jdb82

My apologies.....tired and confused state when I read your post I think. I'm looking at the wrong bit of the loco entirely - in my head, I read your post as the gap between the cab & the tank, which is not what you said at all. To be perfectly honest, the gap between the smokebox and the tank has never crossed my mind, and wasn't something I have looked at. This is how the instructions in the kit have you build it. The kit I believe is based on 'Winston Churchill", and looking at photos of that loco, I'm not convinced that has a gap either, however photos of "Aynho" do show a gap. Seems that some locos do, and some don't. Typical of Mannings Wardle of all classes!! It doesn't really look like Bamburgh does, so you'd be right to leave it out. Mine won't be changing though. Having fixed everything firmly in place, I'll be applying rule number 1 in this case (or is it #2?). This model (and my previous build) are simply to develop my kit building-skills, of which studying photos more carefully shall now be added to the list ;-) There's no layout to run it on (yet), so I'm not too worried.

Paint and weathering might have to cover up a multitude of things at this rate!

Hi Daddyman, Yes, there are a number of photos and diagrams in Alan Wright's book that confirms the gap. Admittedly, it's not easy to see the gap on many of the photos due to a mixture of poor image quality or just the wrong angle, however there are a couple (see below), in addition to the scale drawing on page 42 of his book, and the engineering diagram on page 91.

Thanks chaps - I'll give that a go. I've got 2 or 3 mm of tank that folds under, next to the boiler, so I'll drill my hole through there and see if I can squeeze something sticky in.

That's the problem......the soldering is all done and the tank is very much attached! The only way in that I could see is drilling a hole somewhere a little too visible for my liking, and then maybe soldering a rod in to seal it up again.

Slight floor in my wire-rescue plan......I'd forgotten that the tank has a former halfway down the tank, effectively diving it in two (see my post on 9th December - why did the post numbers disappear with the upgrade?!). Any hole I drill from the firebox end would get me into the back half of the tank, but the wire is rattling round in the front half. Not keen on taking the whole thing apart, but any ideas welcome!

This weekend felt like I was making progress - no great leaps in terms of large obvious sections of the loco - most of those are done, but finished the various bits of pipework and rods around the front of the cab and under the tank. The injector pipework, clack valves, reversing, water rail lubrication and drain cock levers all in place, ask well as the balance pipe which runs underneath the boiler. Slightly less cluttered on the left hand side One slight faux pas, was that whist wiggling the copper wire used for the balance pipe into position, I lost grip with the tweezers, and it disappeared into the tank......... It's now rattling round in there with no access to get it out. Grrr.... I can see a bit of the back of the tank through the firebox, so will either need to drill a hole and hope I can fish it out, or 'inject' resin or glue in the hope it will stick it fast!

Just a quick update from this weekend..... The smokebox door has had a good polish up - there were a couple of blemishes which I filled with solder first, but the reflection means you can't really see them. After the boiler was filled with white metal, I could attach the tank. Because I modified the (cab) end of the tank, there's not much to solder it to, as it simple rests upon the half-cut boiler. The main soldering points were the bracket holding it to the smokebox, and a bent piece of scrap etch on the inside of the firebox. The injectors are also soldered to the tank and the footplate, so it should be enough to keep everything place. I made a right mess of the bracket and got solder all over the place, so quite a bit of cleaning up to do before I'm happy with it...... Still got a bit of pipework from the injectors into the cab and the clack valves. Apologies for the embarrassingly grubby nature of the cab & footplate at the moment - really must give it a proper clean soon! It is an industrial tank though - not many of them were spotless!

Decided to add a bit of weight to the boiler whilst it is still accessible. On my last trip to the UK, I brought back some white metal bars for exactly this purpose. As it's only a small loco, the kit inherently has very little natural weight to it, even after the motor is added. I therefore wanted to maximise the amount of white metal I could squeeze into the space available, and so I bent a scrap piece of brass to slightly less than the diameter of the boiler. I blocked up the ends with a couple of lollipop sticks stuck together with tape, and held everything tight with a G-clamp. Using my gas soldering iron, I melted the whitemetal and left it to cool. I was surprised by how long it look to solidify! After a bit of a trim to make it fit, I them epoxied it in place. Now to repeat the process for the other 2 sections of the boiler, and I'll probably do a couple of ingots for the tank as well.

It looks like it - just as well I'm a 7mm man ;-)

Apologies if I have missed this in a previous thread, but I noticed today whilst visiting the Ragstone Models website that they now have the old Agenoria range of kits available to buy from February this year. This is great news for those of us with an industrial inclination, as the majority of the kits have a decent reputation. Having built a couple of them as an almost complete novice, I can vouch for their accuracy and ease of build. I've spent many hours searching eBay, and the odd one comes up, but now we have the full range available once again. Well done Ragstone for taking them on!

