Ian Major

Nasty. It looks like you have two gone on the top bogie. With the two gears on one shaft, both same diameter and tooth pitch, I wonder why they don't use a single wide gear to engage with the worm. It would be more robust. Shame 'cos you had done a lovely job on it. Ian.

John, Your assumption is correct. If it were to cut left to right the top rake ( which slops from right to left in your photo) would tip the opposite way. The cutting point on your tool is top right on your photo - you will note that the front, top and right hand side slope away from this point which indicate the direction of cut. Ian.

John, Getting parts, as opposed to tools, for Unimat lathes can be challenging. The first thing that you will almost certainly need will be replacement drive belts. Below is a quote from a David (LO) Smith entry on the Gauge 0 Guild Forum on the subject. (David is a member of the G0G Techical Comittee and appears in various guises on several modelling forums). "Unimat belts are totally ridiculous in my view; they are i) cheekily expensive, ii) far too small/tight and, iii) overly large in cross-section. ... but the solution to all of this is to buy 4mm round belting that you can make up your self (eg Whitsales UK) £4.95 including postage for 1m. I cut the belt to length so that it will be barely tight, heat the ends (I have made a blade the fits in my 40W soldering iron, but most people use a cigarette lighter or micro-flame torch) and I then press them together. After a half a minute or so, it will have cooled to allow the raggedy bits to be trimmed off with a sharp scalpel. The belt is available in various diameters and the 3mm will work just as well, particularly for the auto-feed, if you have one. " The next requirement will probably be motor brushes. If I may offer another bit of advice, get to know your lathes characteristics before trying any milling. You will find micro mills and lathes are more flexible than their larger brethren (physically rather than functionally) which is shown up by the lateral forces exerted by milling operations. When you do start to mill, aim to do "conventional" rather than "climb" milling. Below illustrates the difference. Climb milling produces a better finish but with micro machines the mill tend to flex away from the work rather than cut to the expected depth. You then will probably find the mill will bite in to the work, which will probably damage both the work and the mill bit. I know this because ... ? The above is side milling. When you end mill you will find that tend to flex to one side with micro machines. With experience you will learn to compensate for this. Whatever, with micro machines deep cuts will end up in tears. Take it steady! Ian.

John, You have been given some excellent pointers and advice above. I will add a couple of things. 1) When you need to replace/obtain drill bits do so via specialist tool suppliers eg Drill Service (Horely) Ltd . A guy who who knows a lot more about tools and modelling put it to me "don't get your bits from the usual model railway exhibitions". I didn't heed this advice and ended up with badly ground bits that cut over size and wandered. From the specialists you can get bits with very small cutting diameter with a wider shank that are more securely held in the collets. 2) Get yourself a centre (slocumb) drill. When, for example, I do end drilling, I use one to accurately start the hole. One day you will be doing turning between centres. For this the centre drill produces the correct profile hole in the end of the piece to take the centre. The following are 3mm examples. 3) If you haven't already got one, buy yourself a micrometer to measure your turned work - or anything else for that matter. My micrometer is one the the most used tools on my bench. I am sure you will enjoy using the lathe once you have had a few sessions with it. Ian.

Lovely work. The next time we take the grandchildren out for lunch I must remember to retain the empty Tomato Ketchup packets. I don't use the stuff myself. This would go in to my pockets along with the small, empty jam jars that I collect from cafes. I do get some funny looks when I am doing it. Ian.

Hendie, Those supports deserve to be the centre of a model in their own right. I am not sure what though - Steam Punk indeed! Ian.

First - thank you all for the likes. It is most appreciated. Finally on "Jane" for now scans of my chicken scratchings which may or may not be of interest. They are intended to add on to Laurie's words. My notes on the buffer/beam are above. I like to start my project with a basic history of my subject. It helps to keep my mind focused - the older I get the more it wanders! Next my notes on the frames. The cylinder assembly. The valve gear... The cab... The boiler/smokebox... Balance weights, brakes and front buffer beam lamp support... On to the next loco in the pipeline. Ian.

Thanks George. Just trying to keep up with your standards. Ian .

Hendie, I agree with Ian. I notice on the left of your photo you have some spare sleepers. I think I would use them to experiment. If it looked fine and to your taste then go with it. As you say you don't want to glue ballast on to your base only to find that you didn't like it. Everyone I know who do ballasting use diluted PVA on to the ballast after it is brushed between the sleepers. Something to watch here is that some ballast chippings go green if they react with the PVA. The watchword is "experiment" on a test piece - something you are very good at doing. Ian.

