Hull Paragon

Thanks Anthony

Couldn't delete....so I have removed the content. Ray

Admiles Have you been able to source any LEDs for the red running lights on the front of the Class 50 cabs by any chance?....I can find 2mm lighthouse types but not the normal domed type. Sorry if this is slightly off the thread........I was going to ring Laurie and ask him, but like everyone else, I'm not getting a response. Thanks Ray

I think you might be right! A very fair comment....Thanks.

Thanks to everyone for their very informative and supportive input. I spoke to Laurie Lynch at JLTRT this morning and he is able to supply the cabs. However, we talked in detail about the problems with the profiles being different and I felt that I didn't want to go down the route of having to adjust everything to fit.....again so I took the easy way out. Laurie offered me a generous discount and I opted to buy the whole kit. I know it's expensive (ie I have bought 2 kits), but I am sure that I will get some of my money back if/when I sell the part completed PRMRP stuff. There will be an enterprising person out there who will enjoy the challenge I'm sure. I still have an old PRMRP Class 31 which has to be built so I will have a go at that but with the additional experience of trying to build this one as a benchmark! I'm not sure if anyone at PRMRP has seen any of the comments in these posts....there is no response from them so I suspect not. There may be reasons why the kits haven't been modernised which no one is aware of.....I'll ask them when I see them at the Reading show in December. I don't feel that it is right or proper to level excessive criticism at companies/suppliers in these posts, but on the other hand, my concern is that future 7mm enthusiasts might be tempted by the low price and find the construction beyond their capabilities. it might put them off the hobby for life! Scratchbuilding will not be everyone's cup of tea...... In the meantime, as I await the JLTRT kit, I am going to progress my track layout which has been on the back burner for a while. Ray

Stephen I have printed templates with Templot but they don't show any detail on things like the chairs for example. So far I have not found a way to get them printed on the document. My idea was to use Templot to get the templates for construction and use the C&L ones for the additional details.... Ray

There is too much wrong with this kit to continue with it as it is. One of my objectives is to enjoy what I do, but there is no pleasure with this. I have damaged the body and the castings trying to fit them today. I'm sure if I had taken a bit more time and been a little more precise I would have avoided that......but I shouldn't have to be that precise for a kit that costs this little. Anyway, if I can get the cab ends (see above) I will fit them and complete from there. (I don't want to give up altogether!). The fuel tank sub-assemblies are done and so are the bogies. (And the bogies were tedious enough without the roof and end problems I have had today). This kit is over 30 years old and was probably designed well before that. It feels like an aid to scratchbuilding, not a kit. I'm not a scratchbuilder, and at my age, I have no intention of becoming one! I said at the start of these posts that I am not an expert, but I have some experience and I was once the recipient of some very good engineering training. I have some idea; perhaps more that some. But I have to admit defeat with this kit. It is just about the most frustrating project I have attempted to date (which includes a Connoisseur loco with Brake Van and Lowmac, an old etched brass Grampus kit which was quite fiddly, and a Scorpio Britannia tender....part completed, but which, so far, looks very nice and was pleasing to work on. In some respects the kit is exactly what you pay for. A low cost alternative to the JLTRT products. I don't have a problem with buying a cheaper product and getting less for my money, but there seems to be too much 'less' for my liking. One or two reference points or holes or slots would have been really useful, and a bit more metal on the ends to assist with the mating with the main body. PRMRP were very helpful when I first bought it and were very customer focused. But the body was badly rolled and right from the start I was on the back foot. PRMRP suggested I roll the creases out myself and perhaps I should have asked them to do it.....but I thought it would be simple enough.....it wasn't. I would have preferred base, sides and roof all separate which would have been much easier to work with. The instructions are very poor. They should be completely re-written and detailed references made to the shaping of the front as well as the bogies. I could go on but I don't want to be critical for the sake of it. As Peter said to me at Telford, '..........people say my kits are not as good as JLTRT.....so I tell them......go and buy the JLTRT one then....... Before I started I would have agreed with him......today, I wish I had taken his advice. If the cab ends are available for JLTRT and they are cost effective I will buy them.....but if not I will sell the box of bits to a more formidable soul, recover some of my outlay and get the JLTRT Class 50 at Reading in December. Please note that these are only my own opinions, experiences and disappointments. Others I hope will be more successful. Ray

Thanks for the encouragement. I have worked all afternoon and failed to get it done to any level of satisfaction. Peter Harvey has suggested asking JLTRT if they provide 2 made up cab ends and I have emailed Laurie to that effect. If they can do it, I will get them....if not, I am going to sell the bits I have left and buy the JLTRT kit in December.

