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Thanks Simon , it looks ok at the moment......I guess the real test will be once it’s in primer and see how many lines show up then,,

The tank assembly looked quite straightforwards.....looked! And I suppose it was really, it was just difficult to shape the top correctly. The tank wrapper (which I had cut a 4mm strip off to shorten it - see previous post) had half-etched lines to help bend the tank round the fairly sharp corners. I tack soldered the formers to the wrapper, matching up the centre line marks to make sure everything would be nice and square. I now needed to start bending the top of the tank and solder to the formers. I folded an old rag to use as a soft base, and pressed the wrapper onto the former. The problem was that because of the half-etch lines, the full-thickness metal was reluctant to bend, and I ended up with a sharp fold line on the first half-etch. After much wrestling, adjusting and swearing, I finally got it all soldered together. Maybe I'll rename Bamburgh to, "Vader".... On the 2nd photo below, you can see the resulting fold marks from the half-etches. Most of the fold marks I was able to sand away with 280 grit wet&dry. The bottom 3mm or so of the tank sides will fold under to make the bottom of the tank. I'll also add the handrail knobs and the injectors before fitting to the rest of the loco, whilst I can still get to the inside to solder from behind. Think that will be about the last chance I get to do anything on Bamburgh until January now - weekdays don't seem very productive (for modelling!) at the moment, and I fly back to the UK for Christmas on Saturday. I look forwards to reading about all your Christmas pressies that make their way onto your workbench! Happy Christmas All!

Thanks Ian, sometimes the issues are quite straightforwards t solve, however more often than not I don’t think of then early enough, which makes it more difficult than it should be! This time though, I’d had plenty of pondering time, so managed to plan ahead quite well for a change. As for the hands, I sadly only have two, however legs, and anything else I can wedge things up against me in handy for propping things up for a quick photo. All my photos are just taken on my phone, so I can manage with just one hand when needed.

Warning: Long post ahead as I catch up with lots of bits of work from the last few weeks! Slow progress over the last month – work and a baby have meant Bamburgh has been progressing at a snails pace, quite literally one joint at a time quite often. The next stage of the build was the boiler, smokebox and tank. I turned my attention to the boiler first, only the bottom of which is provided as most of the rest of it is hidden under the tank. The pre-rolled etch is only half-etched and therefore rather flimsy. I wanted to firm this up a little so it didn’t get damaged or twisted during installation. Using part of the smokebox etch, I marked a circle on 12thou brass sheet, cut out with a piercing saw, and then smoothed out to a ‘perfect’-ish circle by putting it a spare mandrel in the mini-drill and holding against a file. This was then cut in half, and soldered to the inside of the boiler. It was at this stage that I needed to think about a bit of ‘cosmetic surgery’. There are many variations on the ‘standard’ L Class. The kit was originally designed as a model of ‘Winston Churchill’, currently residing at the Black Country Living Museum. This loco had the tank butting right up against the front of the cab. Bamburgh, however, has a gap between the back of the tank and the cab front, with the top of the boiler or firebox (apologies for my ignorance…maybe someone can tell me which it is) visible. This variant is not catered for in the kit, and so the visible section of the boiler had to be fabricated from scratch, and the tank needed shortening by a few millimetres. The band was made out of 10thou nickel silver (I would have used brass as it’s a bit more flexible, but I only had either 12 or 5 thou), but needed an oval former making first to keep the band in the right shape. The disc I made for the ribs of the boiler above was used as a template before I cut it in half. Once I had soldered the band to the former, I removed a hole from the former to allow assess for soldering to the tank later in the build. From one end of the boiler to the other – next up was the smokebox. The smokebox wrapper was pre-rolled, and has a series of half-etched lines on the inside to aid shaping the reverse curve at the bottom. While being helpful to shape, I inevitably ended up with crease/fold lines on the outside. This needed careful use of various grades of wet & dry to smooth out. I did this very gingerly as I was quite worried that I would end up sanding through the half-etched metal. All was fine in the end though. I suspect I’ll have the same problem when I tackle the tank, as this has the same etch design for shaping the sharp-ish corners. The front of the cab had a locating hole to set the tank at the correct height. However as the tank was shortened at this end and no longer butts up to the cab, this needed to be filled. A coffee stirrer was held behind the hole, whilst this was flooded with flux and solder, which was then cleaned up with dental scrapers and wet&dry. After this, the boiler and smokebox could be soldered together. The boiler was just tack soldered at the cab end so that it remained flexible so it could be easily levelled up. After a bit of wrestling, the smokebox was fitted to the running plate. The boiler was tricky to fit into the smokebox locating holes – it turned out the boiler hadn’t been rolled parallel to the edges, and was slightly twisted. Luckily it wasn’t far out, and the ribs I added gave it enough strength for me to correct the twist just enough without wrecking anything! Finally, the extra bit of visible boiler/firebox(?)needed attaching to the boiler and the cab. The former meant that this was exactly the same diameter as the boiler. I soldered it to the boiler first, and filed and sanded the join. I hadn’t been looking forwards to this, but I think it turned out pretty well in the end. Next I cut a thin strip of 5thou brass for the boiler band. As this was soldered on, it also soldered the whole assembly to the cab. A few minutes work with a file, scrapers and wet&dry cleaned everything up. Now to see how many weeks it takes me to get the tank sorted!

