Rob Pulham

Hi Ian, I am most definitely in the I prefer to make it camp. Much as I am enjoying the dabbling in 3D drawing it will never replace physical modelling.

Modelling time has been in short spells just recently, hence my lack of posts. I have been beavering away at detailing the front and rear of the tender but I haven’t taken any photos yet. However, a discussion on the Guild forum about details of the coal pusher fitted tenders had me looking closely at the drawings of the modifications done to the 9 Ton tender to increase coal capacity to 10 Tons. There are drawings of the upperworks in LMS Profiles no 4. The tank vent castings cleaned up quite nicely by spinning them in the mini drill with a bit of scotchbrite and although the water filler was a reasonable casting, when comparing it to the drawing it’s a bit on the undernourished side. So, using the same bar as I used for the eccentrics which was just the right diameter, I decided to make a replacement. I had a look at as many photos as I could find and it seems that David Andrews has the type of hinge mechanism pretty much correct albeit that all the ones that I saw had plain straps without visible fasteners. After turning, I transferred it to the mill and used a recently acquired edge finder (less than £7 posted from Allendale) to help to accurately position the holes. I then used a 1mm collet to hold a .06mm drill and away we went. Fitting such small drill bits into a collet on the mill is a bit of a fiddle and you could really do with another hand but it’s worth it.

Although I dressed the backhead a couple of weeks or so ago, I hadn’t managed to get it to fit into the cab before now because the stub of the whistle protruding through the cab roof stopped it from sliding in. One of those little few minute jobs that seem to take forever to get around to…. I finally got to it and the backhead now fits in place as if it was made for it.

After spending a week teaching myself 3D drawing, I was back at the workbench today. I had originally planned to just turn a couple of appropriately sized top hat bushes, file some flats on them where they come together and job done. My recently acquired mill offered more possibilities to make something that at least looks like the original even if it doesn’t attach in the same way. This will be soldered to the cylinder front in between the slide bars, instead of being suspended from a substantial bracket between the frames. This is my first real item produced with the mill and I am happy with how it turned out. This is where it will sit in between the slide bars on the cylinder front. I have added some fastenings to make it look as if it should be there, when it’s ultimately lost in the gloom between the frames.

I went through the process again this time drilling the offset at 2mm which proved to be perfect for this particular application. I had been using a very thin cutting tool which someone had ground (not very well it turned out) which came in the box of bits with the lathe. After cutting the first one I thought that I would examine the tool to see if I could improve it or at least rub it on a stone to restore the cutting edge. When I looked closely at the cutting part I noticed that the bottom of the tool was wider than the top and although there was some rake away from the cutting edge the fact that it was getting thicker couldn’t be helping to make an efficient cut. This is a sketch of what the tool looked like originally albeit the bottom of the wedge is somewhat exaggerated. I have watched a few Youtube videos on sharpening lathe tools recently so I had a go at grinding the tool to take off some of the thickness towards the bottom making the two sides parallel. This improved the cut and I successfully cut the groove for the first sheave. Then I parted it off but I was a little too close leaving a very thin edge. During the parting off, the parting tool moved slightly in its holder which pushed over the thin rim of the sheave slightly closing the top of the groove. In the end it was usable but I decided to cut another pair to be on the safe side. It was while parting off the first one that I noted that my parting tool was in fact just the right thickness for cutting the groove without having to move the carriage as well as the cross slide to get the desired cut. Having discovered this the next one progressed much faster and modifying the fixture that holds the parting tool so that it grips the parting tool more securely by squeezing it in the vice made the third one even faster still. The parting tool is one like this albeit mine only has one tool. You will note that it’s a pressed steel fitting that grips the part with the aid of a cap screw. Mine didn’t hold the cutting tool very closely to the holder but it does now. https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41Uv-fAJmjL._AC_.jpg So here we have the finished sheaves. This is how they will fit on the axle once I work out their alignment with the crossheads further down the line. It turns out that I wasn’t far out with my 16mm deep offset hole, I had a measure of the remaining stock while putting this post together, and there is just about enough material to cut a 4th sheave had I needed a full set for a conventional inside motion build.

