agt613

Yes, Sandy, It is the original version. On the one you received (post ~15) the dome is forward of the more central position of the rebuild. Your improved one (post #11) is also modelled the original boiler, I think, but the chimney and dome are where they were in the rebuild. The front-quarter photo I have of the rebuild (the number is in the 1100s - 1183, I think, whereas before rebuild they were without the thousand digit) has a space underneath the smokebox front equal to almost half the smokebox door's diameter. On it, the cylinder covers (rectangles riveted on the base of the front both sides) have at least their own height of empty space before the bottom of the smokebox door. The latter is at the same height as the frame's apex. I've begun to agree with you about modelling it at 00. The cylinder assembly is a real pain to get right. I may switch into plasticard for it. In addition, it reduces the chances of having a nice firm base to the body as there is only the merest suggestion of a footplate above the slim solebar. I have resorted to building the basic shapes behind the cylinders as a cut and score fold-up exercise. The picture shows an early incarnation with the connecting rod splasher side, driving wheel splasher side and cab side all cut and folded. There is one of these for each side. The splashers are deliberately oversize and will be filed down to fit. I may use plasticard for the splasher tops. I'm having a bit of a tussle getting the whole thing horizontal at footplate level, currently it sticks its nose up somewhat and squats down at the rear. It's all an interesting learning curve! I won't be doing much for the next two weeks as my beloved and I are having two nights at a posh hotel and then I'm going to Iran for a week. I am hoping to tackle some of the bogie assembly while abroad and hope Iranian customs are OK with a modelling knife and plasticard as I'm hoping to add plasticard splashers to my brass frame. They should protect the wheels from shorting out on the frame. My original idea of having the whole front frame pivoting as one is filed under abandoned, following advice above. Thanks for travelling the route with me. Please comment where helpful

Yes, great, Blandford 1969. Any help is gratefully received.

Wow, Sandy, it is fabulous. Such detail. Do tell me it's 0 gauge and not 00. One thing. My photo of the rebuild from front quarter shows the boiler sitting much higher. Is this the non-rebuild?

Here are two rather fuzzy pics. Sorry for the quality. Thanks for your interest. Graham

Thanks for the advice ,Steve. Well taken.

Thanks Jim. Who makes a kit? I am hoping that the chassis part of the bogie area can swing against something smooth under the footplate so the clearance will be gained up there rather than round the wheel arches. The splashers can then move with the bogie and chassis together. I'll build in some vertical play in the bogie to which the splashers will be fastened. I hope it will work. Thanks also Steve (Londontram). It isn't my first build. I have built the 55 class, I have made a start at the cab front as I needed it to see how the larger boiler would fit. It as all a bit trial and error. My current experiment is to cut the front too tall and then snip down to the top of in so many tabs, using scissors. I have then curved these letting them overlap as they fall. I have tinned the inside to text the method and will cover the outside with solder the same and file it to shape - I hope it will turn out to be a surface mix of mostly brass and some solder infill. That's the plan. The inside might have to be the concave version of the above. Then the curved roof can be butted up.

Dear Caley fans, Please note I have opened a thread on my efforts (pretty crummy sometimes and lots of repetition!) to build a 179 Oban bogie, at "Graham's Caledonian scratchbuild". Much advice is needed! Graham

Having been given permission, I can now add the drawing for which the Caledonian Railway Association owns the copyright.

