Ruston

I said I'd get a better pic when we had some sunshine so as I was having a play with the railway this afternoon I did just that. A bit of sun really brings out the blue.

The cab on the CD* (chain drive) type are shown in the 1964 Sentinel brochure as being 8ft wide, as is the overall width. The 0-4-0 and 0-6-0 SR* (rod drive) types are shown as having 8ft. cabs and 8ft. 6in. overall (the frames). The 0-8-0 SR type is shown as having a cab of 8ft. 6in. and an overall width also of 8ft. 6in. * Sentinel's own designations for the classes. And for those who are wondering what kind of loads their CD types can haul.

Ive only just found this topic and I have to say, Arthur, that both of those models are superb. You really ought to post more of your loco builds in the industrial section. Top marks!

The same figures are shown in my 1964 Sentinel brochure.

Regarding the buffer beams, the vast majority of the 4w version have the bottom corners as simple corners cut off, but there was at least one with the style more usually associated with the rod-drive version. http://www.flickr.com/photos/ontrackplant/6191632230/

The yellow thing on the end of the motor appears to be the worm drive, not a flywheel!

I've not posted in this for a while now but this week I took a break from locomotive building to mess about with a few details for the railway. Although 45 gallon (?) drums are readily available from the likes of Skytrex and Duncan models I have yet to see any 5 gallon drums, so I set about making some from scratch. The body is a length of plastic pipe, to which are stuck paper discs, as cut out by file punch. The discs aren't quite the correct diameter but are near enough and become hidden by the paint anyway. The cap is a sliver of plastic rod and the handle is folded paper. The body is then wrapped with a cover that has been made in photoshop and printed off. It is slightly higher than the body to give the appearance of the raised lip around the rolled edge of this type of drum. In addition to the local firm Batoyle I have also produced some Castrol drums. This size is ideal for placing on locomotives alongside the more usual oil containers. In the background is a Skytrex casting of a stack of boxes that I have painted and added labels to. Duncan models oil drums with home-made hand pumps and Shell logos.

Yes, the axleboxes do appear to be somewhat overscale. I can't see any reason for this as I assume the axles will run in the chassis and therfore the axleboxes will be purely cosmetic.

What scale is this, please?

Thanks, chaps. I'll get some better photos of it when we get some sunshine and the weathering is finished.

Yes, the round ones seemed much easier to make and they also make my model just that bit different from anyone else's. It's now up and running, with a light dose of weathering. I fitted the decoder yesterday evening and then oiled and ran it on the layout this morning. The poor winter light does nothing for the livery or the camera for that matter!

Almost there now. I've had most of the weekend to work on this so all that remains is to fit a decoder (and hope it runs after all this!), make and fit some window bars for the rear of the cab, add some bits and pieces (oil cans, fire irons etc.) and to finish the weathering. I've already done some weathering on the bufferbeams and the cab steps. As you will notice, I have made and fitted a pair of circular sand boxes. I was going to line them but decided it would be a bit OTT.

Things are still happening with this but at a much slower pace. The lining is complete but it's rough. I found it hard to keep the line a consistant thickness, especially on the curves. It'll all disappear under the weathering though. The smokebox is only shiny because I'm stupid and picked the tin of gloss black, instead of the matt, without looking at what was on the tin lid. The cast sandboxes are yet another source of trouble. The two halves of the mould must have been teribly misaligned because one half stands .5mm higher then the other, making the whole thing list to one side. This is after filing and grinding the join line to something approaching acceptable. The (only?) preserved member of this class (w/n 1604 of 1928) has sandboxes that are circular in plan so I may turn some like that. Or make my own pair of rectangular boxes from plasticard.

I've finished the tank and have begun to paint the rest of the bodywork. I've stopped short of undercoating forward of the toolbox as I'll have to clean the primer off to solder the smokebox to the running plate. At the moment it's just loosely sat on there. The tank has a slot in each end where lugs fit, one fixed to the smokebox and one to the firebox. Once the smokebox is soldered to the running plate it will hold the tank in place but I'll slap a load of epoxy around the lugs on the tank inside to make it all rigid. Therefore I won't need to solder the tank and risk damaging the paintwork.