Although the gent that I am building it for doesn't want full inside motion. One thing that is quite visible through holes in the front frames, is movement of the crossheads. I was asked if I could add some element of movement using the spare outside motion bits from the kit ( a set of Premier rods etc. has been supplied for the build). Having started to think about it long before getting to the actual start of the build I realised that with the axles being hollow I couldn't use traditional cranks to make the crossheads move (or rather I wasn't comfortable that I could make it work without ruining axles wheels). So I thought that a pair of eccentrics would impart movement while being able to be attached to the hollow axles without having to cut them. We agreed this as the way forward and I ultimately bought castings for the slide bars/crossheads and eccentric straps from Laurie Griffin. I was also going to buy some eccentric sheaves too until I recalled Nick Dunhill finding the new cast versions very time consuming to prepare. Further thought made me also realise that the LG cast ones wouldn't really work anyway. This is because in a 'normal' inside motion set up the eccentric sheaves are trapped between the cranks so the eccentric straps cannot slip off the edge of the sheaves. Of course, I planned to use them as a single eccentric so they would need to be restrained at either side. Instead of ordering a set of cast eccentrics along with the other parts, I bought a length of 12mm round brass bar instead. Initially I was going to offset in the lathe using a four jaw chuck to offset the bar but having done a bit of research online, most machinists were of the view that you could but if you had a mill it would be far easier to drill it in the mill. Not being as proficient with my mill as I hope to be in time I did use the lathe to put a small centre mark in the end of the bar before transferring it to the vice in the mill. Then using a centre drill inserted into my centre mark to centre it quickly, it was easy to plot the offset (2.4mm, more on this later) and then drill it out to 4.5mm. I then took it to final size with a reamer. Transferring it back to the lathe I took a skim off the outside and marked up for the first sheave. Some time later we had this. I tried the eccentric strap for size and found it was just a little too wide for the strap to close completely around the sheave. It was at this point that I noticed that the depth of cut of the groove to accommodate the strap was such that it was very close to breaking through into the offset hole. It seems that in setting my offset hole at 2.4mm from the centre to gain the maximum amount of movement was just too much. You may be able to see the mark where it’s just about to break through in the image below. This was made worse by having to apply a second slightly larger reamer than 3/16 (4.74mm) to get the axle end into the offset hole The plan is to start again from the other end with a 2mm offset hole and see how I get on. To be continued…

Thanks Tony, I am enjoying it too.

Yesterday saw more progress on the motion for the J6, with the valves almost complete. I still have the arms to make that connect the valve rockers with the expansion link etc. But I am pleased that I have got this far as I had hit a bit of a mental brick wall with concern that attempts at soldering on the valve rocker supports would result in them dissolving into individual parts again. As happens often when procrastinating, I worried for nothing.

Further progress on the tender has seen the basics of the body put together. So far, the only issues have been some bowing of the half-etched sheets which has taken a bit of work to get them soldered up straight. The worst being the rear sheets with the steps and the coal door. In the end I added a second sheet of 10thou nickel to back off the coal door. I still have more detail to add to the coal door.

While I am distracted with outside jobs during the good weather, I have been working on another of the key outstanding jobs that is simple to pick up and put down. The back head/plate, is as I mentioned earlier in the build, a GNR Boiler Back Plate set from LG Miniatures. It wasn’t quite deep enough so I added a strip of thick brass along the bottom. Also missing from the set as delivered, were the injectors. Laurie includes a layout drawing in the set and it showed the missing injectors. An enquiry to Laurie had an apology and a pair of injectors in the post. I am not sure if they were from the GNR set or another more generic pair but a little bit of scratch building had them looking the part. I had to fabricate one of the levers for the right hand injector from a .9mm rod with one end squashed and drilled out for the pin and then tapered with a file in the mini drill (too small to old securely in the lathe). In the end I only used one of the hand wheels from the set because they came with cast stems on them and I wanted to fit them to the stem already present on the castings so I used some cast hand wheels from the spares box which had holes in the centres. Had I not had them to hand I would have cut the stems of the castings and drilled them for the ones with the cast stems but it would have been a bit tedious. The GA showed some kind of inline valve down the right hand side of the cab at the side of the back plate so I knocked one up from a couple of bits of tube and a cast handwheel from the set. My apologies for the greenish tinge it’s reflections from the green storage box that I propped it against for the photos.