I have been encouraged by Steve (Londontram) and others to describe the building of a CR Brittain Oban Bogie. I have returned to modelling after a 40 years' absence bringing up a family and travelling the world in my work as an academic in housing policy in developing countries. I modelled the Callander and Oban Railway in my teens, starting a Class 55 4-6-0 Oban bogie then and 'finishing it' currently. I have a small stock of scratch-built wagons and a few unfinished panelled coaches but no layout (YET). I have a drawing kindly provided by CRASSOC, even though I am not a member. I'm not sure about including an image of it here so will ask them and include it later. The Brittain Oban Bogie presents an interesting and fundamental issue - there is no continuous footplate as the cylinders and slidebars protrude above footplate level. Thus, a nice flat footplate as a foundation for the build is not an option. In addition, the drawings are of the original while all the photos I have (all of four) are of the rebuilt version which is in my period. The most noticeable difference is a bigger boiler (4'6" I think) which makes superstructure assembly a bit of an iterative process. Added to this, the bogie wheels have splashers which obviously travel side-to-side with them. I'm not good with bogies and clearance so decided to have a joint bogie and chassis unit, separate from the main chassis, which follows the curves in the track. I will see how it goes. Any opinions or experience of such a solution would be welcome. I made a set of frames for the area between the drawbar and the sandboxes which sit behind the bogies. This will contain the driving wheels, the skeletons of cylinders, etc., and the motor. My rather shaky image shows the chassis so far. The frames are pretty standard shaped with 18 thou brass sheet soldered together for marking and drilling. I use a black marker pen (berol multipurpose) to scrape cutting and bending lines on and use the scoring with craft-knife method for thinner brass sheet which gives a beautifully clean break line. My friend with a vertical drill helped to get the frames true and we used his huge soldering iron to fasten it all together, checking it on a mirror for level. The wheels are Romfords. Why did I fear the difficulty of getting true driving wheels? The Romfords are dead true and quarter themselves (as long as I remember which side leads). I assume the right does. Is that correct? I decided to try a fold-up method for the footplate (rear three-quarters), splashers, and cab side. This was marked out and cut leaving the splashers larger than necessary for careful fitting later. I have made the decision to have correct 5'2" wheels and use slightly oversize splashers to cope with the flange oversize. I'm toying with plasticard splasher tops to minimise shorting. Any opinions on this out there? I decided to try Romfords threaded crankpins but my connecting rod is too small for the larger hole needed so will make do with unthreaded. This delays the time to fasten it all up. The masimo motor has a 54:1 gear train from Highlevel. My first attempt but much helped by threads on rmweb and elsewhere. I couldn't agree more with the admonishment to read the instructions at every stage. I rigged up some pickups and found it worked OK. The piston and slidebar assembly (from Markits) all seem a little stiff but I hope they will ease in use. I don't know if the slide bar is correct but it is mainly hidden behind the solebar (only 1mm deep so not much strength available there!) I've added a flat plate forward of the cylinders as a basis for the front end. That's it for now. I hope some members will find it interesting and would benefit from hints and tips. Thanks for reading it, Graham

Absolutely.

I followed a thread to advice that models should be painted as if viewed from 50 scale feet. The writer suggests adding 15% white to dark colours and the same of a neighbouring dark shade to white or very light shade. I did that for my Oban bogie by adding one white brushful for every six blue brushfuls (same brush). On my 782 black goods loco, and on the 55 class roof and chassis, I added the same white to the black. And so on with the maroon underframe on the 55 and even the vermillion on the buffer beam. I'm very pleased with the colour whether it is fully correct or not. All this is because the atmosphere is not perfectly clear but has a whitish hue. Hope this helps. Keep up the great work Steve, Graham

Hi Sandy, That's a lovely Oban bogie. I' m just starting to scratchbuild one in 00. I have made the cylinder ends as per normal and will make a top wrapper fastened to the footplate and a bottom one fastened to the ends. The 1mm solebar will cover any imperfections at the top of the lower wrapper. I've used a piston and slidebar from markits which has gone on without too much pain for a first etch assembly. I'm building the rebuilt version with a 4foot 6inch boiler, which I hope is right. Is yours that one?

Hi Steve, The lining certainly is a challenge. On a blue loco, I have found the HMRS pressfix LNER set very helpful as a basis for my 55 class lining. They are over-scale (like most lining, which should only be half a millimetre wide) but look OK in most settings. The curves are the real bummer. The splasher transfers were exactly the right size for the 55 class but only white-black. I think they look OK and I have used the white-black ones (the narrower black lines loooking from the paper side) for all the frame and underframe lining. There are still gaps, especially around the steps and on the tender underframe. It is a mammoth job and I have had to start a second sheet for the one loco so it doesn't come cheap. I find that you have to fiercely protect the sticky side of the sheet with its cover sheet or you lose the tackiness which helps keep the transfer in place until you wet the paper covering. Once it's gone, they have to be treated more like ordinary transfers - not fixed down until the paper has gone. I'm now using the red lining on the same sheet for the black locos along with a white lining from Fox, leaving a narrow (black) line between. I have the Precision paint CR dark blue but it looks too green. Has anyone any experience of it as I'd like to paint the 179 Oban bogie with it when it's done. Well done with the stud. Very impressive work. Graham

I find threading the front handrails, both round the smokebox door then into straight lines on the side, a bit beyond me. On Caley tanks, there is usually a final dipping into the front of the tank to locate and drill and keep straight. Well done so far, Steve.

