mikemeg

LNER B4 One more step to do before the slide bars are fabricated and shaped is to cut and fit the oilers/valve spindle bearings into the valve guide spacer. These are cut from the 2.4 mm tube and then slotted ono a piece of 1.6 mm rod which is then lined up into the 1.8 mm holes in the steam chest spacers. If the rod slides easily through the valve guides then the inside motion should line up, once fitted. The piece of 1.6 mm rod is then removed once the oiler/bearing is soldered into the spacer. Cheers Mike

LNER B4 A little more progress on the B4 chassis, with the motion plates, front sandboxes and cylinder internals added. The valve guides have also been fitted to the motion plate to facilitate the fitting of the internal valve motion. Next up is the fabrication and fitting of the slide bars. I was, initially, a little sceptical at the use of .015" nickel silver for the mainframes but that scepticism is now dismissed as the assembled chassis is both very rigid and very robust. The countersunk holes at the bottom of the chassis, each side of the mainframe horn block cut outs are to accept 14BA countersunk bolts for attaching the mainframe springs. All of the tube, brass rod and wire (0.3mm, 0.45mm, 0.7 mm) is supplied in the kit, which does make 'provisioning' for this build very much easier. Cheers Mike

Hi John, Good to hear from you and many thanks for the comments. From a rather tentative beginning, while I assimilate your design and engineering methods, I think I'm now making reasonable progress. I'm just completing the internals of the cylinders so too late to implement the modification referred to above. I still stand by my comment that this kit is not for the faint-hearted though that isn't, nor ever was, a criticism. As I think I've said, the design, engineering, packaging and the instructions are just superb. I do intend to fit the internal valve gear and for that valve gear to work; well that's the plan. Anyway, many thanks for your posting and I'll keep posting the progress. Regards Mike

LNER B4 Having now further explored the instructions and made a start on the locomotive chassis, I'm in a little bit of a quandry as to how much and what to say about this kit, given that it is no longer in production. First thing to say is that the kit was designed to be built to P4 or EM gauges, there being no provision for 'OO' in any of the etched parts requiring 'spacing'. Second thing to say is that certainly, this is one of the most comprehensively detailed kits that I've ever seen. On the chassis, alone, there are some 236 separately referenced parts, and this does not include any duplication of 'spacer' parts with P4 and EM alternatives. There are also some 25 common items referenced (rod, tube, wire, etc). The instruction set is a veritable masterpiece of 'step by step' description of the assembly of this kit, with numerous diagrams illustrating positional arrangements of various parts. In reading the instructions and after having built any number of Arthur Kimber's kits, I was intrigued that I couldn't find any reference, in the instructions, to matching the spacing of the axle horn blocks to the spacing of the journals in the coupling rods using a chassis jig. The kit is etched for and does contain six horn blocks from Markits. Checking the cut outs in the mainframes, against these horn blocks they were all a tight fit but with only the lightest of filing (two or three strokes) of a fine needle file, the horn blocks all moved very sweetly within their mainframe cut outs. I assume, therefore, that the coupling rod journal spacing is exactly matched to the spacing of these mainframe cut outs. Anyway, after pressing out the rivets in the ashpan (36 on each side) and then assembling and locating the ashpan and after checking and fitting the various mainframe stretchers and firebox, cab and smokebox support plates, I now have an assembled chassis and can now move on to assembling the cylinders. I did omit one of the prototype mainframe stretchers, which is more cosmetic than structurally necessary, so as to avoid any conflict with anything (final drive gear wheel) fitted to the centre driving axle, though this can be retro fitted if necessary. Many of the parts, which are fitted to the mainframes, are located using 0.3 mm holes, both in the part and in the mainframes, into which 0.3 mm wires can be used as guides for locating and lining up such parts. Instead of using wire, I used a couple of very small broaches - small enough to fit into a 0.3 mm hole - to do this lining up. This I find much easier than using wire though one is obviously left with these small holes in the mainframes. Cheers Mike

Thanks Chas, In between doing the B4, I'm now attaching these fencing sections to the layout. Looking over the model fencing does take me back, sixty five or so years, to a young lad and his youthful mates, leaning on the railway fence on a warm, summer Saturday and just watching a seemingly never ending procession of trains. I guess it's one of the advantages of modelling a real location that the model invokes so many memories of a time and place, now 2/3 of a century ago, yet still vividly recalled. Regards Mike

