Nick Lawson

@Nearholmer Thanks again for your tip off. We duly appeared at the Badgeworth Bassett Lowke Society convention and were directed to a gent who is their steam guru. Our probable centenarian was pronounced to be in good condition; and guidance on getting it going was imparted. Steam oil has been ordered and a can of pure water sourced from my sister's dehumidifier. A stuck safety valve/filler has been eased out and next various seal/ o rings will need replacing.

The last mountings for the boiler were the distinctive Salter safety valve springs. The original whitemetal castings were still present in the kit; and after humming and hawing about whether to use my replacement Gibson brass castings, I decided to use the originals anyway to go with the original dome. Then I discovered that these were a mismatched pair - one having the arm set higher up the column than the other. As the lower of the two broke off when I tried to bend it, I considered soldering it back on higher up to match the other one. Luckily at this point I decided I couldn't be ar bothered and the Gibson brass castings looked so much nicer anyway. (pic1) The loco is now in the paintshop for priming. Pics 2 & 3 have come out a bit blurred - must be the effect of the Stealth Black.🙂

Lubricators The prototype had small "mushroom" lubricators mounted on the side of the smokebox. I saw Gibson did a MR lubricator, so I got a pair. Unfortunately these turned out not to be right for this loco. Firstly the shape is rather more pointy than is required, which I could live with. The second problem though was that the casting had a vertical pipe and appeared to be designed to sit on top of part of the loco, rather than have a horizontal mounting into the side of the smokebox (pic1). I attempted various solutions without success. The castings are minute and irregularly shaped, so of course repeatedly ping out of tweezers to commune with the carpet monster. It was thus impossible to position them against the smokebox and glue them on the right way up. It was even worse trying to get a soldering iron up next to it long enough to take. Eventually I had one last attempt at what had been my original Cunning Plan, which was to graft a length of brass wire on to the side of the casting. It seemed likely that if this could be done it would be much easier to fix in place, by drilling holes in the smokebox and inserting the wires. However, various attempts at this earlier had failed due to the impossibility of getting the casting to stay still long enough to solder. I always ended up with a skewed joint liberally coated in a blob of solder. Finally though I managed to make the necessary joins. A coffee stirrer provided a suitable restraint.(pic2). I still didn't get the lubricators perpendicular to the wires, but near enough that drilling slanted holes in the smokebox would compensate. (pic3). Still needs a bit of tidying up before final fixing, but mostly not to bad. I can stop swearing now.

Is the flat roof a modern "improvement" and might that account for the top courses of brickwork?

Over the weekend I completed the boiler handrails on both sides, in particular grafting the ejector casting between two lengths of handrail. I started on the smokebox door, drilling it for the two handrail knobs. The door had a number of divots in its face so I smoothed it as much as possible with fine emery and then filled the remainder. I had a second attempt at the whistle but made a worse job than before. I backed off from sorting out the whistle today. Instead I did the chimney. I had previously drilled out the top a bit, but the outside of the top was noticeably wider side to side than fore and aft. I tried to file it down to be more circular, also reducing the appearance of some of the missing chunks. It is still a bit crude, but, for once, I was wary of trying too hard so I've desisted from further fettling. The chimney base isn't a nice fit on the smokebox. It rocks - but not in a good way. You may well have seen examples of K's locos on ebay with a chimney leaning either forward or backwards. I considered pruning off the locating knob so that I could sit the chimney on top of some emery on the boiler and grind it flat, but it looked like this would have removed too much of the flared base. Instead I gave up on my plan to glue the chimney in place, which would have allowed a leisurely checking from all angles; and went for soldering, so that I could fill the gap but at the expense of a bit of chance. Luckily I managed to tack it in an acceptable position first go and then completed the job. Now however, looking along the boiler I see the chimney, dome and safety valve bonnet are just slightly out of alignment with each other. I decided to reset the dome to get this alignment, as it is the one of the three which is just glued. However, in the usual way of these things, this glue is nicely stuck thank you very much. I'll have another look in the morning and see how much I mind about this. Memo: in future fit the chimney and safety valve, then the dome, so it aligns with the other two? In other news: I soldered in place the reverser reach rod which I devised a while back. Earlier classes of 2F had a straight reach rod, but later ones had a cranked/kinked one. Needless to say I had made a straight one, not the correct one for my M class. However most of it is hidden behind the wheel arch, so I just filed the top off the back end to put a discreet hint of kink into it. Ahem. In examining photos of the prototype I had noticed the bottoms of the firebox above the running plate were noticeably wider than the rest of the firebox. I guess these were the plates attached to the side of the firebox which sat on the frames. I made a pair out of scrap and glued these in place. Apart from being a pleasing little bull**** job to end the day, these plates are actually quite useful on this loco, in that the firebox casting was deformed and didn't reach the footplate everywhere it should; so these plates help mask the reconstructive surgery with the iron. Looking again at the pics - the other day I mentioned broaching out the handrail knobs for the chunky rails. These knobs are Markits. This wouldn't have worked with Gibson knobs which I used for the CSB mounting points.