I had hoped to make further progress on the J6 motion today but last night my elderly neighbours' bed collapsed. I have spent much of today regluing and splinting the centre support for them. The splints were made from a couple of strips of oak that we had spare from a replacement pack sent for a damaged in transit headboard for our bed. The sun was shining and I like working with wood, so what wasn't to like about doing them a favour.

With the brake hanger height sorted it was time to fit them. Because the wheels are on telescopic axles, they need much more wiggle room to be removable than the Slaters et al, types. It’s actually quite surprising how little room you need to remove a Slaters wheel. The lack of space around the brakes meant that for the wheels to be removable the brakes need to be removable too. I did this by adding a collar from microbore tube over the .9mm rods that the brakes hang from on the frames. And at the moment the cross shaft at the front of the tender is removable but I am sure that if this were fixed the brakes would pivot out of the way to get the wheels out. Just to prove that they are removable. I also made the two quite hefty support rods for the water scoop. Plus, a Blue Peter moment in that here’s one I did earlier. I fitted the brake cylinder that I turned when I first got the Unimat 3. A few general shots of the inner chassis, for no other reason than I got a bit carried away with the camera.

I received the chimney from Mike last week but the good weather meant that outdoor jobs took precedence. However, some modelling time yesterday afternoon and evening, saw the final touches to added the loco. I am now going to sit and look at it for a few days before arranging painting with Warren. Just in case I spot something that I haven’t noticed…

The next interesting bit of the build was when I came to look at fitting the brakes. The kit provides etched brakes for the tender in the usual dual layer fashion. I had some nice casting from the Hobby Horse Reynolds range. They were the ones that I was drilling out when I showed my use of pliers to clamp them for drilling a short while ago. When I put some rods through the chassis in the holes provided and dry fitted the Reynolds castings to the stretchers and pull rod frame they wouldn’t fit because they were not long enough. After a bit of head scratching I checked the drawing and sure enough they are to scale length. However when I checked them again the etched ones provided it all made sense. The answer to this little dilemma was to re-drill the holes in the frames 1mm lower down. There was just enough frame depth to do this without having to resort to adding hanger brackets.

When I started on the brake pull rods and fitting the water scoop, I quickly realised that the kit is very lacking in detail underneath the tender. After being kindly supplied a drawing that showed the detail of the inner frames of the tender, I started to add some additional details. My spares box yielded a couple of balance weights which I added to the linkages supplied in the kit. Not perfect but better than nothing. This is still a work in progress. As you can see from the photos it does all move at the minute but I may need to solder it solid depending on how far I can go with the remaining linkages and how controllable they are. I also started work on the brake linkages adding a bit of 3D detail to the joints using scrap etch and brass rod.

It's time for another weekend project to break cover. Another of my outstanding jobs is the build of a David Andrews LMS Princess Pacific kit. The Loco is to be 6206 Princess Marie Louise depicted in the late 1930’s. I was pleasantly surprised upon examining the box contents, that the gent that I am building it for had ordered all nickel etches. 6206 was slightly unusual in that for much of her life she was attached to a tender equipped with a coal pusher. The additional parts for this have been supplied by Finney7 from their Duchess tender. The box also contains a lot of additional extra castings to upgrade the kit parts. The wheels are Alan Harris castings turned by the gent that I am building it for.

Mike has just sent through some photos of the chimney castings. They look excellent. Posted here with Mike’s kind permission. I am looking forward to getting my hands on it.

Modelling time this last week has seen me back on the J6. I have been making progress with the inside motion starting with soldering the front of the slide bars to the cylinder front and then removing the motion bracket and moving it backwards to match the drawing in order that it would then clear the front horn guides. Getting them square to each other was a little challenging so I cut a couple of rectangles of 10thou sheet to set both the distance between the cylinder front and the rear of the motion bracket and keep them square at the same time. I used a couple of aluminium hair grips to hold them in place while I soldered the ends of the slide bars to the motion bracket. I still need to plot out and drill holes for the support rods for the expansion links in the cylinder front. I have temporarily assembled most of the motion but I still need to add the parts to the motion bracket which support and operate the valves. Having extended the clearance between the cylinder front and the motion bracket so that the cylinder front sits in front of the horn guides, I found that the slide bars still fouled the horn guides. T next task was to reduce the depth of the front horn block in the lathe so my four-jaw chuck got a turn. Because I only wanted to effectively face them off. I cheated a little and fitted a short length of 3/16” silver steel into the tailstock, slipped a bearing on and used that to quickly centre the four jaw. The next task is to remove a section of the horn guides to clear the slide bars. As soon as funds allow, I plan to buy a mill to compliment the lathe and boy would a mill make this task easier. I can see now why Nick plans his inside motion fitting as he builds the frames. A lesson learned for the future! Onwards and upwards as they say.