LNER B4 As an introduction to this topic, a little history. I bought this kit from John Bateson some years ago, when John was developing and selling 4mm loco kits under the name of Great Central Models. Sadly, John no longer produces kits or trades under that name which is a great loss. I can well remember a conversation with John, in a Wakefield School car park at Scalefour North, where we both kind of committed to trying to build 4 mm models of all of the LNER 'B' classes and there were some eighteen of them. This commitment is now probably modified to 'as many as we can', given that I have only so far done B1, B15 and B16 and many of these 'B' classes were further sub-divided i.e. B16/1, B16/2 and B16/3 which were visibly quite different. Anyway, the kit is quite beautifully packed and very comprehensive; containing everything, except wheels, motor and gearbox, necessary to build a 4mm model of the Great Central Class 8K / LNER B4. Starting with the loco mainframes, these were parted from the etch, all cusp removed and then the rows of rivets under the smokebox, were very gently pressed out. I normally use a slightly blunted compass point for this and will go over the rivets pressing five or six times until they are sufficiently prominent. All mainframe drillings of 0.33 mm, 0.5mm, 0.7 mm and1.05 mm were then done before adding the springing supports, These supports use Alan Gibson short handrail stanchions orientated with some 0.3 mm wire and then soldered into the mainframes, after which the protruding tails are filed back flush with the outside of the mainframe. I used the Alan Gibson short stanchions, rather than the Markits ones provided, simply because the Gibson ones have a larger shoulder. The photo, below, shows the outside of one frame with the spring support tails filed flush and the inside of the other mainframe with the positioning wire in place before removal. Cheers Mike

Before I launch into the 'blow by blow' of the B4 build, earlier in this thread I referred to scratch building some NER / LNER lineside fencing, though I never did illustrate this build with any pictures. This was due to my losing the photo editor (an old Adobe product) from the very old laptop which I use for editing and storing my photos and which is also the system I use for accessing RMWeb. Anyway, that loss has now been made good - as if by magic - by the appearance, on this old laptop, of a much more current and far more capable photo/video editor courtesy of Microsoft, so normal service can be resumed on the thread. So the lineside fencing. First thing to say is that I wanted this fencing to be removable from the layout baseboards so that it would escape damage if and when the layout baseboards are moved. Second thing to say is that I wanted to use wood rather than plasticard microstrip to model this wooden fencing. Third thing to say is that because I used wood, then rather than paint the finished fencing I could 'dye' the fencing using a water based paint very heavily diluted which would give that variation in colour and texture. So the basic material is 1mm balsa, which came in sheets 4" x 4". These sheets were cut into strips approx. 2mm deep for the posts and 1.3 mm deep for the rails. For the posts, two layers were stuck together, producing strips 2 mm square, which were then each filed back to around 1.6 mm square. In total some 360 posts 24mm long (deliberately over sized but mounted to produce a 14mm fence height) were cut and some 450 fencing rail sections, each around 1.3 mm deep. The hardboard fence support pieces, which were cut to match the depth of the baseboard sides and which were of varying lengths, were then fitted with various paper and cardboard formers to mark out the fence post positions and carry various other data items. Anyway the fencing was then assembled, using very fine tweezers, a magnifying glass, PVA and Evo-stik adhesives. One of the most tedious modelling jobs I have ever done - the whole 27 feet of fencing took nearly a month to produce - but the results seem to warrant the time and tedium. So, in a nutshell, that is the scratch built lineside fencing. Hopefully the photo sequence will help to explain the process. The final photo shows eight of the total of twelve sections produced. The green painted areas, lightly flocked, are intended to cover the white paper used for marking out the fencing, when the sections are fitted to the baseboards and to identify the baseboard section and position. All of the paper and card sections are hidden when the fencing boards are fitted. Anyway, the diversion from the loco building is, for the time being, complete, so now for the B4 and a whole different set of challenges!! Cheers Mike

Hi Simon, Like you, my modelling period - June, 1950 - pretty well excludes LNER apple green, except for B1's and the early Peppercorn A1's, which were finished in apple green though with British Railways numbers and markings. So a locomotive still exhibiting full LNER apple green with LNER markings, in mid 1950, couldn't really be missed. That said, I do have an LNER B15, all of which had gone by 1948, though that is in LNER black; much weathered, Cheers Mike

Now embarking on the construction of the Great Central B4 kit, a reminder of what the prototype looked like in its final years. Though this loco was not withdrawn until November 1950, it retained its LNER livery and markings until withdrawal. Like many pre-grouping locomotive designs these 4-6-0's just looked intrinsically right! An almost complete absence of externally fitted equipment and with each different section of the locomotive exhibiting flowing curves preserving that impression of perfectly balanced aesthetics. They were just lovely things!! The first photo shows the loco on Ardsley shed, the second photo shows the loco passing through Driffield presumably en route to or from either Bridlington or Scarborough. Both photos are courtesy my old mate Mick Nicholson, whose collection of photos is rapidly becoming legendary. Cheers MIke

