a glaring hole in the sheet where that set should have been! See this C-Nile virus? Does it never stop raising it's ugly head? Guess what will be going on the next sheet I do! Only solution in the short term was to use the made up rod as template to make a temporary one and, while it's not as neat as the etched one and not fluted, it seems to do the job as the wheels turn in unison when powered. The photo has the good one on this side. The crankpins on the other side have been left long to make it easier to eventually replace the rod. Running is somewhat erratic as the lack of weight causes both chassis to shake about a bit resulting in poor current collection, so no video of it, but if the tender is held steady, the wheels turn reasonably smoothly. Hopefully the weight of the tender and loco bodies will cure that. You can just see the drive shaft running behind the spring. I won't be making the front bogie until the loco body is well on the way as the body fixing screw will only be accessible with the bogie off. Jim

It's what I've always used. Watered down to the consistency of thick cream and applied with a soft No.6 artist's paintbrush. Jim

Sorry, Mike. I should have been paying attention😒! Jim

This project might give you some inspiration. Jim

I'm not sure if you are aware of this, Mike, and I can't make out what you've done from the photos, but the side cupboard doors were usually double skinned, with one layer of planks vertical and the other horizontal, which layer was which depended on the builder, e.g. the CR built them with the outer layer horizontal, but private builder often had that layer vertical. Jim

Mike Williams has replied stating that he and Ed McKenna, who have been researching traders wagons, have nothing to add. In that case I would go with red oxide, black ironwork and white lettering. Whether you shade it or not is your choice. If anyone comes along and says you are wrong, the appropriate response is, as always, 'prove it'! Jim

I have a few of them! There's another five where they came from!🙂 (And a few more to build) Jim

Following some advice from @AY Mod, I've rescanned the photo as a .png and been able to upload that. Jim

That sounds like one of the early 6 or 7 ton 'bogies' with outside framing. It was probably replaced by an 8T dumb buffered wagon as a renewal, taking the same number, and this in turn was converted to spring buffered when dumb buffers were outlawed. Had another go at scanning and uploading the photo I have, but still get a 'problem up loading this file' message! ☹️ Jim

'Round of applause' doesn't cut it. We need a 'standing ovation' emoji! Jim 😃

Attention has now turned to the loco frames. The gearbox was assembled first and the meshing checked by having a long shaft on the worm which could be rotated with a pin chuck. The gears were then removed prior to soldering on the thin PCB pads which will retain it in the frames, after which the worm was refitted on its proper shaft, as it will be extremely difficult to fit when the gearbox is in the frames. the two frames are etched in one piece with a couple of cross-members below the coupled axles. These allow the frames to remain square when they are bent up and will be filed away now that the spacers and gearbox are all in. In this top view you can see all the sacrificial lugs which ensure the spacers and gearbox are accurately located. Also the two trunnions with holes at the top which, by passing the length of axle steel through them and the gearbox, ensure the bearings for the lay gear are at exactly the correct spacing from the driven axle. They too are sacrificial. In order to give the bogie wheels a bit more clearance from the frames, the latter are joggled in 10thou each side at the front, the bends being re-enforced with generous fillets of solder. Removing the sacrificial parts and then cleaning up are the next job. Jim

Seems I might be wrong on that. I posted a question on the CRA forum and the following are extracts from the only reply so far :- I have a colour photo of Arniston 515 12t taken many years ago where the livery is (well faded) red oxide, letter white shaded black. I think this wagon is at Prestongrange. ........ ..........an extract from the Pickering order book which reads:- [ARNISTON COAL Co., Ltd. Gorebridge. Brown Oxide, white lettering with black shading. And ironwork. Some wagons without shading, 1 coat of Tar inside. 1901, 1904, 1905, 1907. Will report any more responses. Jim

Given that the colliery was in NB territory, I would guess grey, but I'll try and find out definitely for you. is there no indication on the drawing you have? Jim

