doilum

A wipe on a damp sponge ( or spit on a kitchen towel) keeps the bit clean. You can buy fancy devices for this but there are better things to spend your money on!

St Frusquin followed the current trend towards 10 ba crankpin conversions. You would need a set of 10 ba taps ,( about £10 from eBay) and half a dozen 10 ba set screws and washers. The wheels will tap easily using the existing hole as a pilot, and the crankpin bushes are threaded by holding them in a pin vice . The tap is held rigid in the vice. You also need an additional pair of bushes for the centre wheels. The advantage of this method is that the invertered bushes replace the bulky nuts creating valuable clearance behind the slidebars.

The injector pipework is one of the defining Peckett ( and Manning Wardle) features.

Somewhere on Jim McGowan's website he shares the black art of getting a fold up gearbox to work. Cost aside, my favourite is the Canon / ABC combo if only for laziness / need to work straight from the box. One of the austerities has the above combo, another an 1833 salvaged from a massage chair and a random 40:1 gearset from an exhibition junk stall. Both run equally well. My only gripe with the fold up type is that I rarely get them to work silently in both directions. I also have one of Taff Models 1833 motors, bought when they were about half the price of the endangered Mashima, this works as well as the Canon and Mashima items.

It isn't the cost of the motor, it's those gears that sit behind it.

I was going to make a similar point before the day escaped me. A big simple iron might be the way to go . If in doubt turn it up to 11. The other advice might be with soldering technique. I am no expert and started much worse than your bogie assembly but have steadily improved thanks to lessons from more skillful modellers. My usual approach, after cleaning to heavenly standards, is to lightly tin the contact edge of one component. This is done in such a way as to not compromise the dry fit. If solder, flux and temperature are correct, a 2mm length of solder should run easily for 10 to 15mm in each direction. This can be practiced on bits of scrap etch. You may want to compare the Hachette scrap with brass from another source. Having double checked the cleanliness, more flux is applied to the other component before bringing them together. The tip of the iron needs to be clean hot and retinned and then patiently applied. I am not patient by nature hence my love of the RSU and if all else fails, an ancient 100W Weller. For the record, I use 145 solder and ( let's not start a war) plumbers flux paste. All work is thoroughly washed in CIF and soapy water immediately after a session.

Doubt it. Come down to the crossroads and dabble in the black art of scratch building! Most model shops have display racks of brass and plastic tubes, strips and sections. These can also be obtained from suppliers like Eileen's Emporium. This is a good starting task using the old pipe as a reference to drill locating holes on the other side before scraping/ chiseling it off and making good. In 4mm you could use solid round rod for the replacement but tube is easier to drill for the mounting pins. You will need to represent the elbow where it enters the smokebox using solder or epoxy filler carefully filed to shape.

In 7mm there is a line of two or three dozen rivets to drill and fit!

The Hachette brass isn't the easiest material to solder. The trick is to get it absolutely spotless immediately before soldering. When applying a decorative laminate you can be as quite aggressive with 240 grade wet and dry paper on faces that will not be seen again. I made much use of my RSU but almost every soldering task was a bit of a challenge compared to say kits from Jim McGowan, Mercian or Judith Edge. Patience wins in the end!

A great photo, but is it my imagination or has the cab door area been restored to the 1928 shape?

" box things" are the A3 superheaters ( try Precision Paints for castings). The loco is now left hand drive so the pipe on the right side moves to the left as does the reversing lever. It will also need a banjo dome and modifications to the cab door area. I have not seen one but perhaps someone can point you to a photo of the top of the water tender. The ancient Triang Scotsman had the corridor tender and this might be a good starting point. The important thing is to enjoy the learning journey!

Simple mantra to help. Only feed a point from the toe end. (Old enough to remember the introduction of electrofrog points!)

Excellent work. This all seems a bit familiar. Be careful that the discarded tank doesn't grow into a second loco!

Not sure what happened but I lost the text! A few shots of AH#3 and sisters. AH#3 is in " as she finished up" condition although I had to make a small compromise in the lettering in order to use the transfers as supplied. When I get a free afternoon I will get my daughter to take some real photographs and perhaps include her Ackton Hall stablemates Airedale, Beatrice ?and S112.

Beg borrow or bin dive an old toy of similar size and material. Practice.

Most mid/ late 19th century industry was railside located. 100 years on and the original industry was gone leaving suitable land for scrap yards etc. I spent hours salvaging classic car parts from a Castleford breaker located in a former lineside brick works. The rail connection had long gone even when the brick works were still producing, but this is your model so rule one applies.

The fence helped limit the number of children eaten by the " yard monster"!

AH#3 may be a one off but there are clearly nine plates in the construction. I know it returned to Pecketts during the war for a rebuild and guess that steel shortages led to the re use of part of the original tank or, sheets of sufficient size were temporarily unavailable and there was pressure for a quick turn round from the owners. Whatever the reason, it worked as this is the tank shown in the late photographs used by the preservation group.

In that case, very impressive use of the iron!

Working in 7mm I set out a couple of years ago to build Ackton Hall #3. I could not get the rivet pattern right either and, thanks to the amazing generosity of Trevor at Mercian and a bit of scratch building I ended up with three X2s plus a " grounded" saddle tank amongst the clutter of Frydale yard. In the end the Ackton Hall tank was made prototypically form plates of shim brass over an undersized former. I have not been able to ascertain how AH#3 got that particular tank. Good luck with the project.

Excellent work. Standard iron or RSU?

Back in 1975 we got into LOTS of trouble for depicting Mickey in bovver boots on our rag week t shirt.

I may have told the story before, but I bought a Flintstone edition of the Fiat 126 as a £50 donor for an off road buggy project. From the outside it was immaculate and my good lady fell instantly in love. With the gas bottles filled and steel procured, my brother in law and I hàd it MOT ready in three evenings. After a year of good service it sold for £450 to make way for an MGB GT, but that is another story!

Yep. My E plater was still totally rust free at 11 years when we finally traded it. However, at 7 years, the original battery died and was replaced by top of the range Bosch. Six months later front seat passenger complains that the footwell is full of water! Fortunately the local panel shop did a repair panel complete with battery tray. The whole dash, seats and carpet had to come out as these were the days before DIY mig welders and the gas axe was the weapon of choice. Turned out that the FoMoCo battery had a pair of natty covers that stopped the rain water coming into contact with the terminals. Later models came with a plastic tray that covered the whole battery top and I found one in the local breakers.