Battledown

I have finished the Black Hawthorn, including some weathering. It is built from a High Level kit and is a purely fictitious portrayal with an open cab. I have had, and still have, a notion to build a very small cameo diorama/layout called Alexandria Wharf, hence the loco is named after the Egyptian god of fertility and death (an ancient Jekyll and Hyde). Who knows the idea of Alexandria Wharf may fertilise or die a death. I actually built this about 15 years ago and have only just noticed from this photo that the cab front is out of kilter. Oh well, too late!

Main colours are now painted and ready for lining. The Black Hawthorn is a relatively simple livery so will be completed in fairly short time. The NBR Class R is a much more complicated livery for which I am awaiting specially commissioned lining transfers so will go on the back burner for now.

Interesting, I now use Acid 8 exclusively, sometimes straight from the aerosol can, sometimes via an old badger airbrush, and have had good results with a wide range of colours from my Iwata airbrush - eg LSWR pea green, NSR red lake and GER ultramarine blue, plus vermillion buffer beams & inside frames and tan cab interiors. Brush painted black areas take two, sometimes three thin coats.

And while we're about it, I've also stripped, cleaned and primed a High Level Black Hawthorn that I built many years ago and is long overdue a paint job.

All stripped down ready for painting ... ... and etch-primed.

I agree with all of the above but would also recommend Etched Locomotive Construction, an excellent book by the late Iain Rice that is long out of print but available from various online second hand and railway booksellers. It is very readable and covers all the basics really well, even though it was written in the 1980s and kit technology has moved on a lot since then.

Basic cab, tanks and bunker built up on the running plate. It's all gone together very well so far.

Thanks for the heads-up Adam. I am building No 232 as originally built for which there is a good photograph in Bradley's book on the Adams classes. I was wondering about the boiler and had read somewhere that the kit tube is too big. Bradley gives the boiler diameter as 4' 2". The tube in the kit is a scale 4'6" (18mm diameter). Cladding would have made the outer diameter larger so its probably not a lot out. I have some thinner wall brass tubing of 17.5mm o/d which may be better, plus I will make up the smokebox front from sheet brass. Luckily I have an Adams smokebox door from a Martin Finney radial tank I can use. I can cut the 'piano' cylinder cover from the kit smokebox front casting. That's the plan anyway. I only intend building up the cab, tanks, bunker and front splashers for now so I can check the chassis fits, so work on the boiler is some way off. I can see what you mean about the chassis, though. I reckon the frames are about the only bits I'll use. A lot of scratch building and raiding of the scrap box for this model methinks - I did say it the kit looks like the basis of a good model!

Next up is a Gibson LSWR O2 I picked up second hand. I'm waiting for horn blocks, motor and gearbox to arrive so have started on the body. The running plate goes together pretty easily, although there are no tabs or slots to help. It was all done by eye. There are, however, plenty of tabs and slots for assembling the cab and tanks. For an old kit it is surprisingly well designed for the builder. It has everything you need as the basis of a finescale model although some of the details in the kit are a bit basic and there is a need for some raiding of the scrapbook or scratch building of some items. Here's everything prepared and formed ready for fitting together.

At long last I have finished the North Stafford Class B tank loco - not perfect by any means and there are a couple of things that need attending to, but it's been a long haul and I'm bored of it now.

Now basically ready for painting.

Next up are the side tanks. These have curved tops for which half-etched lines are provided. They are fitted to the footplate, slots and tabs providing accurate positioning, then the cab assembly is fitted. After that comes the boiler. I omitted to take photos of this stage but it basically comprises some brass tube machined to the correct length from which I had to cut away the bottom half under the tank for motor/gearbox axis. The smokebox is formed by two wrappers, the inner going around the full circumference of the boiler tube and the other formed to fit the fold-up smokebox saddle. Underside view showing cutaway for motor. Top view showing the body basically complete and gaps filled in preparation for painting. There was a lot of drilling required all of which required careful measuring and marking. I am modelling No 225 circa 1901, at which time there was a lot of visible 'plumbing'. The holes on top of the boiler are for injector valves. These had long actuator arms running back to the cab and pipes running down through the running plate to injectors, which were visible below the running plate. More pipes fed back up through the running plate to clack valves mounted on the boiler sides. The upper hole in the smokebox is for a blower valve with another actuator rod feeding back to the cab through the handrail. The other holes in the smokebox are for lubricators. The other side is just as busy with the exhaust pipe from the Westinghouse pump mounted on the cab side feeding along the top of the tank to the smokebox. So there will be a lot of polished brass and copper on the finished model. Another interesting point about these locomotives is that they all seemed to have different lamp-iron arrangements, some had as few as three while others had up to six. No 225 had five and they weren't always mounted in the same positions. Some also had brackets for destination boards on the smokebox and cab rear. As is cruelly shown in these phots, there is a lot of cleaning up to do!

Next up is the 'body', starting with the running plate. This comprises a lower plate with fold-down valences and endplates to form a frame and a top plate that is sweated onto the lower frame. Buffer beam overlays complete the assembly. The cab is a separate subassembly - relatively straightforward but mainly butted together, so care is needed to ensure all is square and level. Certain parts and details are added before assembly, such as the strengthening ribs on the rear spectacle plate, inner toolboxes on the cab rear, rear toolboxes on the bunker backplate and inner splashers on the cab sides. The cab spectacles in the kit were over etched so I fabricated new ones from 0.3mm brass wire then filed flat. All is then assembled ready for mounting on the running plate. Digital photos can be very cruel but it all looks fine in in the flesh!

Removable brake assembly Rolling chassis - the driving wheels are temporary ones with EM profile. I also made up dummy inside motion plate, slide bars and cylinder faces. They will hardly be noticeable on the completed model but I still think it better than a void between the frames under the boiler. Chassis with motor/gearbox fitted - it needs tidying up but is basically complete apart from pick-ups. It's going to be tight fit for my favoured top wipers with the compensation beams but I have a plan!

Thanks for the heads up Jol. I'll try it, although it seems to run ok at the moment.