Rob Pulham

It looks superb Chaz. Your patience and well planned progress, is certainly paying off in the quality of the results.

After a bit of fiddling about I got the cylinder front and motion plate for the inside motion made and assembled. The fiddling about was my own fault, I initially made the motion plate too shallow and therefore it would only accept the slide bars at their very ends and I needed to mount it further along. I was also considering adding the valve guides and after spending some time fettling the rather misshapen castings, I realised that they wouldn't actually be seen so decided not to go any further. After considering them I had started to remake the cylinder front plate in order to accept them but in the end used it for the replacement motion plate so it worked out perfect in the end if a little convoluted getting there. One beauty of having a mill is that cutting out the centre section of the motion plate was so much easier than using a piercing saw and files as I have done in the past. Then I needed some pins for the cross heads, so I went the whole hog and made some castle nuts.

An Evening With... Kevin Cartwright is one of our Regional Managers, Constituency Representative for the South West (Area 13) and manager for the Gauge O Guild merchandise sales. You will often see Kevin and his wife Judy out and about with layouts and/or with a Guild promotional stand at regional and national exhibitions and he also often gets asked to demonstrate how to build O gauge road vehicles. Join Kevin to find out about bringing your layout to life with the addition of various road vehicles. Some kits are available in O gauge but Kevin can also tell you about adapting off the shelf models to meet your needs. The event is live via Zoom on 26th March 2022 at 20:00 GMT. You must register for this event as places are limited. The event is FREE to members or £2:00 for non-members.

The Gauge O Guild Spring Show in Kettering Saturday 5th March 10am - 4pm Less than a week to go! • Come and enjoy 6 layouts including a test track, 6 demonstrations, 75 traders, 11 society stands and the usual Guild stands. • Visit the front page of the Guild websbite at www.gaugeoguild.com and you will see all the information you need on the front page. • You can download the Show Guide; the overflow parking information and book advanced tckets that will give you early entry at 09:30am • There are NO Covid Restrictions in place. You DO NOT need a Covid Pass, you DO NOT have to wear a face covering but you can if you wish. The hall has a ventilation system which draws fresh air in from outside and then expels it. It does not recirculate stale air. There will be hand sanitisers around the venue. • Don't forget that if you are having difficulties with any O gauge modelling projects or DCC that the Loco and DCC Advice clinic will be there to help you and the Technical Committee can advise on O Gauge standards and anything else technical. These teams are located side by side and if one person does not have the answer, I am sure another one will. Make the most of their expertise and the expertise of our demonstrators. • See you on Saturday

The last few days have been spent assembling the chassis frames ready for detailing. I had to trim away sections of some the frame spacers to accommodate the thicker cast spring hangers, the horn guides and the gearbox. Most of this adjustment was done prior to assembling the frames but the cut out for the gear box was done afterwards. The mill came in handy for removing the bulk of the cut out, I just needed to square up the round corners of the slot with a file.

Don't forget the next "An Evening With Rob Bishop" is your chance to ask any questions about soldering brass or nickel silver. Saturday 26th February at 20:00 by Zoom Register via the front page of the Gauge O Guild website www.gaugeoguild.com Free to members and just £2.00 to non-members More and more people are moving into O gauge modelling with the increase in ready to run stock and many start to get interested in building some items of their own. If you want to attempt a kit or scratch build in brass or nickel silver please rest assured that soldering is not a dark art. It does require some basic equipment and skills but you can do it. If you are new to O gauge and want to learn about soldering or, if you are an established modeller who still has some problems with soldering, this is the session for you. Rob Bishop has been building brass and nickel silver models in O gauge for many years and does soldering demonstrations at our Guild events including how to use a resistance soldering unit. He has produced videos to help people and will be available for this 'An Evening With' to answer your specific questions. Suitable for modellers in any scale

The last week has been spent preparing the chassis for assembly. I started by adding additional strips to edges of some of the frame spacers to make them more three dimensional their appearance. The extras include some nice cast springs and hangers for the driver so the next job was to cut off the etched versions from the frames and open out the horn guide slots. The horn guides are Finney and made up without difficulty The loco is to have a basic form of inside motion animated by a pair of eccentrics to give an element of movement to the cross heads which are visible through the cut outs on the frames above the bogie. To facilitate this, I made up a motion plate and cylinder front.

