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GWMark

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  1. GWMark

    Absent but not idle

    By GWMark,

    I realised it had been a long time since I last did an update when Daniel asked me if I was planning to post about our recent weekend at Missenden Abbey. I decided that before doing that I really should do an update on the things that I have been up to between the spring Missenden Weekend and the Autumn weekend.
     
    At the spring weekend I took a break from my usual locomotive construction topic and spent the weekend with Ian Rathbone in the painting and lining room. This is not a subject I am good at and my expectations going into the weekend were, in retrospect way too high. I thought I would come out of the weekend being a master painter - not so of course. As Ian righty said it takes lots and lots of practice. So since that weekend I have done a little more painting, it can not be called perfect, but it is possibly passable. I plucked up the courage to paint a couple of the models I took with me, namely the Nucast GWR Steam Railmotor and the Mallard Duke.
     

     
    The rail motor still has a few issues, some of my masking was not accurate enough so I need to touch up the chocolate in places. But it has a base coat now, it needs window detailing, glazing, interior and of course the roof needs fixing. The roof is not joined exactly straight, so it sits up too high in the middle, I will adjust the joint to bring it level and then make it sit correctly. After that a quick spray with white primer and some black on the pane above the motor bogie should see it look a bit better. It is now fitted with DCC sound and manages to haul itself along reasonably well. It is never going to be a perfect model, the engineering of th white metal bogie is too crude for that. Plus it is a bit of a lump with the white metal body and roof.
     

     
    The Mallard Duke is a slightly better paint job, but there is some touch up needed on the splasher tops and the spring details. Once that is done I will matt the finish down a little and add the plates - when I can find where I have put them! This too will get DCC sound shortly and I am thinking it needs some brake gear - there was none in the kit, but I should not let that stop me. The backhead looks a little strange in the picture as it is laid in and not exactly straight. It will be fixed once I have painted the floorboards in the cab. I also managed to break off the brake standard on the tender - careless - so I need to reinstate that. I also need to add the buffer heads and front coupling hook. The current high gloss finish does show off the ripples in the tender flare where I did not do a perfect job, but hopefully the will be less obvious after some matt varnish to dull it down. The high gloss finish did allow the transfers to bed down nicely however - much better than my previous attempts.
     

     
    I even had another go with the bow pen. Using a Mallard 57ft rail motor body I tried my hand at panel lining. Not my most successful experiment, this will eventually be stripped off for another go at some point. I think I will do more painting however before I try to move on to lining.
     
    I have also started to paint my Black Hawthorn, but I will post that later when it is more advanced than it is now, and back in one piece.
     
    At least I have filled some of the gaps between spring and autumn, there are other things that I will post over the next few days before the update on the Missenden Autumn weekend.
  2. GWMark
    As I said in my previous post I am now less than a week away from my next Missenden weekend, this time I am down to do painting and lining with Ian Rathbone, so my plan is to try to get as many of my current projects ready to be painted, at least in some state. So I have spent much of the weekend, and last week, doing those last little jobs, you know, all those things you have been putting off because they are fiddly. In my mind at east none of them would take long, but of course I was deluding myself. I have to thank my wife for putting up with me taking over a corner of the kitchen and spending so much time on modelling, especially given it was the weekend of our wedding anniversary.
     
    The Black Hawthorn needed one little job, as it now ready for cleaning and primer, the Neilson needed more work, especially in the cab area, but that is now done, although I did note after taking the picture that I have still to add the makers plates. The under frame still needs work, it only has half of its brake gear for instance!
     

     
    The Duke I know needed more work, in particular I had been putting off the handrail due to lack of holes for the handrail knobs, but that is now done. The only thing left is the top feed - although to be honest it has been on once, but I detached it (broke it off) when adding the pipe run.
     

     
    After taking the picture I noticed it was not on the rails correctly, why is it you only see this when you upload the picture! I hope to add th topped, again, on Monday and do the pipe runs from it. I need to think of the best way to do the pipes, my issue was using stiff brass wire that as I bent it around the boiler put to much pressure on the topped and pinging it off. Maybe this time I will use fuse wire. the handrails turned out to be easier than I had thought, thanks to a tip I picked up from Tony Wright about how to mark out the positions.
     
    My next project was my NuCast Steam Railmotor, the main job to doing being the steps. After my last post it was suggested I look at the Dart Casting Autocoach detailing kit to get a set of the folding steps. So pending a decision on that I put off the NuCast for now in favour of a different Railmotor.
     