I have had to come inside to calm down after a fraught morning attempting to put castings into the 2nd end. I soldered the roof casting in without too many issues, but the end casting is proving less easy. I'll do it in the end but the process is so excruciatingly awful and stressful that I have resolved never to buy a PRMRP kit again. Others in replies to my posts seem to have built them but I just can't get the alignments right. The flange of metal on the castings is so tiny that holding things rigid to solder is almost impossible......I've wired, taped, blu tacked, tack soldered....but nothing will stay put for final assembly. I soldered the roof casting on once before but afterwards I discovered that it was not level and I couldn't wrap the window frames round properly.....so I took it off. Each time I try to line something up, the brass casing bends putting pressure on thin etchings such as the window frames.....these have to be straightened and now look 'dishevelled'. I am not giving up, but the pleasure has long gone. I wish I had paid the extra money and bought the JLTRT version Thanks to Peter and Peter Snr for good service etc, but (in my opinion) the kit is so bad...........never again!

I ordered a template and expected an e-invoice with payment details etc. When I didn't get it, I phoned and spoke to Phil. He is obviously struggling at present as he tries to get to grips with the backlog he has........but as frusrating as it is, we must try to be patient and hope he succeeds. The hobby (especially 7mm) needs him and people like him, to find their feet and hopefully provide products for years to come. I'm sure he will be at Reading in December where I will wish him well. (And maybe get my template?) Ray

Day 7 The next steps have been to try to form one of the front ends. I stuck with my plan to put the roof on first, then the front/bonnet and finish with the windscreen. I am part way through this plan for one end but although the assembly of the parts was relatively simple, the subtle changes of curves and angles of the body were not. The cast roof has a very small rim on which to locate the brass body. It is so small that when trying to set the pieces up for soldering, I found the roof popped out of position which made things less than easy. Also, you will see form the picture that the roof profile as delivered and the casting profile are (slightly) different. I wasn’t sure how best to re-profile the roof and in the end, as the difference was quite small, I decided to fit the casting, then apply pressure to make the brass line up with the white metal before soldering. (I’ll use this profile to make a bulkhead to fit to the other end which will prevent this happening again). After setting it all up, I put a few pieces of low melt solder along the join and soldered it together. The next section sounds considerably more simple than it was. The internal angle stiffens the body….but the body has to be bent inwards to accommodate the bonnet casting. At the same time, the body side straightens in the vertical plane so the body side bend has to be straightened at the front end, which means that the internal angle has to be bent to allow this reshaping. (The instructions do refer to this but the detail isn’t apparent). Eventually, (and I mean eventually) I manoeuvred the body, casting and three dimensional shaping with two hands and a few bits of wood, clamps and wishful thinking, and soldered the two together. Here is the end result…..photographed to give the best view as I still need to tweak it! You will notice that the side window frames are not yet properly secured, but even if they are bent to the roof profile/curve, the front window frame etchings don’t fit by about 2mm. Maybe if I’d followed the instructions, this wouldn’t have happened? For the other end, I am inclined to carve a former from balsa but I don’t think I have the necessary skills to do it accurately, but I will have the experience of this end to help me make a better job of it. At least it suddenly begins to look like a Class 50!

Before I write up my next post, I'd like to thank Peter Harvey at PH Designs. Peter read my posts and very kindly offered to send me a set of etched air horn grills from one of his detaling kits. I have not seen these before and I think they look superb. Thanks! (And please note that until this exchange, I have no connection with PHD!)