Presumably your station will be reverting to coal-firing?🙂

Looking again at the coalrails in the pic above, the end slopes are too straight, so I may see if I can put a bit of a curve into them. Or maybe not. I have been adding stuff to the loco body. Firstly the cab handrails. The original kit supplied wire to bend, but this was long gone. My replacements instead used brass wire with the inevitable bit of scrap etch for the top brackets, drilled through and the wire soldered in. Soldering from the underside of the top simultaneously tinned the remainder of the brass bracket ready for soldering down onto the whitemetal body. For the rear handrails I cut a notch into the cab side sheet for the handrail bracket to fit into. To minimise blobbing low melt solder all over the side sheet, I then tinned (?) the rebate in the whitemetal with low melt solder, slapped loads of flux on, offered up the tinned brass and put the iron on top. However I see from pic 1 that I should have bedded it in a bit more, on that one at least. Since taking the picture, I have filed the excess off the top of the handrails. For the handrails at the front of the cab, (?? to which the hero clings desperately while hanging over the side during the exciting chase sequence??) I tried to similarly notch the whitemetal behind the edge of the sidesheet. It is hard to tell from photographs, but I think these handrails, (front and back), should be set a bit further outboard than I achieved. To do this the top brackets need to be more comma-shaped. Question: the low front extensions to the cabsides appear to have been open-topped. What was the purpose of these enclosures? Umbrella stand perhaps. Boiler handrails. These locos had chunky boiler handrails, as they also served as conduits for the vacuum ejector gubbins. As I have a Gibson ejector casting, I wanted to use 0.7mm wire to match. I was a bit worried that the handrail knobs wouldn't cope, but in fact I managed to broach them out easily. Pic 2 shows the first length of rail awaiting the ejector. The rail isn't fixed yet. I want to represent the cab front fixing point first. Whistle I managed to overlook that the whistle was missing from the kit. I sourced a Markits turned whistle from Roxey. Interestingly there seemed to be some variation in the height at which the whistle was pitched - sometimes higher than the cab roof and sometimes lower. I have unilaterally decided to go for lower as being less vulnerable to low-flying sausage fingers. In fact the Markits whistle shaft is very short. As pictures show whistles having a horizontal, fore-and-aft component with a connection through the cab front I thought this might provide a useful base for it, so I faked up this component, managing to drill through a piece of 1mm brass wire. My intention was that the whistle and an extension shaft would meet inside this cross piece and be soldered together. To get the proportions right, I first had to make the whistle shaft even shorter. My joint hasn't quite worked, the hole is filled by the lower shaft and solder and the whistle is wobbling on top; so I need to do it again. However, pic 2 again shows the general effect. No, I haven't put in the connection through the cab front.

@AY Mod Kemilway/Peter K kits have ceased trading. Are you able to add them under the "defunct, dormant or demised category"? Peter Dawson's daughter has told me that although the website which disappeared earlier this year has returned, this is only due to unilateral action by the hosting company; and it will be disappearing again. Modellers should be aware that there won't be any service from it.