The last week has been something of a 2 steps forward and one, or more, back. The assembly carrying the motor etc. will be electrically ‘dead’ with current being collected via the bogie inner frames. To get the current to the motor there are a pair of thin double-sided PCB strips soldered either side of the rear bogie pivot. On these are two short transverse lengths of copper wire which both take current from the top of the bogie and will also stop the tender from rocking, while allowing the bogie to rock fore and aft. Current from the front bogie will come via the two long finger springs, allowing the weight of the front of the tender to transfer to the loco via the drag beam. To collect the current from the loco another pair of thin PCB pads are soldered either side of the front frame sections, each carrying one of the little tubes I make by wrapping fine wire round a No.80 drill and then flooding it with solder. A thin wire then runs from these pads to those on the rear bogie support. The finger springs need a bit of re-shaping at their outer end. The first iteration used decoder wire to link the pads, but when I tried the bogies on this was too thick and resulted in the wheels hitting it and pretty much stopping the bogies pivoting. It has been replaced with some very fine varnished and cotton covered multi-strand wire which has been tucked into and cyano glued in the angle of the frame and base. The leads to the motor are attached to the back of the bogie mount pads and go through two holes in the base. Another of the issues I had was eliminating shorts between the pads/wiring and the chassis. It took several unsoldering/re-soldering attempts to eliminate them! On the top side I wanted to be able to disconnect the motor and decoder without having to resort to the soldering iron. First thoughts were to use one of the small plugs and sockets I had used to connect up the wiring to the lights in my signal box, but that was going to be rather bulky. Some of the decoders came with an 8 pin plug on them. So I cut a section off the end with 2 pins on it and made a ‘socket’ again using tubes made as before using a suitable drill (took a few attempts to get the right size drill). These tubes were soldered to a suitably gapped piece of thin PCB and two wires added. This was then soldered to the inside of the side of the motor cradle and the wires led down through holes as described above. The decoder track leads have the plug attached and the motor leads have a second socket made in the same way, but this time backed by a piece of 20thou styrene with the tubes embedded in 5 minute epoxy, the leads from the motor having another plug on them. The socket with the track leads. With the decoder (CT DCX75) and the leads all plugged in. Alongside the motor is the bank of 4 220uf capacitors which have still to be wired to the decoder. This came from my 2-4-0 which has had the configuration of the decoder and capacitors rearranged to get more weight to the front of the tender. The capacitors are not connected up as I’ve still to source the components for the circuitry. This arrangement also means that if I want to run the loco on a DC layout, all I have to do is unplug the decoder from the track socket and replace it with the plug from the motor. The bogies have also been assembled. The side frames and stretcher were etched as one piece with two half etched lines along which they could be separated once soldered to the PCB spacer. LH one is right side up, the RH one upside down. The (cosmetic) outside frames will be added once everything is up and running. The whole assembly sitting on the bogies. Apologies for the long post. Hope it's understandable. Jim

The vertical washer plate on the outside , the hoop and the corresponding washer plate on the inside are all one piece, presumably forged from round bar. The heavy transverse top beam is attached to the wagon sides, reinforced by a washer plate which extend right across and wraps round the corners. This has two metal plates on top, corresponding to the position of the hoops. The door swings on these, via the hoops. The washer plate across the bottom framing extends out on either side as round 'pegs' and the door is held shut by two oval loops attached to the sides. The pegs have a hole in them into which a pin, held on a chain, is placed to keep it shut by stopping the loops coming off the pegs. The left hand half of the two end elevations on p103 of Mike's book show the inside (top drawing) and outside (bottom drawing) arrangements. The RTR wagon you refer to had the hoop disappearing into the top of the cross beam! How anyone thought that would work is a mystery to me! HTH Jim

Looking forward to seeing this one develop. Does it have the heavy-framed end door, using the top cross member as the hinge, and cupboard doors, typical of central Scottish mineral wagons? I've tried to upload a photo of an earlier 'Arniston' wagon which is a dumb-buffered outside framed 'NB-style' 'bogie', but there seems to be a problem uploading images at the moment. ☹️ Jim