John, The mechanical lubricator, shown on my photo of the superheated (or ex superheated) J21, is not an etching, it is one of Arthur's castings and I have a spare one if that will help you. Also, I have an assembled long smokebox (assembled just to check it out, even though it was superfluous from the last build which was saturated) with the pop rivetted wrapper. Arthur supplied both the flush rivetted and pop rivetted wrappers for both types of smokebox, flush for the NER and early LNER boilers; pop rivetted for the later LNER boilers fitted to this class. I'll check to see what other parts I have for J21's, given that I built three of them, all different in a number of features. PM me with your address (and phone number) and I'll send you the lubricator, assembled smokebox and whatever else I have which may be useful for your build. Regards MIke

Hi John, Measuring Arthur's extended smokebox wrapper, it comes out at around13.5 mm - a scale 3' 4 1/2"; the shorter, saturated wrapper comes out at around 10.5 mm - a scale 2' 7 1/2". Arthur used General Arrangement drawings to scale his etches, so reasonably safe to assume that these dimensions are correct. Arthur is indisposed at the moment, so contacting him for clarification isn't, currently, an option. The test build which I did of the extended smokebox (ex superheated) version is modelled on 65110, of which I have a few photographs. Hull had J21's before the war but, post war, they had all been re-allocated so I chose a Selby (50C) prototype for the saturated build - 65039 - and a Darlington (51A) prototype for the superheated build - 65110. These were the allocated sheds for these locos as at mid-1950. I did test build a third J21 as 65070 of Retford (36E); this to check revised etches. This one was not vacuum fitted (65039 and 65110 were vacuum fitted; 65039 also retained its Westinghouse pump) and also had the later, central, compensated brake pull rod; again 65039 and 65110 retained the brake pull rods outside of the driving wheels. Also worth noting that the handrails on the smokebox were continuous on the longer smokebox but with a separate front handrail on the shorter, saturated smokebox. Also, the superheated locos (and ex superheated) mounted a mechanical lubricator on the left hand side of the footplate. This because saturated (or wet) steam was a lubricant; superheated steam was not as efficient as a lubricant. Hope this helps. Regards Mike

Richard, My mistake! The last B4 was 1482, though the rest of the posting was correct; the loco was actually seen at Driffield during the summer of 1950 and was withdrawn in November 1950. So, yes, 1482 - Immingham - is the B4 I shall build. As to the North Eastern fencing, yes I scratch built it. I have this photo, shown below courtesy of my old mate Mick Nicholson, which shows the lineside fencing pretty well and, coincidentally, is the exact location of my Hessle Haven layout. All of the signals on this photo, including those beyond the bridge, have already been modelled, as has the bridge in the distance. That was the bridge where a youthful bunch of spotters first discovered and then spent many happy days watching the trains from 1957 to 1964. Apart from the up and down fast lines, all of this has now disappeared including the bridge. So photos such as this are a wonderful reminder of a time when the railway was just a joy to behold. I don't know the date of this photo but with the B1 carrying the full British Railways legend on its tender, then it's not far, either way, from June 1950, which is the date of my layout. The train looks as though it was the Hull portion of the up Yorkshire Pullman, which was attached to the Leeds - London portion at Doncaster. The three additional photos, below, are some of the scratch built signal models waiting to go onto the layout. Regards Mike

Richard, Many thanks for the kind words. As to the B4, reading through the instructions, a couple of months ago, I noticed that I needed 0.3 and 0.4 mm drills. Now my stock of such drills had exhausted and I also needed a new pin chuck which items were duly ordered from Eileen's Emporium. I received an e-mail, on their receipt of my order, informing me that many of their suppliers were now supplying on very long lead times so the delivery would be delayed. Later I received notification that Eileen's Emporium had gone into administration, so no drills were received, though I did get the pin chuck. While waiting for these items to arrive I restarted work on Hessle Haven, the layout, which has occupied me for the last five or six weeks. As to the B4, the last survivor which was 1482 (still in LNER lined green and numbered 1482) was withdrawn from Ardsley shed in late 1950 and, I believe, was seen on a working to the Yorkshire coast during summer of 1950. Certainly, during the first years of British Railways, there were occasional visits to Hull by some of the ex-Great Central 4-6-0's up to their withdrawal. Anyway, I have now completed the project on the layout - provision of some 27 feet of lineside fencing - and have found another supplier of small drills, so a start on the B4 is imminent. May I also wish readers of the thread the very Happiest of New Years. Cheers Mike