Hi, Bit late to the party on this one, but I have a Kitson 0-4-0ST (based on GWR 1338 & 1339) Agenoria kit stashed away in my cupboard which I may or may not get round to building. It's one from the Pete Stamper era, and comes complete with instructions, wheels, motor & ABC gearbox. Not sure if it's quite what you are after, but let me know if you are interested. John

An old pot of Gaugemasters brass liquid flux - not a clue where I got it from, but it's the only pot I've got out here!

Nice work with the weathering! What do you use for your weathering? Powders, dry brush, air brush? Or a combination of all of the above?!

Wouldn't have thought about a cardboard box....I guess it will absorb some of the moisture. However i'm coming to the conclusion that really there are no shortcuts and the best option is to roll up the sleeves and get the elbow grease out :-)

For some time now, I've been looking to cut corners on cleaning the model, as I seem to (need to) spend a disproportionate amount of time cleaning and polishing the model instead of actually building the thing! I look at the work of PAD, Mick and Richard from Finney7 and many others on this forum and stand in awe of how clean and shiny their models always are. I suppose what I should be doing is scrubbing it down with soap and water, followed by a toothbrushing with Viakal or similar, followed by another rinse and a blow with the hair drier after each and every session. In reality, all I either have time for, or can muster the enthusiasm for, is a quick scrub with washing up liquid to prevent the green monster from the flux appearing. So today I tried a little experiment. I have an ultrasonic cleaner, which is great for removing grime, but not tarnish. I have Viakal, which is great for brightening up the brass. I thought mixing (1:5ish) with water in the cleaner might do the trick. I left the parts in there for about 25 minutes at 70 degrees celsius. Really, I should have known better, as if it was that simple, everybody would be doing it. On the less grubby parts (the tank in this case), it semi-worked, in that the brass was generally brighter and less tarnished than before, however is did come out rather blotchy, the blotches being a pinkish colour, with the casting being particularly pink. The cab, running plate and smokebox were particularly dirty and tarnished after sitting round on my bench for a few months now with very little action. The tropical climate here doesn't help either. These parts showed very little improvement after being in the same cleaning session as the tank, which was disappointing.... I didn't think to take any photos before cleaning unfortunately, but these two are straight out of the ultrasonic vial/water mix. The blotchy pink areas can clearly be seen. Still needed a good polish with the usual grades of Gariflex blocks/scratch pen/fine grade wet&dry to get it really looking good... Although the tank didn't come out too badly the rest of the loco, which is really quite grubby, showed very little improvement. Back to the drawing board with the next idea!

I found myself unwrapping a rather nice Iroda Solderpro 120 bought by my lovely wife as a Christmas present a few weeks ago. I'm having great fun experimenting with it, but haven't been brave enough to use it on my current project yet, as it has a tendency to unsolder everything I've already soldered.....It does make the metal VERY hot. I think I need to learn how to tame it a little first, but it would certainly solve the 'not enough heat' problem, if that indeed is the issue!

December? Really that long ago? Mmmm..... couple of separate trips back to the UK, a big school inspection, and oh - a baby. I guess regretfully, modelling has been pushed down the pecking order a bit :-( Not much to report, but thought I'd just post a quick update to prove I'm sill alive - I have added the handrails to the sides of the saddle tank and epoxied the tank filler cap on top (apologies for the lack of photos). Next was to make up some injectors, as the castings (which were of pretty poor quality anyway) bore little resemblance to the ones used on Bamburgh after its 1934 overhaul, which looked fairly meaty. I made these from various slivers of brass telescopic tubing and some 12ba nuts. The photos are fairly self explanatory - just need to add the copper pipes to it's various orifices (should that be orofi?) to the cab and clack valves. Admittedly they do not look the cleanest of soldering jobs under the closeup of a lens, but they'll look just fine once I have smothered them in paint and weathering powders ;-) Having just about cobbled one together, I now had to try and replicated an exact mirror image for the other side. Not sure I managed the 'exact' bit, but I did at least end up with 2 :-) On current form, my next post may be around April time

Maybe a daft question from someone who knows nowhere near enough about loco anatomy, but are they meant to be attached to the boiler? If everything is straight and square, then there should be no reason for it to pull away from the joint surely? Is it pulling my away after the solder has cooled?

Very nice indeed! Do you punch the rivets by hand, or do you have a nice GW Models riveter (or equivalent)?

Might be cutting it a bit fine for that one... that's likely to be around the weekend I fly back, so I'll have to wait until the Wakefield show later in the year

Completely in awe at what you can do with a bit of plastikard! I live abroad at the moment, but will be moving back to the UK in the summer - I very much look forwards to seeing your work in the flesh at a show one day :-)

Likewise! This is really impressive and has huge potential. Is there capability within your generator t cater for less ‘standard’ designs, such as the double bossed design that Manning Wardle quite often used?