I mentioned earlier that I had no pictures of a Class 50 taken at high level.....I couldn't find any clear ones on line either. I took theses today. Maybe they will be useful to someone building a Class 50 in the future. No1 End No 2 End

Andrew Many thanks for your comments. I like the plywood floor idea.....it will also help to keep running noise down too I suspect. I think I will attach the spacers/stringers first, then attach the interior grilles and glazing before fitting the roof castings. My method will be to brush flux paste on both sides of the joints, position the roof, add a couple of small lumps of low melt solder on the top join, then run the gas torch over it until the solder runs. This method could also work doing it from underneath but you won't be in as much control of the roof position if it should move at all. Almost all of my white metal work is done like this and if you are careful to allow the heat to build up slowly, the solder will run before the white metal! Ray

I then spent some time thinking about how best to go on from here. The body is quite springy and bends all over the place when it is worked on. It needs to be stiffened so I thought I would simply solder a couple of cross pieces in across the angles. Cross piece (not fitted yet). In order to measure the gap, and to fit a piece that is reasonably close to the internal width of the body, I unwrapped the cast roof and end/bonnet pieces to test fit them. This will close the body sides down to the proper width. The roof castings are not good. The castings are quite flat, (elliptical), but the rolled roof is quite round…..therefore the pieces don’t fit together well. The front of the body has to wrap around a little to get the shape mentioned above. The instructions are not helpful. They simply say ‘…..fill any gaps with solder or a car body filler such as Isopon……’. It will take a lot of fiddling to fit them. The end castings are slightly better. The instructions suggest that the end casting should be fitted first, the roof next and then finally the etched window frame. I’m a bit nervous about this as it is quite difficult (how many times have I used that word?) to be certain as to the accurate locations for the pieces. Even having a dry run is almost intuitive guesswork at best. As I write, I don’t even know which way up the window frames go yet! There are two problems I need to consider before I go any further. The first is the roof. The kit is for the final rebuilt Class 50. The casting appears to be for the first version, with if I have guessed right, an etch to wrap over the casting to represent the rebuilt version. It's very unclear. The etchings and folded roof panel (unsoldered) are shown here. I have dozens of photographs….but none at high level so I need to look further to resolve this issue. The second problem is with the ventilator etchings which have a fold at each end. This means that they will stand back from the body side about 1mm and I need to understand what the prototype has and what the final result will look like on the model. The other issue is that if the whole etch sits back from the body, the central portions will be unfixed and will therefore push in when handled.

The kit comes with a 3mm angle which has to be soldered along the inside bottom of the body side. It forms a ledge on which a number of bits and pieces are fitted; specifically fuel tanks and the cross members for the bogies. The angle is supplied as a flat strip which must be folded. This is a challenge, but can be done! The instructions suggest that a ‘U’ channel can be utilised instead, so having decided some time ago that I liked the idea of a stiffer construction, I bought some. Unfortunately, I discovered that 3mm ‘U’ section isn’t! It’s more like 2mm so the folds on the fuel tank etchings don’t fit inside it without the lower part of the ‘U’ cut away. Additionally, the profile at the front changes which means bending the angle/’U’ to accommodate this. Clearly, the ‘U’ is stiffer and therefore more difficult to shape. So I ended up utilising the kit supplied angle. Angle as supplied. Angle folded. 'U' channel. Even in the picture it can be seen that the available space in the internal channel is much narrower than the 3mm of the angle. I smeared the edge of the body with 188 solder paint, ‘clamped’ the angle on and with a series of passes, gas torched them together.

