JamieR4489

Progress on the B7 slowed a bit a few weeks a go due to a few distractions: Firstly, I've been interested in the Hornby Live Steam range of models ever since I found out about them which was just as Hornby were discontinuing the range. Seeing the OO Live Steam Club at a few shows recently made me think it was time I finally got a set and an affordable, second-hand Mallard was duly bought. The loco had only been lightly used and, after a bit of hesitation, sprung into life. It is recommended to learn how to use the loco with it on a rolling road so I set up this makeshift one. The second distraction was the decision to take the Ely Club's new exhibition layout, Wickham Market, to our show this year with the intention of it being, more or less, scenically complete. For my part, this meant finishing the signals. Three of the ones I made several years ago just needed motors fitting so I tackled these first and then built the last signal needed for the layout. This signal is now ready for painting. When I got back to the B7 I discovered that the cab roof didn't fit correctly and after a discussion with LNER4479 I realised I'd fitted the cab front too far forwards. Dismantling the cab and rebuilding it sorted the issue and this weekend I've been able to progress with fitting the cab handrails and the splashers. To fit the boiler, you can either file the bottom of the firebox so it sits on top of the splashers or file the tops of the splashers back so the firebox sits between them. I chose the latter option as it will look more prototypical. Here, the boiler and cab roof are just placed loosely on the model. You can also see the signal in the background. Regards, Jamie

Just a quick update on the B7. I've made a lot of progress on the bodywork with the footplate formed and the cab started. I did have a bit of a problem with the raised section over the cylinders as the jig didn't seem to make this section high enough for the valence fillers to fit but I got there in the end by tweaking the jig. It's very possible I didn't bend it up accurately enough to start with. Here I've just plonked the boiler in roughly the right place. It needs a bit of filing at the back to fit properly but the instructions do say that it is produced overlength and needs to be trimmed. Regards, Jamie

Unfortunately, it's no better than Book Law. Firdaussi was one of only 9 A3s to have a banjo dome whereas Papyrus had a round dome until 1943 and then a streamlined one. Papyrus alternated several times between GNR and 1928 corridor tenders but after 07/09/1937 it had a 1930 New Type non-corridor until 1953. Book Law and Firdaussi both had 1930 New Types but the dome issue makes Book Law a better donor. Jamie

The drive is also on the wrong side. 2573 was rebuilt from an A1 in 1928 and retained the right-hand drive until the 1950s whereas 2750 was built as an A3 so it had left-hand drive (this means the vacuum ejector pipe is on the wrong side of the boiler on 2573 for 2750). Annoyingly, Hornby have never done a pre-war left-hand drive A3 with the GNR tender. The easiest way to make one would probably be to get Book Law and either Flying Fox or Gladiateur and swap the tenders over. I think it was 4481 St Simon. Interestingly, 4481 retained the high ventilator when its cab was cut down. This unique cab was transferred to Merry Hampton at some point.

No problem, Nick, it's interesting to hear about the J21s as it wasn't a class I'd previously considered getting a model of until I found out about the GN section allocations. Thanks Simon, I only dun wot the destructions told me to do! See these photos courtesy of @LNER4479 https://www.lner.info/forums/viewtopic.php?p=129056#p129056 PS, that's a brilliant photo so thank you for sharing it. Thanks Richard, I look forward to seeing your B7 gracing Basingstoke. Regards, Jamie

The bottom-end of the B7 just needs a clean up and then it'll be ready for painting. It's all been fairly plain sailing including the inside valve gear which I've assembled but won't fit permanently until much later on. Today, I assembled the gearbox (a Highlevel Roadrunner+) and got it running sweetly. I'll start on the body next. Regards, Jamie

Thanks Graham, In that case I'll go down that route rather than trying to use the separate spindle and rod. I didn't fancy trying to drilling a hole through the 0.8mm rod! Jamie

Thanks Graham, I am planning on having a go at the valve gear but I won't be too upset if I can't get it working. The instructions mention that 0.7mm rod can be used as the valve rod and spindle combined for a simpler approach but is this just for if you make the gear cosmetic only? Jamie