Coal rails The whitemetal kit still included both the tender coal rails, but they are looking battered, (pic1). One in particular has a break in the lower rail. I tried to straighten them but they were never going to look good. Instead I acquired some 0.7mm square section n/s rod from the Wizard MSE range; which I used to make replacement rails, together with uprights of scrap brass etch, (pic2). I tinned the latter for soldering to the whitemetal tender body, (pics3,4). The n/s rod is slightly smaller cross section than the original whitemetal, which is good in that the rails are less thick, (although still overscale); but less good in that the rails aren't quite deep enough compared with photos of the real thing. In this exercise I admit to concentrating on replicating the kit pieces, rather than studying photos to see what they ought to look like and I positioned the assemblies lengthwise on the tender a bit arbitrarily. I had checked the height against pictures, but still managed to mount them a bit high so that the two gaps are not the same. Also I see that the lower rail on the far side of pic 4 isn't quite straight. However, overall I think I have achieved a reasonable improvement on the kit; and, apart from reducing the blobs of low melt solder from the tender top, these are now pretty much done.

I noticed that the Kemilway website disappeared earlier this year but then reappeared, so I enquired. I have just had an email from "Peter Dawson", in which his daughter, Sarah, says he is no longer trading. I have asked for a form of words for an entry in the "defunct, dormant and demised" category.

@Nearholmer Thanks I'll try Badgeworth.

More progress with the cab. I had been a bit dissatisfied with the cab windows as being lacking in the roundness department and being set a bit too far towards the sides. I acquired a Mainly Trains spectacle frames etch from Wizard. Although originally for GW locos, the smaller size was about right for this loco. I admit I had wrongly thought I could slap these on the outside surface, masking the lack of roundness. I fastened them inside the cab, taking the opportunity to move them towards the centre for a better look. The prototype windows opened, being hinged on the edge nearest the cab side, with fastenings on the opposite side. I left the tabs on the pieces to represent these fittings. (pic1) After the glue had gone off, I dug round the outside of the cab windows where necessary to reveal the window frames, and slapped filler on the opposite sides. Further making good to do on this, but I think it will be worth it in the end. In the meantime I fitted the reversing lever in the cab. The backhead isn't super detailed, but I thought I could improve it a bit by fashioning a regulator handle. I adapted an L-shaped whitemetal offcut for this. With these in place I put the cab roof on. (pic2) I realised that I should have done this before fitting the safety valve bonnet as I couldn't get a good run with the soldering iron along the front edge of the cab roof. It would have been good to solder this as the arc of the cab roof was a smaller diameter than that of the cab front so there was a bit of a gap to fill. The roof is a good thick chunk of whitemetal which wasn't amenable to bending. Instead I glued the roof on; and , later pared away the underside of the roof overhang to reduce the appearance of thickness, and filled underneath. Today's adventure with scrap brass was to fake up a fall plate. I had looked at the Brassmasters plates at expoEM, but couldn't decide which to buy. My homemade one could also be considered a Brassmasters product, according to the wording etched on the underside of the plate! The general appearance was taken from photographs, but adapted to reach the unprotypical distance across to a 4mm tender. The whitemetal cab floor is higher in the middle than the sides, so I needed to cut a rebate into the rear edge, so that the fall plate can sit flat. It is held loosely in place by a couple of wires bent over into holes in the whitemetal floor. I notched the front edge of the plate in a couple of places to locate these and soldered them in. (pic3) As you can see, this still needs tidying up. I'm not sure how strong this will be, but hopefully enough for my use ("social, domestic and pleasure" ??)

@Nearholmer Thanks that would be great - Cirencester.

@Nearholmer Yep its O Gauge. The paint job on the other side is a bit more worn, but only a bit. Yes,it is my Quest is to find this rare breed.

All, thank you for your responses, from which I deduce that it would be ok for me to take this thing apart and fiddle with it myself. Ah, another whole new project. I will put this aside until I have completed two others. In fact, there is no track. Apparently my wife and her older siblings just ran it across the floor. There was no rolling stock either, but I recently succumbed and bought it a Bing GN open wagon as I thought it looked lonely. I've been thinking vaguely in terms of buying some old track and making up boards 3-4' long that could be taken outside on a nice day/evening and plonked round the garden for an occasional steam. The nominal owner may take an interest one day, but he's busy rebuilding his house at the moment. First though I need to find out if the loco will run. In the meantime here is the said loco and wagon.