Jane Part 2 To complete the loco I will (try to) make some lettering transfers. I have some Hannants Xtradecal (blank) for this. Obviously I will be trying test pieces first. Then satin varnish and finally glazing. Some photos of the painted loco. The chassis has no paint on it. This was chemically blackened as per Martyn Welch's MRJ article. I did this at the time of construction. In the intervening years the black has tended towards a dark grey/brown. We actually had a bit of sunshine. So I managed to bang off a few piccies in the garden before it rained on me. Then the rain came and I had to rush indoors. Fortunately Jane and the wagons seems water proof. I took this low level shot to show the condenser tucked up under the roof. It was a nightmare to fit. This is also the only view where the steam brake cylinder is visible under the cab floor. It also reveals the heads of the screws that retain the tool box and the removable cab sides. One thing I need to address. The buffer bodies have to be on raised plates since the main bufferbeams are below standard height (as they were on the prototype). The extra plate packs the buffers out which results in the Standard Slater's chain links being too short. I couldn't resist a sepia photo. The bufferbeam needs toning down! So - now it is on to the next paint job. In the meantime Jane will return to the display case. I have scanned all my notes in, so will publish them here. Ian.

Excellent stuff. The "signal gantry" idea to support the roof is intriguing. That would not have occurred to me! Is it worth ballasting the track? That is well short of a diorama but it would improve the appearance of the sleepers. Ian.

Jane (the Painted Lady) Part 1 One of the first locos to start moving in my paint shop is my Wantage Railway No 5 ("Jane"). Some of its history. I made it about 18 years ago using the Model Railway Journal articles (1999/2000) written by Laurie Griffin. Volumes 114 to 122 have parts 1 to 9 cover construction. In Vol 123 is part 10 which is written by Martyn Welch dealing with painting the model. They are excellent articles describing scratch building techniques and include plenty of photos of the prototype, plans and templates for cutting out platework. For additional material I bought a copy of Branch Line to Wantage by Vic Mitchell and Keith Smith. I modelled "Jane" as it was from 1936 to the closure of the line in 1945. During this time it only had one lamp bracket on its front bufferbeam. The other, I suspect, was knocked off during one of its trips off the track as it did on 8th Jan 1936, where ran across Grove Street and went left had buffer first in to a nearby solid brick wall. There are plenty of images of "Jane" on the Web. My favourite is a delightful clip from a British Pathe film. It shows No 5 in action and some useful shots in the cab. Towards the end of the clip it shows her taking the route to the Lower Yard at Wantage. It is a miracle how it stayed on the track . See here: I made most of the plate work out of nickle silver. The photo shows it at an early stage of construction. I made the inside valve gear working - an interesting challange squeezing it in gaps between the frames and the well tank. Part of the valve gear can be seen through the frame cutout. When the brake gear etc were added to the chassis the valve gear became pretty well hidden! A photo of the loco with a couple of wagons to give an idea of its size. Probably the hardest part of the build was creating the concentric circles of rivets which are on the rear of the smoke box and the front flange of the boiler. I used a GW rivet tool. The X/Y co-ordinates of each rivet being worked out using an Excel table with formulae. The photo shows the result. The rear of the smoke box and the boiler flange are separate pieces. Clearances around the leading wheels is very tight. The Slaters wheels showing rust already. On Laurie's model he did not include the front glands on the steam chests. I decided to add these. They consist of thin walled brass tube which extend right through the valve chest and protrude about 1.5mm at the front. On each extension are two diamond shaped pieces of brass to represent the flanges with short lengths of 0.5mm wire represent the bolts. The valve spindles pass right through and waggle back and forth a small amount when the engine is running - great fun, though you would hardly notice! The buffer beam is basewood covered top, bottom, front and rear with N/S platework. I used Slater's GWR tapered buffers which I converted to self be contained. The plate on to which the buffers are attached does not have a hole in it. So the buffer body is modified by cutting the rear extension off. The central hole can then be bored throughout with a reamer or a single diameter drill. A hole is drilled in the underside and tapped 14BA. This takes a 14BA grub screw which retains the buffer ram. The supplied springs were cut in half since they are contained completely inside the buffer body. Converting the Slater's rams - this consisted of turning a brass bush 0.5mm thick with a diameter slightly larger than the hole in the centre of the buffer body. This bush was drilled to be a sliding fit on the ram. The bush was soldered on to the ram 3mm behind the existing wide part (not the head). The threaded part of the ram was put in the lathe chuck and the bush turned down to be a sliding fit in the body. Then the threaded part was cut off immediately behind the bush. Hopefully the following photo makes this clear. (Self contained buffers in model form are not my invention. ) ... and a copy of my construction notes including dimensions - if you can read them! Before I started to paint the loco I tried running the chassis on my rolling road. When built it had run nicely. After greater than 16 years without turning a wheel it would barely move despite fresh oiling. I cleaned it up, re-oiled it then it ran much better but is still very stiff. I fear to get it running freely again I will have to strip the chassis to give it a thorough service. That will have to wait for another time. Now if we get some sunshine I will photo the Painted Lady outside. Ian.