So, on to the body. I have spent a lot of the day trying to be sure that everything is identified and fits. There are so many areas which are not quite right that it is difficult to select one as the datum to measure all the rest. I’ll try to address each as they come up………. The body is supplied in one piece. The brass has been pre-rolled but in my case, the roof/bodyside curves have ridges and although I tried to remove them, they still don’t look right. (I have decided to rub them all down after the body is built). In addition, the roof is rolled but the profile doesn’t line up with the roof end casting which is flatter. More on this later. In the meantime, I marked the ends so I don’t get mixed up. The arrangements are different on either side. I chose to set the lower body angle first. (Is that a tumblehome?). I measured the prototype and found that the angle is around 20°. The body has a nearly full length half etched band on the inside to assist in the forming of the bend. It’s very awkward to do, but I managed in the end. The prototypical bend doesn’t go the whole length of the side. The shape of the body is not very complex but it changes quite subtly at the front ends. I took a whole load of photographs of ‘Lion’ to try to understand this……. It’s not too easy to see but the lower fold goes from one end door to the other while the area between the door and the body front straightens in the vertical plane, and at the same time, the whole body sides close inwards at the ends in the horizontal plane. There is a further bend at the end which is lower than the bottom of the main body side…….(this can be seen at the extreme end of the picture above). The effect on the prototype is further confused by the colour scheme which seems to suggest a fold all the way along the body. This will be more apparent when the front end is built.

Day 6 Actually, it’s Day 6.5! I took a couple of hours yesterday to do a few things, including priming the bogies. I painted them with a quick coat of Satin Black and bolted them together……..not without minor difficulties though. There are a couple of things I should have been more careful with. The stretchers are different at each end of the bogie. The front end must have the stretcher which has slots for the guard irons. I made sure this was the case but somehow, the mounting holes didn’t line up properly in the configuration of inner frame/bogie I assembled and I had to file them into slots….. Incidentally, I have powered both bogies and they run although they are a little noisy. When I feel confident weathering things I’ll spray them with frame dirt etc…….

Day 5 My short break took longer than I thought! It would be prudent to make a small comment on the difficulty of lining up the axles. I could have easily lined them up with the axle boxes if I had not opted to utilise the drive belts. (I don’t know how easy it would have been had I chosen the Delrin drives instead). On to the brake cylinders. There are 3 on each side of the frames…..12 in all. The white metal castings are sealed within a polythene compartment which is part of the packaged bits and pieces. They need to be cleaned up a bit but that doesn’t take long. The bogie side is cast with 4 half depth slots. There is a half depth hole at either end and 2 half depth holes on the rear face. The bogies are ‘handed’ and each side is the mirror image of the other. It follows that whichever one of the central slots is utilised on one frame, the other will be used on the opposite side. The castings are, therefore, arranged so that any frame side can be used for either ‘hand’. You just need to be careful that you get the arrangement the right way round and drill out the correct mounting hole from the rear. (Actually, I used a 2mm end milling tool). Front Rear I marked the frames to remind me which positions were to be used. I started off by thinking that the blanked slots for the brake actuators were not what I wanted. The prototype has the slots opened up, and they are quite a bit narrower. I decided to drill them out and slide a milling tool along the slots to open them out so that the actuator arm just slipped through. Unfortunately, in my haste, I made several mistakes on the first hole which resulted in the slot being far bigger than I wanted. I mixed up some Milliput and closed it up a bit. As I seem to be accident prone today, I decided not to go down that route for the rest……black paint will give the impression of a hole there so I will be content with that. I shortened the actuator arm a touch and superglued the cylinders onto the sides. The unused slot will be filled in and filed smooth.

Good morning! I'm still here but the short delays have turned into slightly longer ones....however I have made some progress on the 2nd bogie! Ray

That is sound thinking........it didn't occur to me but makes good sense......thanks Ray

During the afternoon I finally soldered the outer frames to the stretchers. The whole process is a bit fiddly as there are no reference points, but it is still relatively straightforward once you have it all set up. After setting up the inner and outer frames together, again without a reference, I drilled holes in the end plates and (eventually) screwed the whole lot together. It still needs some work but essentially it’s finished. Sounds contradictory but at least I know what I mean! The stretcher looks a bit out of line but it has to come off again as I realised that this stretcher should be at the other end. I also drilled large holes so that there is quite a bit of adjustment available. This is the first time I have done one of these. The lessons learned on this one will make the second one a bit quicker and, I hope, a bit better. I now know the dimensions for the axle centres and I know the sequence of events. However, the misalignment of the outer frame axle boxes with the main axles is immensely annoying especially as I had to adjust the axle centres the wrong way to get everything working properly. Setting up the motor gearing, the drive belts is very fiddly and I lost count of the number of times I did it, took it apart and then did it again. I'm not an expert but I have a little experience. I cannot imagine a beginner doing this bogie. Unless someone knows better of course........ I still have to put the air cylinders on but that shouldn’t create too much trouble……the etched steps need to be done too. I’ll be back when the second bogie is done and I make a start on the body.