1. Car Parking Arrangements Confirmed As many of you have already heard on the grapevine, the number of parking spaces at the Kettering Leisure Village has been reduced due to the presence of a Covid Testing Station. Unfortunately, this situation will exist until April. Additional off-site parking has been secured and thanks to the generosity of Maersk, we have the use of their car parks on a nearby trading estate. Although their site is only a few hundred yards from KLV, as the crow flies, the distance by road is 1.3 miles. We have therefore arranged for two courtesy mini buses to shuttle visitors to and from the Show. Obviously, the KLV car park will be available on a first come first served basis, so arriving early might guarantee you a space, however, you may prefer to aim for the overflow car park first, and travel in by bus. Disabled parking will be on site. As you can see from the attached map, the Maersk site is on the opposite side of the A14 to the KLV. We hope that those arriving by car will not be unduly inconvenienced by these arrangements, which have been compounded by the fact that the two nearby schools, whose car parks have previously been used by KLV, are both unavailable on the show date so, please do not try to use those locations. As in previous years, a courtesy bus is available to and from the railway station. The walking route is also shown on the map in case you prefer to walk. 2. Bring & Buy The Bring and Buy stand will be appearing at Kettering, two years after its last outing. Only members can price their items and put them on sale (£1 per item priced at £20 and over). All visitors can purchase at the offered price. The seller receives the purchase price less 10% commission. Please take advantage of the fact that the commission has been reduced from 15% back to 10% Unsold items to be collected before the exhibition closes. If you are planning to bring items to sell on the Bring and Buy at Kettering, please, if possible, download the form and complete it in advance. If a removable label is also attached showing member number / item no and price then that would be ideal and helps keep the input queue to a minimum. For more details see https://www.gaugeoguild.com/general/bringandbuy.aspx Any queries about bring and buy should go to Nigel Nelson via gog@nigelnelson.net 3. Covid Restriction have been lifted Please remember that there are no Covid restrictions now - The latest information is available here: https://www.gaugeoguild.com/events/Kettering2022_Covid_Restrictions_v2.pdf 4. What to expect and advance tickets With 75 traders, 6 layouts including the test track, 6 demonstrations and 11 societies, plus the Guild stands, there will be plenty for you to enjoy. Those who have been asking about a live steam special interest group can talk to Dave Robinson, Rafe Shirley, Graham Sheppard and Trevor Colegate who will be running live steam on the test track Tell them what sort of things you want to see / learn about. More details about traders and other exhibitors can be found here: https://www.gaugeoguild.com/events/guild_shows.aspx?id=4 Finally, advanced tickets are on sale here: https://www.gaugeoguild.com/onlinesales/ticketsales.aspx Any comments/queries about the show, please feel free to contact the Show manager via davesmith.gog@gmail.com

It was only after taking the photos above and preparing them for upload I realised that I hadn't fitted the guard irons. So that was a quick task this morning. As supplied the slots in the bogie were much wider than the thickness of the etch so I beefed them up with another layer and then shaped them to suit.

The bogie as supplied is a fold up box to which additional end pieces are soldered. I forgot to take a phot of this so I include a snip from the instructions to show what it consists of. I have some very nice castings in place of the etch parts B6, but sadly as you will see not much of them is visible on the finished bogie. I built up the bogies frames to create the I section where needed, as with the trailing truck. I also added some rivet strip along the top. Parts 164 are white metal castings which were passable, but I chose to remake them from brass You will also note parts B10, this is where period photos are essential because these were not fitted until the 1940's which is later than this model is to be depicted (around 1938). There were location marks half etched into the spring plates so I reversed them to hide the marks. I have also elongated one pair of holes so that I can provide some basic springing of one axle. Once it's all assembled you can see what I mean about the visibility of the springs.

I do hope so Chaz.

Usually when I start a loco build, I start by making up the coupling rods in preparation for aiding with the assembly of the chassis. On a whim, I decided to build the trailing truck and the bogie first. First the trailing truck. The truck is in two parts an outer and an inner which holds the axles/wheels. As it comes in the kit it's a fold up frame with the front yoke as separate etches that you assemble to create the I frame. I am working from the Wild Swan Loco Profile book N0 4 The Princess Royal Pacifics and aside from photos and historical information about the development and changes to the locos over time it also contains a number of General Arrangement Drawings. One of sets of drawings is for the trailing truck and shows the differences between the first two and the main production batch. 6206 is from the latter. What is clear from the drawings but not from photos (because you only see the sides not the ends) is that the front and back of the truck is also I beam type construction. I decided to add this from 10 thou nickel sheet cut with the guillotine. You can see the first piece in place on the photo above. The inner truck is a basic fold up box that you add a couple of nuts to and then fit bearings. Although it cannot be seen from any angle unless you turn it upside down the drawing shows that there is some kind of side control mechanism so I decided to turn a basic representation of it from a couple of pieces of brass rod. Lastly the truck assembled and ready to fit to the chassis at some future point. The additions have also added a little more weight to the truck so with luck I may not need to try and find room for some lead later on.

A few good sessions at the bench over the last couple of days has seen the tender finished, aside from one remaining task. I have made the cross frames which fit between the wheels removable via some brass angle soldered to the inside of the outer frames. One of them needs to be cut to fit around the scoop operating mechanism. Despite having built several Stanier tenders now, this one has been the most challenging to date. Some of that has been due to the large half etched panels and straightening out the bowing of them brought on by the etching process. The remaining fight has been with the fit of the coal space. Not that clear in the photo below due to all parts being nickel, but in order to finish of the left side, I had to cut a triangular strip 3mm wide tapering to nothing over 55mm Here we are with the axle box/spring castings just rested in place for the photos. They will be fixed in place after painting. If you zoom into the photo below you can see that I did revisit the second feed pipe on the coal pusher mechanism.