I had a long morning finishing of some fencing at the back of the house yesterday so modelling took a back seat. I did however manage to do some test running of the Class 5A on my rather rough and ready test track which it passed with flying colours. I took a video of the slow running. It's only just over a minute don't fall asleep. https://youtu.be/5qOrTJtpFdo

Unless Barry has changed policy recently, he was quite happy to send to a friend in OZ. So I would be surprised if he wouldn't send to Europe.

Thanks Tony, I hadn't noted that, I will consult photo's and move it down a bit.

The final part of the build while awaiting the chimney casting was how to fit the cab windows. I drilled each one top and bottom and added a pivot pin. After thinking about bits of tube etc. I realised that I could add some bottom ‘hinges’ in the form of pipe type bracket and do the same at the top but only solder one tab so that the bracket could be eased back to make the window unit removable for painting. A few shots as she stands awaiting her chimney. I also added lead to the side tanks and as I suspected she now runs quite smoothly on the rolling road. I will continue to run in while awaiting the chimney and when the weather improves, I will dig my test track out of the shed and test run around curves.

The build slowed down a little when I realised that the chimney casting had the flare cast lopsided. This meant that when you had the chimney sat on vertically on the smokebox there was more flare at one side than the other. I tried to reshape it with bars rolling it over a former the same size as the smokebox but I couldn’t improve it much. After some discussion with Brian, I emailed Laurie Griffin and Andy Beaton to ask them if they had anything suitable in their ranges that might do (as long as it looked right it wouldn’t matter which loco it was originally designed to fit). Sadly the nearest we got to was an LNER standard chimney from Laurie. The next step was to ask fellow Guild member Mike Hopkins who has been posting some excellent stuff on the Guild forum where he has been designing in 3D then printing waxes and having them cast in brass. I supplied Mike with a drawing a couple of days ago and he went away to draw it up. Below are some photos of the wax prints prior to removing the supports and sending them away for castings. Photo’s copyright of Mike and posted with his kind permission.

I had some Milliput out for making some modifications to some axlebox ready to make some castings of them. I needed a miniscule amount so it seemed a shame to waste the reast of what I mixed so I filled the back of the balance weights for the Class 5a. They still need a little tidying up but they do look a bit better than just an etched skin. When I did my J63 I had some etched washers that were just the right size to make the front windows into opening ones by sticking them either side of soe glazing material and wrapping a strip of brass around them. I wondered if I was able to turn a couple with a proper recess rather than a wrap-around overlay, now that I have a little more confidence with the lathe. I ordered a 3.5mm boring tool and when it arrived, I thought I would have a go. I cut a length of brass rod and turned a section of it down to the required width and then drilled progressively bigger holes in the end until I reached 5mm in diameter. Then I tried the boring tool ad had a gotcha moment. The tool might be 3.5mm wide but it’s also 3.5mm deep and it wouldn’t fit when trying to centre it in the hole for cutting…. In order to get the tool in I would need a bigger hole than I wanted. I scratched my head for a bit and then had a rummage thought the box of tools that came with the lathe. One of them had been ground with boring holes in mind but the corner of the cutting edge was chipped so while it would cut, I didn’t get a square edge to the bottom of the hole. It was at this point that I remembered that I had bought a mini bench grinder from Lidl about 3 years ago and it was sat on a shelf under my bench. Out it came and I had my first go at grinding a cutting tool for the lathe. Light touches soon restored the missing bit of tip and I now see what Ian meant when he said a sharp tool makes a lot of difference to how it cuts. While I had it on the bench, I reground a couple more tools that had dings out of the edges too. And one with the obligatory 5p for scale.

Last but not least here is a photo of the perishables van lettered in NER livery This photo is not mine but I have permission to share it.