And in place, as the backing to the scene. This photo does pick up the variations in colour and texture on the fencing, which was always the desired effect. Perhaps unsurprisingly, all of the sleepers on this trackwork are also wood. These were cut from sheets, though here I used 1/16" obechi as it is much harder than balsa so shouldn't distort or compress when under any load. Might be that this scene just needs a couple of youthful spotters, 'copping' an A6 tank as they lean against the fence on a bright summer's afternoon. Days now long lost in the mists of time!! Cheers Mike

And this is what will be seen when the fencing is attached to the grass banks at the sides of the permanent way. Hopefully this conveys that almost rustic look of railway lineside fencing which was such a feature of the railways that we knew. Cheers Mike

The fencing is then assembled, from the 1.25 mm wide strips and stuck with evo-stic applied using a cocktail stick. This sounds (and looks) like a very tedious process but, surprisingly, it turned out to be quite the opposite and 31.875" of fencing was built in around three hours. The darker fencing cross pieces (is there a name for these? Yes, they are rails or backer rails) are pieces which were recovered and re-used from the original fencing build. All of the bits of cardboard and paper jigs will be hidden when the hardboard strip is fixed to the side member of the baseboard, as it is fixed with the fencing strips facing away from the trackwork, as per the photograph. The hardboard will be augmented by layers of card, applied to the bottom edge to facilitate a parallel fit with the baseboard framework. The assembled fencing will not be painted as such but is dyed using very diluted wood dye. This allows the texture and colour differences in the wood to be preserved. It actually looks like wood, which is the desired effect! In all I have some twenty seven feet of this fencing to build so around two / three weeks to complete the whole lot! Cheers Mike

The fencing is actually built on hardboard strips, in my case up to 31.875" long which was the length of the hardboard sheet. The hardboard strips are cut to a width which will allow then to be affixed to the edge of the baseboard and which can be 'unaffixed' if necessary. Attached to this hardboard strip are cardboard formers which will determine how far above the hardboard strip, the actual fence posts will protrude; in my case 14 mm i.e. a scale 3' 6". The paper strip added at the top of the cardboard is simply there to allow things to be written or marked. The photo is the end of one of the hardboard strips with the fence posts fitted at 24 mm (scale 6' 0") intervals. Cheers Mike

I'm not sure whether or not there is a commercially available product representing this lineside fencing or anything similar, but I would imagine, if there is, it would be some form of plastic moulded material. For me, to achieve that look of weathered and even distressed wooden fencing then the material had to be wood and the easiest wood(s) to use to achieve this look would be balsa or obechi. Both of these woods are very brittle so the design and the mounting of the fence, using these materials, would need to take account of that brittleness. I found a source of balsa wood 1mm thick, which was supplied in packs of 4" x 4" sheets with some twenty sheets in the pack, so this was the choice. Each sheet was then cut into strips, with some 1/16" wide (1.66 mm) and others 1.25 mm wide. The wider strips were glued together - using evostick applied with a cocktail stick - in pairs to produce a piece with a square section. These wider strips were then gently sanded down to remove any visible seams and to achieve the required section, around 1.6mm square for use as the fence posts. The narrower strips would be used for the cross members of the fencing. So far I have cut and assembled some eighty fence post strips, each of which provides four posts cut to 24 mm - 9 mm hidden, 15 mm showing. For the cross members, I have cut around two hundred strips, each of which is reduced to 96 mm length prior to fitting, though shorter lengths are also used to 'break up' the symmetry a little. Photo below shows the material, part used, and the relative sizes of the various wooden component strips, prior to cutting and fitting. Cheers Mike