Sleep deprived and homeless after my modelling room was mercilessly taken over as the new nursery, I returned briefly to the temporary bench today after 7 weeks of nappy changing, feeds and running errands for new mummy. Not too much progress, but gave the footplate and the outside of the cab a polish with the Gariflex to remove several weeks of tarnish. Managed to complete the remaining wheel splashers using the method described previously, and epoxied to the running plate. Generally, I prefer to solder details on where possible, however there was no access from the back due to the leaf springs, and I was concerned that if I cranked the iron up to heat from below the plate, everything would get too hot and simply fall apart.....

Nicely done! Took me ages and many attempts before I got mine right.....

Ken, could I ask what kind of ratio you use to water it down with? I'd quite like to give that a go.

A little girl :-) Thanks for all the advice - it certainly is a learning curve! I have a couple f articles, along with a book which I’ve managed to get quite a bit of info from - certainly makes life a lot easier!

Apologies for the lack of build updates recently - baby #1 arrived a couple of weeks ago and has been occupying a certain amount of my time!

Thanks Mark - they are really useful, especially the ones inside the cab, and the pipework just in front of the cab - are they the injectors?.....must make spend more time learning the anatomy of locos.....

Hi Mark, I got the drawings I've used from the book "The North Sunderland Railway" by Alan Wright. The drawings are specific to the L Class loco they had, Bamburgh. As I'm sure you're aware, the exact specifics of individual locos varied wildly, however the basic dimensions should be the same. Be aware that Bamburg had 3'6" wheels which were larger than most L class's. There were also some drawings with the kit instructions, however these did not have any dimensions on them. John

Yep that's the one..... I first saw this on a video I watched by Tony Wright. Some screen shots below, so not the best quality, but you get the idea. I've never needed to try it myself yet though, as the Hudswell Clarke I built had holes pre-etched, and I've not quite got that far on the Manning Wardle I'm currently building.

Good to see you back! And the loco is progressing nicely too. When it comes to marking out, maybe a scribe held at a constant hight in some form of mount, and then pull the model (pre-'coloured in' with a Sharpie pen) to get a horizontal line? I can picture in my head what I mean.....just don't know the name of the tool that holds the scribe! I'll see if I can find a picture

Think you were spot on that this version of the shed fits into your layout better. I continue to marvel at your work!!

Almost 3 weeks since my last post - busy busy! Since then, the cab has been soldered to the running plate. Bamburgh was fitted with 3'6" wheels - slightly larger than the standard size of 3'1" that lots of the L Class's came with. This made them protrude though the running plate, and were covered by small splashers. These are not part of the kit, and so I have made my own: 4 strips of brass were soldered together and the curve marked through blue marker. They were then cut out with a piercing saw, and the layers were then unsoldered and cleaned up. A simple jig was made with track pins and a few waters of masking tape. The vertical face of the splashers are inset slightly, and so layers of masking tape were used to keep the brass in the correct position whilst soldering. Now repeat 3 more times!

Just a few pics of the cab interior.... The floor has been soldered in place, as has the hand brake stanchion. As suggested by Simon, I used a solder resist (in this case a Sharpie pen) to prevent the solder flowing down the half-etched 'wooden' strips. Everything else has just been 'placed', and will be painted first before finally fixing into position. The reversing lever has been made up, but isn't in the photos.