Day 4 An interesting morning. First of all I needed to get the drive sorted out. After setting up the worm/worm wheel alignment (crudely) it then became apparent that the belt drive would rub against the worm and, one assumes, rapidly wear and/or break. This was caused by the bearings pushing the pulley too close to the centre of the axle. Nothing was fixed at this stage so I took the bearings and held them in a drill chuck and sawed off the excess. Putting it all back together and putting power on resulted in a red hot motor! Nothing turned. It was clear that both the worm/worm wheel mesh and the belts were both too tight. I decided to move the drive axle 0.5mm away from the motor (to the rear) and move the axle at the front end 1mm to the rear. The end result, I hoped, would be to release the pressure on the worm and to slacken the belts by 0.5mm. I then soldered the bearings in (hoping that I had got my dimensions right), and re-assembled it all. This time, everything worked reasonably well. It’s not quiet but I will oil all the surfaces and drives which should help. This view shows the cut back bearings at the bottom. I also added spacer washers to the drive axles to prevent any lateral movement and effectively lock the worm wheel on the centre axis. One is just about visible between the wheel face and the bearing in the bottom left of the picture. I thought there might be a problem with the axle lengths and after soldering the second bogie side to the stretcher, I checked……..and I was right. The inner frame will not sit inside the outer frame unless the ends are cut off the axles. So I cut the ends off the axles! You can see this on the right hand side with the shortened axles on the left. Eventually, I have reached a point where the inner frame is almost finished……which sort of translates into ‘I’m not taking it apart anymore!!’ The centre bearings are loosely fixed in place to allow coarse vertical movement. I’ll put a spring of some kind on the axle at some stage in the future. The only other problem I had was the failure of the grub screw in the narrow pulley. It has just about tightened enough, but if I can’t fix it, I will drop some nail varnish or something on the joint to add a bit more friction.

I had to do a number of things to get it sorted out.....see below......

Day 3 Day 2 sort of fizzled out! I then spent a day on the railway where I took some more pictures of the body shape on Lion. I don’t need these yet but I will when the body is folded later on. The pulleys haven’t arrived yet so I concentrated on setting up the stretchers with the outer bogie frames. Am I the only person in this hobby who can’t do a 10 minute job in 10 minutes? As well as not wanting to make too many mistakes, I want to get everything lined up properly…..and this is the root of today’s (long) delay. The axle centres are 47.25mm giving an overall front axle to rear axle dimension of 94.5mm. This dimension is pretty much set in stone as the belt drive is designed for these centres. (However, the centres could be slightly reduced to slacken the belts if they prove to be over tight). The problem is that the bogie frames are too long. I measured the centres at 96mm. The photos don’t show this too well due to parallax error unfortunately. This means that there is a misalignment of the axle boxes/wheels. This misalignment will be exacerbated by reducing the axle centres to accommodate the belts. No amount of filing the ends of the castings can change this. In the end, as I couldn’t see a reasonable solution, I went ahead with the axles slightly out of line. The stretchers are bent along the half etched lines. There are indents on the back face which align with the inner bogie frame ends. I guesstimated the centre line and marked the drilled holes for the fixing screws. I also formed some end panels from scrap to solder inside the frames for the stretchers to bolt onto. Eventually I set up a rather Heath Robinson arrangement to line up one of the bogie ends with a stretcher ....... and holding my breath, I soldered them together with low melt and a waving gas torch. (I took the picture before I cleaned it up!) Tomorrow I will solder the rest of the bogies and stretchers together, line up the axle centre height and mark the panels for the fixing screws.