Now - where did I get up to...? The MACAW H has had a basic paint job. Next up was to be some lettering using transfers. I was intending to get these from Fox on my annual trip to Telford. The plague put paid to that trip, so I will be getting these on line. To keep the postage down I am moving other projects to a similar stage and batch up all the transfer requirements. I started work on the MACAW B. Since I am going to fit it with DC brakes, I produced replacement solebar overlays (as per my previous entry). General construction will be similar to the H. At this point I need to cut out the false floor in plastic card. I bought a "deep cutting" blade for my Silhouette cutter. These were a new release. Sadly, there is a software error that results in a spurious cut appearing on the work. I am registered for their Beta testing so I raised 4 (four) software error reports with Silhouette supplying loads of evidence. I waited...and waited. Eventually I got a response saying "Thank you for your error report. Unfortunately all your evidence has been deleted. If it is still a problem please resubmit." This was followed with the cancellation of Beta testing, meaning submitting evidence became that much more difficult. I will carry on trying to get a fix to this problem. I the meantime I have put the B on hold. Instead I am firing up the paint shop. I hate painting 'cos I am no good at it! I have a few finished locos resplendent in not so shiny brass effect. These will need transfers which means I will order them at the same time as those for the wagons. A few photos of MACAW progress. The first couple are the painted H awaiting its lettering posed alongside the beginnings of the B. The next shows one of the completed B solebars with the replacement overlay fitted. The last is the B etch. The red outline highlights the components to make pin rack/lever type brake. The green outlines the parts to use on the DC brake. Amongst the latter, the part that looks like a quarter of a gear wheel and the part immediately below (which looks like a swan with a hole in its shoulder) are not suitable for the B. They are the shape used on earlier double ended DC brakes. I will scratch the correct version of these. I will also create a representation of a Hayward slack adjuster which is very visible on Bs and Hs when viewed from the side. Now I'm off to the paint shop. First up will be a Painted Lady. Ian.

Here you go George. A couple of shots of my "Jane" which sat in a complete, but unpainted state for nearly 18 years. Painting nearly done - I need to (try to) produce some water slides for the lettering. I think my black paint is a bit tired and gloopy. The chassis was totally chemically blackened 18 years ago and is fading to a grey brown. Ian.

Interesting. I was judging your pencil line since it is horizontal and straight. Even with pilot holes I would probably still get wavy lines! My prairie is coming along nicely. I have also dug out some completed locos to put with it in the paint shop. These other locos are complete but in bare metal- one of which has been like that for nearly a quarter of a century. It hadn't turned a wheel in that time and was well and truly seized, shades of Barry wrecks. I will update my thread in a few days with some pickies. Ian.

George, that looks very nice. What technique do you use to established the horizontal line for the handrail support holes? I always find it a bit of a challenge to avoid wavy lines, especially on tapered boilers with Belpaire fireboxes. Ian.

Yay. That looks good - can't have you running dry! I think I will have to get myself fitted with one since we are not supposed to meet up with friends in the local around here at the mo. Ian.

Nice work George. It might be an old kit but it has scrubbed up well. If the locomotive turns out equally well it will make an attractive model. Are you going to fabricate a water scoop for that tender (or is there actually one that is hidden from the camera)? It would be a nice little challenge for you. Ian.

