nickd

All done and ready to ship. Thanks to Paul Moore for the paint and Robin McHugh for details and help.

Taster. Come and see it at Barnsley tomorrow.

The Atlantic is back from paint and reassembled. I'll test it tomorrow and add coal etc. Painted by Pail Moore and with a lot of help from Robin McHugh. I think it has turned out well, and I have forgotten about the abominable kit. More pics to come when I get a pro to take some.

I spent a lot of this week sorting other locos out and going too and fro from the painter. I did however make up the rear drag box and cylinder block and made a chassis. I pored over the drawing I have and measurements showed the Slater's cast brass axleboxes to be an almost perfect match for the ones on this loco. They required a little bit of modification round the front wheel and some fettling to make them fit nicely. Surprisingly the bearings were a nice sliding fit in most of the cast horns. I used solder on the horn cheeks to take away any end float and have used those cast horns for the front wheels. The LGM motion kit has slide bars that are very close match, but they did require a fair bit of fettling and straightening to make them function smoothly. The crank castings had a crank throw that was too big and therefore the slidebars wouldn't contain, luckily Laurie had some that were near perfect, so I have swapped mine. I managed to work out how the Stephenson link motion works (with the help of an engineer!) It is very similar to the arrangement that Broad Gauge locos had (and I have built a few of those in the last couple of years!) So here's the chassis with the slidebars test fitted and the footplate on top. Here's how I aligned the cylinder covers on the cylinder block, it's a cocktail stick with masking tape wound round to achieve the correct diameter. It reminds me of a clutch alignment tool I made years ago, from a bit of broom handle and some parcel tape, when fitting a new clutch and refitting the gearbox on a Reliant Scimitar I owned for ages in the 90s. Also I have misplaced my 6'' rule somewhere in the workshop/house and it is driving me potty!

It's time for a new project, and this is a very esoteric one indeed. It's a Cambrian Railway Albion Tank. The CR bought 12 2-4-0 tender locos from Sharp-Stewart in the 1860s (and so did the Furness Railway, which is the origin of the GA I have used.) They chugged around for quite a while, aquiring new boilers and better brakes etc, and in 1907 two were converted into tank locos and ran on the Barmouth to Pwllheli line. These are the two locos I am building, nos, 44 and 56. Taff Vale Models have recently introduced a kit for the tender version of the loco, I have been sent a set of custom etches from Julian at TVM ordered by my client to build the tank version. The build is to be an all singing and dancing model. The first step was to build a footplate. The locos had a wooden buffer beam at the front and the custom etches had a series of brass overlays that were designed to be planted behind either sides of the buffer beam to give the illusion of a wooden plank. I didn't much like that so got a local joinery to cut some wooden ones from a left over lump of mahogony (from a sustainable source of course!) I modified the buffer beam etches to suit. The etches had no castings included but luckily Markins (via Roxey Mouldings) do some rather nice turned ones. These were modified slightly to be self contained. The wooden bits slot in and out so they won't get wet when neutralising acid fluxes after a soldering session. The next but was to make a chassis. The chassis frames supplied were fine, but the stays were only 24 mm wide (with cusps) which would have resulted in a chassis only 25 mm wide. This is far too narrow to fit inside motion, and also the kit stays were a bit randomly placed. I cut out some more with a better representation of the rear drag beam and cylinder block. Next week I have to build a pair of chassis and incorporate the slide bars and crossheads. Here's an interesting little loco I have been building on the side for someone. It's a GWR 2196 class built from an Agenoria kit. As is usual with Agenoria the kit was a delight to build. Everyone should build an Agenoria kit at some stage, they fit together very nicely, especially for a hand drawn kit. It's at paint now. Also noteworthy are the crew I bought from Andrew Stadden and had painted by Evan Griffiths. Evan is really a Wargamer/D&D(?) guy but does excellent paint jobs on my crews. All properly researched etc. (evilevan666@yahoo.com) Skeggy anyone?

Important that models run smoothly at very slow speed.

Here it is running on DCC. The chuffs are a bit out of sync, and I usually get that, and a bit of 'tuning-in,' done before delivery. This model however has a Zimo chip. I usually use ECU decoders and Rob @ Modelyard in Leeds sorts out the firmware for me as part of his fee for the hardware. There's no one I know of in Yorks that can supply and tune Zimo decoders professionally, unless someone out there knows differently......

Quite a squeeze. I can see that a quick blow with an aerosol of carburetor cleaner might be in order now.

My it's all so small. Scratchbuilt con rods and redrilled modified crank webs with new journals. The crossheads were 'shrunk down' by cutting the castings up and reassembling. The slide bars have a crank throw length of 10 mm, so new cranks were made with 5 mm centres and a 3 mm journal.

Due to rain I put a bit of a shift in at the wekend and managed to finish the brake gear and sander stuff. There's brake hangers and shoes in the kit but nothing else of any use, so most of it is castings sourced elsewhere (LGM mainly) and scratchbuilt stuff. There was enough cash in the budget to build the inside motion and I bought one of Laurie's Stephenson kits. One for an LSWR loco was the nearest, but horror of horrors lots of the castings were much too big for such a small loco. A process of miniaturisation has begun. I new the shrinking-raygun would come in useful. This will be my challenge for tomorrow, the crank webs/journals were waaay too big so I reshaped them and drilled them for a new 3.0 mm big end journal. What could possibly go wrong with that? I'm probably going to have to make a pair of con rods too. Hope there's some left over etches from something else to get me going.