My apologies for not updating this thread more often, I hadn't realised how long it had been! I quickly realised that the J15 would need more than just a simple renumbering so I decided to do 7515 which according to Jackson and Russell's 'The Great Central in LNER Days' was at Grantham from 1936 to 1937 and then appears to have moved to New England. This was a steam brake only engine whereas my donor had a Westinghouse pump so I took a deep breath and filed the pipes cast into the footplate off. The pump itself came off very easily. I also replaced the cab roof for the original low-arc version and swapped the Ross Pop safety valves for Ramsbottoms on a plinth. I decided that life was too short to worry about the tender underframe being wrong and I found out after I'd finished the model that the wheels shouldn't have balance weights for a non-Westinghouse engine and the smokebox rivets were a post war feature. I won't lose sleep over these issues. The Comet TK is now complete but I haven't got any recent photos of it so this is how it looked a few months ago. I bought a Hornby B17 Kilverstone Hall to become Doncaster's Belvoir Castle and although I haven't got round to doing this loco yet, it did inspire me to have a look at the 1980s Manchester United I was given a few years ago. It used to belong to my great uncle who was a Spurs supporter so it's become 2870 in its May-September 1937 condition. I cut the huge front coupling and steps off the bogie and added some guard irons. New steps and vacuum pipes came from a Hornby B17 detail pack as will the drain cocks when I remember to fit them. Some front frames were cut from plasticard to fill the space above the bogie and the latter's wheels were replaced with Gibsons. I left most of the moulded handrails as I didn't want to repaint the model but I did replace the smokebox door handles and add lamp irons. The boiler band lining was replaced with HMRS transfers and the wheels lined with a bow pen. I then weathered the loco very slightly. As a Christmas present from my parents, I got one of @LNER4479 and @gr.king's B7 kits which I've made a good start on. The kit has gone together really well so far but the motion bracket has taken quite a bit of fiddling. This seems to be due to my hamfistedness rather than the kit, however, and it's now working very smoothly. Before someone says it, no I'm not planning on making it as a 4-4-0. I removed the front drivers to give better access to the motion bracket. Lastly, I hope everyone had a good Christmas and I'd like to wish you all a happy New Year. Regards, Jamie

I bought a set for my J5 about a year ago and they seemed to be eccentric as the model rocked on the centre axle at some points in the wheels' revolutions but not others. I've read similar stories on here so it doesn't seem to be an uncommon issue.

Based on a rumour I've heard about the recent GER Society AGM where Paul Isles from Accurascale did a presentation with a picture of an E4 behind him, I think you may be right there.

...arriving at King's Cross 6 hours later after a blistering run making up over twenty minutes of delay between York and Doncaster.

'The Great Central in LNER Days' by Jackson and Russel has a chapter on the Highdyke workings and I seem to remember it mentioning that the J15s might have been brought in to be trialled on the branch alongside the more usual J3/4s as O4s were banned from going beyond the exchange sidings.

Thanks Jonathan, I thought you'd probably have the answer. In that case I'll leave it as is and fit a regulator box. Do you know what they looked like? Jamie

A question for the carriage experts. I'm currently building a Comet D155 end door TK but battery boxes were only supplied for one side and the underframe diagram in the instructions only shows boxes on one side. Is this correct? I thought passenger vehicles normally had battery boxes on both sides but I think I've read somewhere that in the late '30s regulators were fitted meaning that one side was sufficient. Thanks, Jamie

Good afternoon Tony, Thank you very much. There were only a couple of C2s left in my target era of summer 1938 and 3254 was the only one I could find photos of from the late '30s showing both sides. Additionally, it had to be a loco from the last batch because of using the C1 chassis with the square cartazzi frames. Regards, Jamie

I've just finished my C2 so I thought I'd post some photos here. The loco started off as a K's C1 I bought already built with the intention right from the start of converting it to a small-boilered version. The new cab, boiler and tender are all 3D prints which I did the CADs for and had printed by Hexa-Cubed. The gearbox and motor (X04 with K's gears I think) have been replaced by High Level Kits examples meaning it's now a very smooth runner also helped by tender pick-ups and a flywheel to get over my insulfrog track. The lining is HMRS on the tender and boiler bands and Humbrol enamels through a bow pen everywhere else. This explains the difference in shade picked up by my phone's camera but to the naked eye the difference is a lot more subtle. I've deliberately left the loco in ex-works condition. Regards, Jamie