    Many years ago I picked up a Mallard 57ft Railmotor for £10 at an exhibition. It was part built but missing its bogies and all the white metal fittings. My thought was I could make use of some of the bits on the NuCast version, in particular the bits of valve gear it had. However that never happened and it has sat in a cupboard for nearly 10 years. Over time I have collected all, or most of the bits to complete this, but not actually started. I decided it would not take much to get the body ready for paint, with the thought I could paint it in GWR Lake and use it for lining practice, even if I would need to strip it later so that I could complete it. When I got it out of it's box it looked like this...
     

     
    First order was to clean of some of the tarnish and then make a start cleaning it up, removing excess solder, before adding body detail, after making sure I have added the captive nuts that would allow me to fix the under frame on after it was painted, and once I had made it! These things have a lot of handrails, so a lot of .45mm brass wire has been cut, bent and soldered on. A few of them still need a little bit of tweaking, but now they are all in place. As are the lamp irons, steps on the front and those that hang off the buffer beam. Also some buffers are now in place. Once thing I did discover was that the original builder had soldered the body together but glued the overlays for the droplights - the glue was not very good and did not stand being drilled into, these are fiddly to put back when the body is soldered together and the internal partitions are in place. Then I was struck with the idea of tinning the body side and using a rubber block to manoeuvre the droplight in place whilst looking from the outside. I could then apply the RSU to the outside of the body, having attached a clip on the body itself and generate enough heat to have the droplight tack solder themselves to the body. Then I simply applied the RSU on the droplight itself to get a permanent bond. This solved the problem of lining the droplight up and getting them soldered in such a cramped spot. By the end of the night it looked more like this
     

     
    As a footnote, whilst researching handrail positions for this railmotor I looked at lots of pictures and noticed the different door arrangement, some with single doors and some with double doors. So I need to look at a DK1 kit from Dart Castings to see if it is for the same door arrangement as my NuCast has, otherwise I might be back to square one on this one.
     

     
    I still may look at taking this, since my plan is to paint it in chocolate and cream, much of that work can be done without the steps in place, so maybe it will get some paint after all.
     
    In the few days left I want to at last apply primer to a few models, so I can practice top coating them, and hopefully have at least one I can use to do some lining. If that is to happen I really only have one more day to attach any more bits to these models. I also have a couple of ready to run body shells to play around with and a scratch build loco I picked up secondhand for £10 - that spent a few hours in paint stripper, so will hopefully make a good thing to experiment with. Maybe one day I fix it up and have it running again.
     
    What all this does prove, to me a least, having a deadline really does focus the mind to get things done. But even then I put things aside as "too difficult", like the second go at the top feed and those pipes!
  3. GWMark

    Preparing for Missenden

    By GWMark,

    It's less than two weeks to go before the Missenden Abbey Spring Railway Modellers weekend. This year, in a break from tradition I am booked on the painting and lining course with Ian Rathbone. My chance to learn to finish my models from probably the best around. Although rather daunting I am looking forward to hopefully gaining some new skills. To this end I thought I should try to finish a few items to the state that I can try to paint them at Missenden, time allowing.
     
    My Black Hawthorn was already finished, or so I thought until I decided to clean it up ready for primer. It was then I notice I had failed to add the two T handle from the valves on the dome. So I drilled through the cab front and added these out of some bits of 0.45 brass wire.
     
    Next on my list was the Neilson, that I knew needed some more work to complete the cab detail, break gear and under frame. So I spent the last evening or so working on the cab detailing, I decided the under frame could wait, it was the body the I was more interested in painting. I believe that I now have the Neilson complete above the footplate. It needs the brake gear to the rear to be added, the clack valves below the footplate and some taps on the cylinder fronts.
     

     
    Next on my list of items to add those finishing touches to are my NuCast steam rail motor and the Duke.
     
    The steam rail motor needs some steps made up to replace the broken, and frankly not very convincing white metal ones. The real thing had complex folding steps on the passenger doorways to allow passengers on and off at locations without platforms. The white metal versions in the kit, which have since broken, where very simple and not a good representation of the original. There were also steps on the buffer beams to allow the crew to change the lamps etc. The kit makes no provision for these, but I am hoping I can adapt some etches intended for guards vans to represent these. The roof needs fair bit of cleaning up, but this could be done later, since the main body could be painted without the roof.
     