Pretty much all of the external detailing is now complete. Studying the only photograph that I have of the rear of the tender (LMS Loco Profiles No4 Page 84) I noted that there was a small fitting with what initially looked like a single outlet pipe which is how I fitted the small casting, that I found tucked away in the corner of the castings bag. However, having checked the Finney Duchess instructions and then looking at an a scanned and enlarged view of the fitting it seems that there is indeed a second pipe so I will need to revisit it and fit a second pipe, if I can. I have posted elsewhere of the lamp irons that I milled from recycled plug pins but I haven’t showed them fitted. I forgot to add that, for some reason probably oversight, there were no castings for the steam heat pipes. I had a look in the spares box but the casting that I had wasn't very good so I made one up from rod, scrap etch and fine wire. I also made the vacuum pipe removable (screwed on from underneath by a 10 ba screw) to ease painting.

Next, I moved onto the springs and hangers. Several of the dampers had become detached from the springs. The white metal pins are the vulnerable parts so I decided to replace them. First, I cut off all the dampers and pins from the springs. Next, I used a burr that came with a set of tools for the Dremel in the mill, to mill out the remains of the pin between the frame of the damper. I had to slow the mill down to 320 rpm in order not to over heat and melt the white metal. I used a clothes peg to hold the springs to drill them again using the mill. I cut lengths of brass rod to replace the white metal pins. I made a jig from a piece of ply with a blob of bluetack and a hand vice to help with soldering. Not the prettiest of soldering but they look a lot better.

While mulling over how to get the fire iron tunnel in place and the left hand side to fit without a gap I decide to make up all the little details that contribute to the whole. The castings for the intermediate buffers were a little soft around the edges so I turned some from nickel that are a little more crisp looking. I did the same with the windlass handles for the brakes/water scoop

Although I haven't posted for a while, the battle with the 4000 gallon tender has continued. The biggest issue has been the coal space and getting it to fit. The instructions rather unhelpfully refer to fettling and filling gaps with coal. Fine if you are modelling a tender loaded with coal but not if you want to see the coal pusher. The coal pusher castings are Finney 7 and as expected just come as a set of castings so I needed to make the push rods from strips of nickel cut with the guillotine. Although a casting was provided in the set for the vent pipe arrangement Due to the laminated rear of the coal space being quite a chunk I didn't trust that I could successfully solder it on without the risk of melting it so I filed up a replacement from some brass bar. In order to get the coal chute to sit down properly I had to cut 2mm of the front edge.

Hi Pete, I must confess that I have a set of GW Models rollers so I have never used it for rolling anything. I use it purely as a Guillotine a job it does very well.

I used to use a scrawker but then I bought one of these from Warco Warco Mini Formit They have gone up a little (I paid £179 for mine)

A belated finish to this thread. I was contacted by Paul Moore who ended up painting this loco to see if I would like some photos of the finished loco. He has made a smashing job of it and the photos are copyright of Paul and posted with his kind permission

Wot Chaz said!!!

A couple of bereavements since my last post on this have slowed things down somewhat but I have made a little more progress. Getting the rear of the tender and the tank top square and straight up has been a bit of a struggle. This has mainly been due to the fact that the rear of the tender is mainly half etched. The half etching process in what is quite thick base material, has made it curl in several planes. A look at one of the tender sides probably helps to illustrate this better than the photos of the tender rear. I got there in the end.

I don't really want to start yet another thread in another part of the forum so I will just pop this here. If I get around to having them printed, they will ultimately feature on an item of rolling stock at some point. I plan to do springs for them at some point too. After having it pointed out to me by a friend that we don't always model the full axle box behind the W Iron in our scales I modified the file to produce a version that sits in front of the W Iron

Moving swiftly along from the brake standard modifications. You may recall further up the thread my making a stove for the brake van using my Silhouette cutter. Although I proved it was possible, it was extremely fiddly to assemble and I certainly wouldn't want to be doing a lot of them. It's also a perfect candidate for 3D printing so yesterday morning (after amending the brake standard files) I started to draw up the stove. It has proved to be my most ambitious and ultimately satisfying design project to date. My apologies for the image overload but I am delighted at how well it has turned out.

After joint the Gauge O Guild's special interest group on 3D cad and printing I have been drawing up a few items that I have long been unable to source from the trade. Slaters do very nice lost wax castings of brake standards and stoves but they are both LMS in origin and I wanted the LNER versions so since having a dabble at drawing I decided to have a go at them. I started with a brake standard. and then with the version with the wooden box over the mechanism. More to follow.