By way of introduction to this thread, a little history. Some of the subscribers to this site may have read some of my other threads around building NER and LNER locomotive models, NER and LNER signals and a test track which I started building a few years ago. That test track became the first sections of a model of an actual place; a place where I and many of my youthful contemporaries first discovered and then spent many, many days watching that seemingly endless procession of trains, which was the railway of the late 1950's and early 60's. This on a railway system whose appearance was little changed in fifty years. The model was built around ten or eleven years ago and though it has been occasionally updated, nothing very much has been done on it for a few years. However, a few months ago I restarted work on the railway, initially repairing a few damaged areas and generally tidying it up. One of the casualties of its time in storage was some lineside fencing which had become damaged in a number of areas and which was always very vulnerable to damage. So the lineside fencing needs to be re-made and one or two details of this fencing ratified. Just as with the original layout model, where my old mate Mick Nicholson proved invaluable in supplying prototype details, plans and photos so, quite recently, Mick sent me a photo which clearly shows the details of this wooden lineside fencing, though that wasn't the subject of the photo. So, from this photo and other official records of the old NER, I was able to establish the size, spacing, etc of this fencing and then to design an approach which would minimise the vulnerability of this fairly fragile structure to damage, which is the subject of this thread. The photo is attached below, clearly showing that lineside fencing and also showing how much land, over and above that occupied by the permanent way, was actually fenced in. Oh and the location of this photo? It is a place called Hessle Haven, just west of Hull, and it is the exact location of my layout model!! The photo was taken from an overbridge which stood at the east end of Hessle Station and it was this same overbridge from which we also watched the trains and, occasionally, photographed them. There is so much detail to see in this photo - the guying of the two bracket signals, the point rodding on its stools extending along the trackside, etc. Now, of course, with various rationalisations, except for the two fast lines, all of this has gone. Cheers Mike

NER, LNER I need to delete this posting!!

J72's Various Before I launch into the build of the B4 and while I am slowly digesting the very comprehensive instruction set, a photo of a now painted North Eastern Kits LNER J72; one of the members of the class with the longer bunker and one of the last batch which were actually built by British Railways after nationalisation. This one, finished in a 'mid way' state between newly painted and well weather worn, was based in Hull in 1950 and is shown with two other J72's which were Bachmann conversions from the older Bachmann model. From other photographs, one or other of these models has a slightly incorrectly dimensioned cab window cut out. Checking side on photos of these locos, it's apparent that it is the older Bachman model which is wrong; Arthur's kit is correct. Anyway, as long as this line up isn't repeated on the layout, no one should be able to make the comparison. I still have one more J72 to paint, which was the test build for the short bunker version and which will become 68670 (the doyen of the class), again based in Hull in 1950. So this line up may be photographed again with 'four of em' and then with all nine of the 0-6-0 tanks on the layout. Really must stop building these 0-6-0 tanks but Hull did have over forty of them in 1950 and I'm old enough to remember those Sunday afternoon 'shed bashes' seeing row upon row, stall upon stall, of locomotives, lined up on their 'day off'. And it's those memories which still motivate and inspire me to keep building the locos and the layout!! Cheers Mike

Since last I checked, at which time some references to photos prior to June 1st 2021 had disappeared, I now find that for my own postings, prior to June 1st 2021, some of the older photos or photo references (without the actual photos) seem to have reappeared. So, as I am a compulsive hoarder, with a confirmed reluctance to throw anything away - especially photographs - I still have almost all of the photos ever posted on this thread, So they can be gradually replaced - eventually. Anyway, I'll keep on replacing the lost photos!! Cheers Mike

On an entirely different issue, does anyone know where RMWeb is in trying to recover lost photographic images? Or has this recovery exercise come to a halt? Cheers MIke

It is quite a time since I posted to this thread with the summer taken up with some gardening, some travelling, including trips on various steam hauled services - Scarborough Spa Express, The Jacobite and on the NYMR - and quite a lot of 'bits and pieces' jobs to repair and, in some cases, update some of the existing models. At the very start of this thread I described the 'conversion' of the Bachmann J72 to P4 using the HIgh Level Chassis kit and also making various mods to the Bachmann body. I always intended to replace the footsteps on these models as the originals were very thick and chunky but never got around to it. Anyway, as I had to remake some footsteps for the T1, then I did get around to it and re-made sets of footplate steps for the two Bachmann J72's as well. Photo below shows the last pair awaiting fitting. So having built 'goodness knows' how many ex North Eastern locos, time now to change pre-grouping source with an ex Great Central loco. I bought this kit - the LNER B4 'Immingham' - some years ago and it has lain in the 'to be built cupboard' these past years, finally to see the light of workshop day, last week. This kit is no longer in production, so might not serve to help any other would be builders of this particular model, but it does contain some innovative approaches and a great deal of detail, so could be challenging and might be informative. Cheers Mike

NORTH EASTERN KITS LNER A6 The fourth (and last) of the A6's has now been 'rescued' from the airtight box and is being completed. This one will be 69798, with a saturated boiler and some of its original North Eastern fittings, which it retained until its withdrawal in 1951. The brakes, brake linkage and some piping still remain to be done but this photo was taken while the initial running trials were being done. The loco will be finished in British Railways lined black, though somewhat weathered, to reflect its condition in mid 1950. As is fairly obvious, I do like these A6's. For me, passenger tank locos didn't get much better than these. Cheers Mike