After much tweaking, I've finally finished the C2 more or less exactly a year since I started it. I had intermittent derailments of the front bogie and rear pony truck that I thought at first were caused by the pony not having enough sideplay. It only took me a couple of days of fiddling with springs and back-to-backs and filing away at the cartazzi frames to realise all I had to do was simply extend the slot in the bogie that the pin slides in a few millimetres sideways 🤬. A few washers of 30 thou plasticard between the chassis and body and nibbling away at the cylinders also seemed to help. My phone makes the bow pen lining on the loco appear a lot brighter than it does in reality; to the eye it matches the tender lining (HMRS) much better. I'm still researching J15s. I've narrowed it down to a loco with a Westinghouse pump as my model has one and the pipes for the air brakes and steam heat that run along the metal footplate are cast integrally making them almost impossible to remove. This means I'm looking at 7542-71 and 7640-9, with 7559 being the front runner at the moment as it was seen at March in 1938 and a photo of it shows that it matches my donor's tender and cab cut-out. Regards, Jamie

Thanks for that, Jonathan. Unfortunately I don't have the Yeadons for the J15s but I'll carry on looking for allocations. I might ask over on the LNER forum.

Not yet; I've been away so I haven't really been doing much research. Thank you for those 2 locos. I've found a picture of 7515 but unfortunately it's got the wrong tender for my donor. I haven't been able to find any pictures of 7696. 7550 looks like a possibility as I've found pictures of both sides, it fits the donor and according to ShedbashUK it was seen at New England in 1937. However, as the photos of it were taken at Dereham and Norwich, it might not necessarily have been based at New England. Jamie

My apologies for such a long gap between updates, A-levels rather took over this year but with those out of the way now I've been able to make some good progress. The C2 sat untouched for several months until the invitation to help on Grantham at the Doncaster show in February gave me the incentive to at least get it presentable in time for the exhibition. The 3D print took quite a bit of filing to fit the K's running plate but I got there in the end. Originally I'd put a Taff Vale motor and Highlevel gearbox in but the motor was too weak so it will be replaced by a Highlevel one. The loco was in plain black and with numbers in time for Doncaster and I lined it with a bow pen shortly afterwards. I then lost motivation so it's still waiting for the finishing touches. I've left it in ex-works condition as 3254 was out-shopped at the start of July 1938 and I'm aiming for July/August '38. I was given a Hornby Railroad Flying Scotsman a few years ago and I had a static clone of a Hornby A4 so I decided to use the A4 tender to replace the A1's corridor one as no A1s or A3s had corridor tenders in 1938. The streamlined tender meant I was limited to only a handful of A1s and I eventually settled on 2561 Minoru, a long-term King's Cross resident. I had hoped it would be a fairly quick project to replace the moulded handrails and get the loco into 1938 condition (cut the chimney down and reduce the cab cut-outs) but it ended up taking much longer than I thought (as all of my projects seem to do), not helped by problems with the primer cracking twice when it came to repainting the loco. For the apple green I used Tamiya XF-5 after seeing someone on the LNER forum use it. The lining is all HMRS pressfix apart from the red bits and on the wheels which were done with the bow pen. I decided to leave the loco fairly clean as it was only a month or two out of Doncaster in the summer of '38. You can't see it in the photo but there's just a light dusting of grime on top of the boiler. For my next project I was thinking of renumbering my Hornby J15 as I believe some were based at Grantham and New England in the 1930s. Does anyone happen to know which ones were allocated to those sheds, please? Regards, Jamie

There's a copy of the 1928 specification in the Haynes manual for Flying Scotsman and that shows no lining on the cylinders. However, looking on the Colour Rail website, there are a couple of late '30s or post-war photos of A1/3s (2573 and 2582) and V2s (4771 and 4843) with lined black cylinders. The specific locos in the pictures all seem to be ones shopped at Doncaster. It doesn't seem to have been universal, though, as there's a colour photo on Steve Banks' site of 2548 with unlined cylinders in 1937. The switch might have coincided with painting the class on the bufferbeam?

Ah, I see what you mean now. I've always thought that the 1935 tenders were called streamlined ones to differentiate them from the 1928 ex-A1 tenders even after they had the fairings removed in early 1938 (the 1928 tenders also had these fairings fitted when transferred to the A4s, see Hornby's W1, but again they were removed in '38). Hornby never bothered to model the fairings but the tender itself is still the 1935 type (also built for 4491-7 in 1937)

I'm fairly sure Hornby have provided the correct streamlined tender on all of the Silver A4s they've done since they retooled them (R2965/3306/7/8/9) apart from the Railroad train pack released a few years ago. You can tell it's the streamlined one from the lack of beading and the bowed rear end.

Or is it to do with where the locos were overhauled? 2564 and the other Scottish A1s were overhauled at Cowlairs rather than Doncaster until 1931.