It's worth a try, Arthur.

Boiler backhead. In cruel close-up. There's not much detail with the kit as it comes and some of it is, frankly, unusable. Yet again poor brass castings have meant that they've become landfill. As it comes the kit provides the regulator handle, the firehole doors, manifold, and gauge glasses. The gauge glass castings were awful so I made my own from plasticard and plastic section with bent wire for valve handles. I also made flanges on the boiler, where the gauges fit, as there were none on the castings or on the etches. Another added detail is the washout plugs and pipework. The pipework is simply copper wire and the plugs are slivers of plastic rod with cubes of square rod glued to them. I've painted the gauge glasses white but it doesn't look quite right. I suppose I should have made them from clear plastic but I don't have any. I might paint some black diagonal lines on them - opinions welcome. Next will be to make a representation of the firehole door opening mechanism

A bit of a long post this one... First off - the tank. The missing brake column and tank wrapper arrived in the post yesterday so I made a start soldering the tank together. That doesn't look very good, does it? That's because the tank wrapper is either the wrong one, or badly designed. The half-etched lines are on a part that is almost flat and there's not enough of it to curve around the bottom of the tank on either side... It's also too long. I couldn't be bothered to send yet another email and wait another week for a replacement so I cracked on and decided to make my own wrapper. I'm not confident of cutting sheet brass to fit perfectly, or to get 90 degree corners so I came up with a plan that is so cunning you can brush your teeth with it. Having measured the correct gap twixt firebox and smokebox, and having deducted from this the thickness of the three formers, I turned up some spacers from 1/2 inch brass bar. This gives me perfect 90 degree corners that I can butt the parts up to and solder to with the aid of a machined block, magnets and a length of machined angle iron. The next stage will be to roughly cut the wrapper, solder it to the formers and then file the excess flush with the ends. And finally... Buffers soldered to bufferbeams, heads blackened and fitted - and yes they are sprung. Also, one cylinder painted and lined, ready to fit.

Buffers. The kit comes with two sets of these. One are solid cast brass and the others are cast brass with a steel head and shank. Neither are brilliant. The solid ones have a casting mark along their length and across the head and it's not easy to get rid of on this cast brass as it's very hard, so I have thrown them in the spares box (God knows what use they'll ever be though). Apparently all the Agenoria range have had the whitemetal castings replaced with brass but it's a bad idea IHMO. The other set of buffers are not great castings and the shanks would not fit inside them due to little bits of stray casting. This wouldn't be a problem with whitemetal as a bit of work with a file, or holding a drill bit between fingers would have sorted it. But with brass I've had to drill them out on the lathe. The supposedly square bases aren't perfectly square so it's rather difficult to line them up in the chuck. The shanks/heads are of a large diameter so I'm keeping those for another project and have substituted some from a set of LMS heavy duty wagon buffers, from Slaters. I drilled them through the centre of the heads to look like those in the prototype pictures that I'm working with.

I think so, Mark. I've already used this colour on my Peckett but I may line this one. I'm thinking yellow and black. Opinions welcome... Last night I painted the frames and today I fitted the motor. It's a Mashima somethingorother and drives through a one-stage 40:1 worm drive. The frames have been given a dusting of weathering powders as a start as I want to weather them before the wheels, motion and pickups are fitted. I don't want to take it all apart again.