Here it is taken on my ancient phone. It shows up glitches in lining rather horribly though! At least I can correct them. I started building it in 1969, I think, when Tony East of the Harrogate club made the chassis for me. I must have had a blueprint back then. Recently I have improved some of the detailing, especially the smokebox front and done the paint job. The paints are reduced 15% with matt white to give (I hope) a realistic scale colour viewed from a distance. Because it has a Triang x04 motor, there are gaps under the boiler which shouldn't really be there nowadays. I made the tender so that it pivots on the rear wheels and leans all its weight on the cab floor. The front two wheels are on a separate chassis free to move up and down. Hope you like it, Steve. Graham I've still got to fit the Westinghouse pump when it's lined

Brilliant. As you say, it's the vision to do it that's the important bit. Would I be allowed to put a picture of my 55 class Oban Bogie on here? It's almost finished. Keep up the good work, Graham

Yes, not to mention the WP! This also raises the issue of thickness. At their prototype measurements, the lining white-black-white (got it wrong last post) was less than 2" wide in all. In 00, I'm sure that's less than current transfers by a factor of about two. The WP would look more like a Magpies shirt than a blue thing with some lining on. Oh, you didn't mention the buffer shanks, either.

To the august company that gathers around this thread, might I ask a question which might also help others. The context is that I'm adding lining and other transfers to my 55 class 'Oban Bogie' and wonder how far it is reasonable to go. Obviously boiler bands, main panels and even the tight 'oval' around the handrail on the panel of the tender side nearest the cab are required. Splashers and cab front and the line between the maroon and red on the buffer beam seem necessary (the latter if only to tidy up the paint boundary). But how about all that lining along the sideframes between and in front of the splashers? Below the footplate is no easier to decide. Obviously there is much to gain from a white line along the maroon solebar but how about the white lines around the steps uprights and on the wheel spokes and round the tender frame cutouts? Using the three foot viewing standard, a little bit of artistic training (to A level in the 60s), and not being a museum standard wallah, where do I draw the line (pun intended)? Or not? I'm using HMRS LNER loco black-white-black pressfix (very impressed) but finding the curves difficult to get smooth. I hope it's OK bringing this slight digression, Steve, but I suspect others might be in the same quandary. Graham (now back home in North Shields)

I made some step treads from angled brass strip from Eileen's. I'm tempted to follow you through the 104 step by step. No pressure though. Greetings from Kolkata (Calcutta in old money).

Thanks for restarting the 104. I will follow it with interest. Where do you source the drawings featured at the beginning of your post? The Hornby chassis you are using has been slated in reviews but I think it moves quite well. What's your experience? Keep up the good work, Graham

Quite sublime, Warren. What skill and attention to detail! I love the driver's moustache. I'm looking for some white-black-red lining for my Caley 482 black 0-6-0 tank. Is there a source of transfers for it that doesn't mean two separate white and red lines parallel but apart? All power to you, Graham

Just picked up my interest in pre-group Callander and Oban again but am just finishing off long incomplete stock from my youth (pre 1973) so far. 55 class Oban Bogie nearly complete and some WCJS coaches waiting. Graham

Hi Andy, From what or where is the 0-6-0 backplate with all that detail on? My mostly assembled kit was bought without any cab detail as the xo4 motor filled it, Graham

I realised that I was taking the wrong place on the j83 chassis as the datum for the footplate! It fits fine. All I have to do now is to reshape the front and rear of the chassis and make fixing points. Super work on the 49, Steve

Thanks. Yes, I've enjoyed going through the main caley locos site. Most ingeneous and, might I say, adventurous! I have a j83 chassis from which I have removed a fair amount of metal to try to fit them into a 782 cast kit which I have resurrected after 40 years. Unfortunately I have found it is too tall to fit inside. What has been your experience of fitting it into the 104's boiler?