Hi Simon, Didn't think of solder resist! That would have made things easier. Having already cut the door out completely, I just lined everything up on my wooden board, threaded the nuts onto the wire and held everything in place as best I could with clips and fingers. Fiddly is probably an accurate description!

Turns out later in the week has become this evening :-) The cab floor has been bugging me. It's not a very good fit either around the bunkers, the cab sides and especially the springs, where the gap left seems ridiculously wide. The fact that it folds up only serves too accentuate these deficiencies, and also seems to obstruct the bottom of the firebox door, and the bunker openings. After checking the photos I have, there is no evidence the cab floor was raised by the 6 or 7 inches the kit would suggest, and so I decided therefore it would be better to have it flat to the running plate. This meant moving the nut used to secure the body to the chassis from on top on the running plate, to underneath. It had to fit in the small gap between the bottom of the running plate and the top of the frame spacer, and so the thickness needed to be decided by half before soldering. Next, the folded sides of the floor were removed, and and insert made to narrow the gap for the springs. Not perfect and still needs tidying, but much better than before. I'll solder this, the reversing lever and the hand brake in place next.

RMweb seems very quiet this weekend - I hope you are all enjoying Telford! I'm not envious. At all. I do however look forwards to seeing what you have all bought and their progress on your workbenches. I've only had short snippets of time over the last couple of weeks and have been concentrating on the little cab details. First off was the safety valve. On Bamburgh, this was located on top of the backhead/firebox, inside the cab. The lost wax casting needed quite a lot of fettling, and some parts needed filling with solder and sanding smooth. The closeup shows that there might still be some work to do. Next was the firebox door. This is a rather 1 dimensional, half-etched offering, and frankly it looked a bit half-finished. So I have tried to bring a bit of life to it. First job was to cut the door from the frame with the piercing saw. The intension was to have the door partly open, to give the 'picture' a bit of texture if nothing else. The hinge of the door was created by soldering 4 16BA nuts to the door & frame, and threaded a 0.5mm nickel silver wire through them, and soldered it all together. I was quite pleased with the result! How people do this kind of thing in 4mm scale though, is completely beyond me..... The regulator valve, gauge glasses, shelf, pipe work and safety valve were all added. The flare on the bottom of the safety valve didn't quite match that of the top of the firebox - filing the middle would have left the dome a little thin, so the gaps were filled with Araldite and sanded to match the profile. In theory, once it's painted up you won't know it's there. All needs a good clean up as it's now a bit grubby. The bunkers were soldered up with a couple of handles added. The handbrake stanchion was cleaned up, and the reverser lever laminated and folded up ready to be soldered into the cab. I think I will leave the backhead out of the cab for now for painting, and then epoxy in place once painted, but solder everything else in. Attention now turns to the cab floor, which is currently undergoing some modifications. More on that later this week.....

Some very tidy work there Rob - very nicely done!

Very true - they came in all kinds of different guises. My prototype, Bamburgh, did have the full cab, covering the entire firebox, dome and safety valve. A kind RMWeb member has sent cab interior photos of Matthew Murray on the Middleton Railway in Leeds, and whilst this of course doesn't guarantee the same arrangement of dials, pipes and knobs, it's all I have to go on for recreating the inside. The only thing I know for certain (thanks to Fred Harman's description in his book) is that it had the round type firebox doors - not dissimilar to Sir Berkley - which is what I'm currently knocking up. Luckily the kit provides the correct door type, but it's a rather one-dimensional half-etched affair. I'm attempting to bring it to life a bit :-)

Thanks AMJ, that’s really helpful :-)

Good spot on the handles/knobs - I hadn't noticed that. Any photos of inside the cab of Matthew Murray would be greatly appreciated next time you're up there - many thanks!!

Glad your photo has been of some use! Thanks for posting it :-) And of Matthew Murray too. This is much more similar to Bamburgh (my model) that Sir Berkley in that it has a completely enclosed cab. I had enlisted the help of my dad, as Matthew Murray had been on loan to Elsecar, which is just round the corner from where he lives. Unfortunately it had been taken back up to Middleton by the time he got there.... Interesting that both have a brass 'rim' between the backhead and firebox wall. That should be fun to paint! Bunker design provided with the kit is fine for my prototype :-) Thanks for your help! John