My in-laws bequeathed a live steam, Bing-for-Bassett Lowke O gauge tank engine to my son. This hasn't been run for 60 years or so. 1. Please will someone tell me how to operate it? 2. It is probably 100 years old. Should I get checked out/serviced first? Thanks in advance.

@Andy HayterWell yes, which was why I was looking there. However It seemed unlikely that the d-limonene used in foods was the same d-limonene used by modellers for melting plastic, so not wanting to waste money on the wrong one, I asked for specifics. The valuable info that it can go off means I may not rush to buy some anyway until I have a particular need. (Today just discovered most of a packet of milliput which is crusting over. I must look for something to use it on pdq.)

Some progress on assembling the loco body: I fitted the front bufferbeam, which was awkward to solder from underneath due to various obstructions. I then had to scrape out the excess solder which of course ran to fill the spaces for the frames. The plug of the safety valve bonnet was a nice fit in its hole, so that was a quick touch with the iron to fasten. I then found that the consequence of filling in the underneath of the boiler earlier meant that I couldn't do the same for the dome. Instead I stuck it on with GS Hypo contact adhesive. The big thing which I have been putting off is the fitting of the cab sides. These consist of the sidesheets themselves and the wheelboxes which extend under the cab front to provide a filling piece under the boiler (pic 1). It isn't visible in this picture, but the other end of the box is incomplete. The other, offside, box was more seriously deformed and unusable. I had been toggling between “problem”/”opportunity” modes about this before settling on the latter. This kit like many others makes the cab wheelboxes extremely wide in order to hide OO gauge frames. In the prototype the wheelboxes are taller than they are wide, unlike the kit. As my loco is in EM, I had hoped that I could narrow the wheelboxes a bit to give a bit more floorspace for the crew to actually approach the backhead. Ideally, trimming the outside surface of the wheelbox would allow this. The problem in this case is that the front part of the casting needs to stay inboard, snugged under the boiler. However, the mangled state of the offside wheelbox was such that the front panel was unusable anyway and would need cutting away and replacing with some scrap brass. This left me free to attack the remainder and trim away the worst part of the outside leaving a narrower, fairly complete wheelbox. The frame spacing on this loco is in fact not quite wide enough for the top of the frames to be hidden inside the wheelboxes, (wider EM gauge frame spacers are available from other sources), so I cut an arc into the bottom of the wheelbox side such that it sits on top of the frames. I was worried that this would be too visible, but in fact isn't too bad. It was however a pig to solder the cut down, not very square wheelbox to the cabside before fitting this assembly to the footplate. Having done this I then tinned my brass replacement piece and soldered that in place. (pic2) For the other side I followed a similar procedure, except that I was able to reuse the wheelbox front, but had to fill the partly missing back end with solder. With the cabsides and wheelboxes soldered in place I then cut away some of the hidden parts of this assembly (pic3 – before cutting), to ease sliding the motor into the boiler barrel. Pics 4 & 5 show the current state of play. I'm waiting for the filler to go off, so I can fit the body to the frames again. Overall I like the effect achieved, although I am annoyed that I have managed to end up with the left hand wheelbox slightly wider than the other.

@Compound2632For the uninitiated, please would you indicate what you mean by d-limonene? Having previously seen references to this, I was prompted by this thread to get some to try. I was boggled to see that the first response from ebay was some kind of vegan health supplement. Not believing that you have progressed to 3d-printed tofu kits....

The last thing to say about the body is that these are supposed to be hopper wagons, so make with the plastikard. (pic1) The angle of this picture hides the fact that the floor looks manky, quite apart from my failure to model the bottom doors at all. Also that the central divider isn't level. I am quite pleased with my scored planks in the hopper ends though. Btw, I also discovered that my dad's old mortice gauge is quite useful for scoring straight planking lines into wagon sides. I missed a trick with the first of these bodies: There is useful space underneath the hopper ends to add some weight to these wagons. Shonk 2 has added lead. The hopper dimensions were roughly estimated from the Tatlow diagram. the result was painted with a notionally wood colour which makes me think of canine ordure; but I had bought a pack of weathering powders to experiment with, so slapped on some black. I had also sprayed the outside with pale grey rattle can primer, which I then daubed with more black. Properly there are other things I should have done first, such as giving this wagon an identity, but, for a five minute job, I'm quite pleased with the effect and it's given me something else to think about. You will see from pic2 that the wagon also has an improved wheelbase. More of that anon.