Collett, My thanks for sharing these files. I am intending to build a model of what was my local station which was of this type. I can try the SVG file out on my Silhouette cutter. I find SVG files easy to read and edit - even with Notepad. The station in question was Littleton and Badsey on the Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton main line in south Worcestershire. Stretton-on-Fosse was on the Shipston branch of the OWW. The two stations were about 12 miles apart. L&B was an 1880s station. The OWW was part of the GWR by that time. So it is very likely, as you say, the building panels were Swindon made. Below are some photos of the station building. I took them so the copyright is with me. Unfortunately their quality is not of the highest thanks to them being processed and printed by my High Street Chemist. There are plenty of other photos of the front in books such as Chris Leigh's first "GWR Country Stations" or Mitchel and Smith's book "Morton in Marsh to Worcester". None include a photo of the rear of the building which is included below. The doors were left to right Booking Office, Private and (I think) Ladies toilet/waiting room. The door at the end was the Gent's toilet. Hope they are of interest to you. Ian.

Nice work in deed. Some of the holes look a bit on the large side to me. Is this a case of a 7mm kit produced from a blown up 4mm one? Ian.

Sumo, My approach is to cut out the plastic card, cardboard, whatever on a self healing cutting mat. They always have a good straight edge. I line the edge of the item being cut with the edge of the cutting mat then use the engineer's square on both of them. The square's blade will sit flat on the item being cut and if they are both butted up hard to the square you will get a good right angle cut. I too hope that makes sense! Ian.

George, the loco looks great. As you say, back under stricter lockdown conditions again. A friend of my wife's suggested that to allow family to gather at Christmas we should hold a funeral for the turkey. That way we could gather 30 people together! I am keeping an eye out for Warren Shephard's upcoming 2251 kit. I am sorely tempted. I even have a number in mind - 2232! Ian.

George, I am looking forward very much to this build. I don't recognize a 2225 class. Is it a Collett 0-6-0 tender engine? If so it will be a 2251 class which will make a lovely model. It should be very sale-able as well since they were very versatile - they were used for local passenger, light goods and banking. So it would easily fit in to most small or large GW layouts. 2225 was one of these but does not appear in my 1960 Combined ABC book. I you wanted to you could go to town with the tender. Some had ex Aberdare tenders. One of the Worcester 2251s had the tender from a withdrawn Robinson ROD 2-8-0. Only 3205 has made it to preservation. My Mother loved railways and enjoyed riding on the Glous & Warks Railway and was keen to have a trip on it when the line was extended to Cheltenham Racecourse. She was not well at the time so I took her ASAP for a trip along the line. The engine that pulled us on that occasion was 3205. She died a few weeks later. Hence I have a particular affection for that loco! Ian.

Hendie, I am afraid I have run out of words to describe your work on Pegasus. A thought on mounting the roof... In the model ship world I have seen some interesting methods to overcome similar problems. 18th century sailing ships would probably have 3 or more boats. Whilst sailing, a couple of these would be stowed on board lashed to a pair of spare masts. The long boat would be towed alongside towards the starboard rear of the ship. Now some of the guys who make full hull models like to represent this . Problem - there is no (artificial) water on which to float the long boot. Their answer is to make a perspex support .that extends up the side of the ship to make a cradle for the longboat. In Pegasus' case a possibility would be to have a vertical perspex support that would stand behind the carriage. From this support a couple of perspex rods could project horizontally forward. The roof would then rest on these rods. The roof would in effect hover above the carriage body. Viewed from above one could see the roof ventilators and down in to the passenger areas. Viewed from slightly below horizontal the under side of the roof would be visible. No risk to the carriage. BTW. Being extremely nosy, I am always interested in what goes on in the background of photos. For example, in your case I am intrigued by Marg Simpson, Yoda (apparently stopping a reel of solder floating away), a galloping wolf and a diver's helmet. Actually I believe this form of nosiness helps with good modelling which is all about observation. Oh dear. I am being all pompous again! Ian.

Mikkel/Don, I have just read the item linked by Don. I possess (at least) two books that describe the "Battle". One is in LTC Rolt's biography of Brunel. The other is in Vol 1 of "History of the Great Western Railway by ET MacDermot (revised by CR Clinker). The MacDermot book was published in 1927 at (I believe) the request of and with the assistance of the GWR directors. Work on the history started at the time of Grouping. The MacDermot version is the most detailed and it appears that the account extracted from Terry Coleman's book is an embellished version of this! Ian.