So in the last week or so I have burned through the detail parts of the model. The last structure that had to be made was the backhead. There was a white metal thing in the kit which was approximately the right shape with cast blobs to represent some of the fittings. To be fair the casting was a bit too short and, being white metal, was a bit too thick. I needed to have the volume inside the backhead available in case the space was needed to accommodate the motor. Turns out that the Slater's SG38 gearbox fitted with a Taff Vale 1525 was still too tall for the boiler, so the Taff Vale worm and gear gearbox is now fitted. Lots of the backhead fittings are from a Laurie Griffin set, as is the steam reverser. Everything is dtachable for paint. Theres more pics here https://www.flickr.com/photos/144381574@N05/with/52767202593/ The bodywork is virtually done and just about within budget, so I think were ON for a bit of inside motion activity! The client would like all the push-pull fittings included so if anyone has any insight into what was there I'd be grateful.

Hi comrades, does anyone have a decent picture of the steam reverser rodding on top of the tank and inside the cab? It's time to fit the parts up!

Yes the frames were dished like this. It's common feature on older locos. If you look at the frames you can see I put a cheeky joggle in them behind the rear driver. This is to allow the (S7) loco to go round a 6' rad curve without having to cut the frames to clear the bogie wheels. There's so much flange to railhead slop in FS that I doubt the joggle would be needed. Then it's just a case of limiting the bogie movement so the wheels don't touch the frames.

It's a trick of the eye. It's an overlay on the back of the chassis.

I finally got the castings together that I needed to complete the 439. I have finished the cab and boiler backhead and it will go off to paint on Monday. I added the front door to the ashpan. I'll post more pics when it's painted and reassembled.

Most societies eg SRPS have drawings of the locomotives they own, the NRM archive has many thousands of railway drawings in it's catalogue. I have used Isinglass drawings and they're ok for a general outline but a GA is much more useful.

I should change the title of my thread.

Dunno about Rob but I get my drawings from societies, the NRM or just helpfull fellow modellers. Isinglass drawings not much use in 7 mm.

Aaargh! DMR Z Class. I built one in 7 mm and it was appalling. Well to be fair it was another kit that was just about buildable and looked a bit like a Z, it was rather in the same vein as this P build. If you want accuracy though the piercing saw has to come out of the box! I remember the etch for the footplate. The designer placed some very high expectations on the modeller to be able to form it correctly. And even if they did the resulting structure was wrong. I bet the 7 mm etches are just the 4 mm ones enlarged. The fold lines aren't quite wide enough making it hard to get 90° bends without panel distortion. That's a classic problem with 4 mm kits blown up to 7 mm. This might help you with your Z build. Notice how the bunker tapers from the cab entrance to the rear of the body, and that there's a subtle vertical fold line in the bunker about half way along to increase the taper. https://www.flickr.com/gp/144381574@N05/KZD5PTw802 If you fish around in my other Flickr albums you'll find more Z drawings there too.

More P Class 'fun.' Since the last post I have added the bits of the tanks inside the cab, the cab floor and the lockers/splashers. I had to cut the floor in half to get it in but thats OK as I'll be adding planking later. I made the cab roof next. It's quite challenging to make with all the guttering and the verandah shape. I roughed the end bits of guttering out of scrap, soldered them on and fashioned it to shape with my grinder. The bag of castings in the background are for the loco. Most of it is only useful as fishing weights. oops a bit squint in that photo. Also in the pics you can see that I have added the rest of the lamp irons. The GA only shows 4 irons front and rear. was the additional middle pair a SR addition? Also you can see from the above pic (if you zoom in!) that the front top lamp iron has a small additional hook incorporated in it. In the historic photo of number 325 you can see cord/air hose(?) connections from the front and rear coaches. Presumably this is a coms system for push-pull working. Anyone any idea how it works and has any details of it? Ta.

So cracking on, this week I have built a boiler and smokebox. The boiler in the kit is too big, the smokebox is the wrong shape (and too big) and the tanks too wrong, although I did use the tank sides, modified of course. I just didn't like the way the tanks were designed with front, top and rear that go across from side to side. The top of the boiler and firebox just sits on the tank top. By the time I had reduced the tank sides to the height of one of the later 6 (the tanks and bunker in the kit are too low for the first 2 and too high for the last 6) the boiler would have sat too low. I made my own. Phew.

Here are the cab sides that I cut out using my GA as a reference. You can see the dimensional differences. The cab was also too narrow so I had to cut out cab front, back and bunker rear. Here is everything assembled. Today I measured up the smokebox parts and found the former to be too high and too big in diameter, which wouldn't have been such an issue if the base wasn't woefully narrow. So I am scratchbuilding a boiler and smokebox and firebox then fitting the tanks round it all. Of course the cab roof will not now fit so I'll have to make one of those as well. I am having some difficult conversations with the client about the cost of a small 0-6-0T locomotive.

Hi all I wonder if someone could help. You can see from the attached photos my model with it's scratchbuilt cab. It is substantially different in dimensions to the kit cab! Of course the kit boiler doesn't fit so I'm scratchbuilding one of those too now. The tank tops extend beyond the inner edge of the tank sides up to the boiler clothing. Can anyone tell me whether there's a gap between the tank top and boiler clothing or does the boiler clothing sit on top of the tank top? Thanks