I was a bit sceptical about them until I watched one of the demonstrators at the GOG thing at Halifax, last year. It makes lots of jobs much easier because you can hold parts in place, or together, with the probe and the foot pedal allows you to hold them whilst the joint cools, which it does rapidly as all the work is done on a steel plate that acts as a very effective heatsink. In fact whilst I was watching and talking to the fellow doing the demo he soldered some parts together and had me hold out my hand and dropped them in. If it'd have been done by ordinary soldering I'd have got burnt but as it was they were perfectly cool to the touch. Anyway, I may as well post another few pics. I don't really work as fast as this thread shows - I started this on Boxing Day and did most of it whilst off work. The following pictures will take us up to where I am now and progress will be somewhat slower from now on as the holidays are over and I'm still waiting on a couple of parts that were missing from the kit... Wheels fitted to frames and the rods were laminated and fitted. The Slaters wheelsets come only with the short crank pin bushes so I turned a pair of bushes for the centre axle, where the con-rods go. I then made up the cylinders/crossheads/slidebars and fitted them. After that I must have had them on and off more than a dozen times whilst I pushed the rolling chassis up and down, attempting to find the source of the binding. I then took it apart again and fitted the brake hangers and blocks, and also the springs and hornblock keeper plates. The plates are simply thin scraps of brass that are soldered across the gap at the bottom of the frame plates. The bottom spring plates are scraps of brass, soldered to the hornblocks and the springs glued to them. The top spring mounts are scraps of brass, folded over at the top to retain the spring and soldered to the frames. Today I finished the brake gear and added the rear sand boxes and pipes. The whole was cleaned, dried and given a coat of etch primer. I also undercoated the wheels and am considering what colour to finish the loco in. Current favourite is Prussian Blue. You never know, I may get some more done tomorrow...

Hi, Arthur. The RSU is from London Road Models. The solder paste comes in a syringe with a shortened and blunted hypodermic needle. It's totally different to the solder paint, such as Carrs, that I've used before and it leaves virtually no residue.

Yes. I should have said as much but I sometimes forget that lesser scales are available. Firebox added, smokebox built up (but not fitted - I can't until the saddletank is fitted and the wrapper is missing so I can't build that yet) and valances sorted out. I'd misunderstood the instructions and fitted these centrally, thinking the gaps at either end would be filled with a thick buffer beam timber (as on the loco shown in the background photo of pic 1 in the last post). I was wrong and they should have been right up to the front bufferbeam and the bunker should overhang the rear bufferbeam. To remove both valances would be a right PITA and, most likely, unsoldering would cause other bits to drop off, so I cut into the valances using a slitting disc and unsoldered just the ends. These were then fitted into the correct position and re-soldered. Of course this left an unsightly gap, which I have covered by offcuts of brass that have been dimpled to form rivets. The loco in the background in the pic below has exactly the same repairs so it's still prototypical. On to the frames... This is the first loco that I have built with more than 4 wheels so compensating it is a bit daunting. I've decided just to spring the centre axle. The pic below shows the lining up and soldering of the hornguides, for which I am using lengths of brass bar. The frames assembled and ready for the next stage.

I don't usually post my kit builds for reasons outlined in another thread in this section of the forum but as I've currently got one on the go, here goes... It's an Agenoria Models kit of what the blurb describes as an Italia class Hudswell Clarke, although I can find no loco so named in the works list contained in Ron Redman's book The Railway Foundry Leeds 1839-1969. The kit is meant to build into the WC&P's Walton Park and is provided with name plates, but I'm not modelling the WC&P so my loco will be an anonymous version and, possibly, with a few alterations to suit other locos of the type that I have seen in photos in various books. Rivets dimpled out, buffer beams soldered on, overlays for springs soldered on and springs bent up. Cab assembled. I'm using resistance soldering for the first time and I'm impressed with how little cleaning up is neccessary. This picture is as put together - no cleaning has been done at all in this pic. Screws to fix frames to bodywork soldered in and cab fitted to running plate.

Are there any pictures of the front end of this model yet? I'm wondering if they've modelled the knight with sword that the Sentinel locos had.

You have put your images on Flickr, which is a photo sharing site. There is even a little "share" drop-down tab that gives the code to enable them to be pasted into forums. emails etc. I do not have an account on there but I would guess that there is something in the terms and conditions when you sign up to Flickr that says your permission to reproduce them is implied by your putting them there?