The next easiest improvement to these wagons is to reduce the height. There is a diagram by Peter Tatlow in his LNER wagons vol2. Comparing the model with it, the main body planking is slightly over height, but I'm not fiddling with that. However, the coke raves are too far apart, raising the height considerably. I always wondered whether these wagons carried huge lumps of coke. We had a coke-fired boiler at my parents' house (guess who fetched it in) and the fuel was – from memory – about 1-1.5” diameter. That would have shaken out all over the track. Anyway it is a simple job with a piercing saw to remove the top rave, cutting immediately above the lower one; then remove the lower one similarly. Clean up the top main plank and top of the lower rave; then evenly shorten the stubs of strapping until you like the gap of the lower rave and mek it back in place. Repeat process for upper rave. You may need to apply some fine filler, depending on how enthusiastically you have wielded your file. Doing this easily lowers the height by well over 2mm.

This started as a displacement activity when I couldn't make up my mind about the next step of my loco build. I aspire to build up rakes of finescale wagons, but unfortunately I also desire one day to be able, every now and then, to marshall all roads of a fiddle yard into a really good long mineral train beyond economic reality; and run it around. So, while I have various promising materials in the stash, I also found myself wondering about how I could assimilate other, abused 50 year olds relicts which I can't bring myself to bin; to make a 'B team' of don't-look-too-closely, shonky stock. None of this should require expenditure on detailing frets etc. Shonk The First I had accumulated three examples of the venerable Triang “NER coke wagon” which famously looks almost exactly completely unlike any real NER prototype. As a diversion from sorting out coupling rods I looked to see which prototype these models look least unlike. The answer seemed to be the diagram R5/R6 coke wagons – apart from being 1mm under length; 2mm over height; 4mm short on the wheelbase and with wheels 1mm diameter too big. However the most obvious feature of the model is that it attempted to represent the distinctive NER end brake gear. Sadly the limitations of the moulding mean that this appears as a Rear Parcel Shelf; Marble Run and Ferret Ladder. (pic1). Oh, and you might not have guessed that this lot was meant to be brake gear at all, as the model also has the normal side brake handles. But this end brake gear was only characteristic of the (ex Stockton & Darlington) Central Division of the NER, including coke wagons to diagram R5. The Southern and Northern Divisions had "normal" gear - including their equivalent coke wagons to diagram R6. So a proprietor of this Triang stock can legitimately trim these "monstrous carbuncles" off the ends. This was just a pleasing fancy but then The Pugbash appeared before me and said "Pick up your scalpel and follow Me." So what else could I do? Pic 2 shows the general effect, although with the fine scraping still to complete.

Oh, and for anyone who has seen the ebayer trying to sell an unmade SEF tar wagon kit for £69, the current price at Squires/SEF is £22.99. A bargain! Buy three! 😁

I recently had a good experience with Squires. For anyone else thinking of buying SEF products, the SEF website hasn't been brought up to date yet, particularly still sporting an out of date 2021 pricelist and out of date payment methods. However, my email enquiry to check availability led to an emailed invoice paid by bank transfer.

Tender bunker continued: I carried out my plan to modify the flat-top tender to include a coal bunker. The top is cut down from the original piece. It was a bit of a game soldering it in due to the cross members lower down. I decided against trying to solder in the off-cut as the sloping bunker rear, due to the even more restricted space up front. Instead I cut down my plastikard template and epoxied that in but I can see that the exposed epoxy has gone that gungy orangey colour, presumably disturbed by flux residue. Hopefully it will hold together. In the pic below you can see that filling is in progress. You can also see the conspicuous hole in the top, which does not appear in the instruction diagram. I have no idea what it is for. Perhaps to allow the crew to plumb in a jacuzzi? Less conspicuously there is a second, smaller hole underneath the cross panel towards the rear. No idea about that one either. I'm now faking up a tank filler - another item not include in the kit or instructions. I have a length of old copper gas pipe which I think will be the right sort of diameter. I'm trying to file the end square so the filler loses its current racey look.