    The Duke needs a top feed, clack boxes, smokebox dart, lamp irons, cab interior fittings, whistles and handrails. The later being a bit of a pain since there are no handrail knobs positions marked on the kit. I also need to replace the middle step tread on the rear tender steps, sadly I was attaching it with the RSU and sneezed, the result was that the delicate half etched tread pretty much vaporised. Something I will have to learn to avoid in the future.
     
    Hopefully I will have time to get all these things sorted before Missenden. Then I need to think about priming all or some of them so that I can apply top coat at Missenden. Perhaps I should have started my preparations somewhat earlier!
  4. GWMark
    I'm not normally a builder of coaches, although there is no real reason for this, just that I got hooked on building locos and the occasional wagon. As part of my desire to finish some of those long started and put aside projects I pulled this Blacksmiths coach kit out of the cupboard. I was given this for Christmas many years ago and got as far as doing a fold and soldering the two ends before realising I had messed up by not putting the tumblehome in the ends. Annoyed with myself at making a mistake so early on it was put in a cupboard to be left for almost 10 years.
     
    So fast forward to 2017 and out it came, the ends were corrected and then the tumblehome added to the sides. The basic box was built, followed by the sole bars, buffer beams and retaining plates for the rocking W-irons. Steps have been added to one end. Last night I built the basic rocking W-irons, added the bearings and popped the wheels in. Now it looks like a coach and rolls up and down the track.
     

     
    Next stage is the under frame details, brake gear etc. plus the end details on the other end, but the instructions are unclear as to what is on the end without steps. It looks like there is some kind of pipe or bar across with the attachment points. However I have no idea if there are corresponding etches for any of this - the instructions simply do not say.
     
    Likewise the under frame detail is a little patchy in the instructions. The end wheels sets are covered in the diagrams and have enough detail to be able to work out how to build the brake gear. However the centre wheels are not shown, nor any of the casting locations. In fact the instructions are a fairly poor, difficult to read photocopy. Some the instructions have been cut off by the photocopier, ending in mid-sentence. There is a great part in the instructions that say "Attached as per diagram but" - it's anyones guess what the "but" might be! So some of this is going to have to be by guesswork or from interpretation of the pictures.
     
    If anybody has one of these kits with a better copy of the instructions or a complete model, I would really appreciate hearing from you.
     
    I would really like to get this to a stage that it can be painted soon since I am enrolled on the "Painting & Lining" course with Ian Rathbone at Missenden Abbey over the first weekend of March. If only I had planned better I would have more models ready for painting and not trying to do all those finishing touches to so many models in the next two weeks.
     
    EDIT: Since posting this I have now come across one photo of Diagram R2 in as built condition, http://penrhos.me.uk/Rdiags.shtml. This seems to show very little below the sole bar, certainly no brake cylinder or brakes of any sort. And not the very long take that comes as a white metal component in the kit. I must say I am struggling to find where to fit the tank that is supplied, it appears to be too long to fit between the articulated W-irons.
  5. GWMark
    Following on from my previous post regarding the day Daniel and I spent in Princes Risborough working on valve gear, tonight I cleaned and degreased my eccentric cranks before having another go at attaching them to the ends of the crankpins. This time I used cyno rather than loctite and I appear to have had more success. So now I have all the valve gear attached and the rail motor runs with the rods all moving as they should, maybe not exactly as the prototype, but the best that can be arranged with this rather old white metal kit.
     

     
    I think it would benefit from a bit of test track that is more than twice it's one length - it hardly starts before it has to stop again!
     
    Most of it is original NuCast with the exception of the eccentric rods and cranks which have come from a Mallard Steam Railmotor kit. I picked up a part finished one with partial valve gear that I stole those items from before getting another complete etch of the valve gear that I will use to finish the Mallard kit. The NuCast eccentrics were too long and caused the valve gear to seize at the end of the stroke. This set works somewhat better, although there s still room for improvement.
     
    As said before I am really pleased to see this finally moving, it was the first kit I ever tried to make and gave up on it as too hard a job. It has been on top of a kitchen cupboard for more than decade now, seeing the light of day once before when I tried and failed to put the valve gear together. In the time it has been up there it has suffered a bit, the sides have bowed, a buffer got broken, steps bent and broken and the brass strip trussing broke off the white metal body sides. Once I had the valve gear working I started on some body repairs, replacing the broken buffer with one I picked up from CooperCraft at ScaleForum. I've also straightened the sides somewhat. The roof is currently in a bath of model strip, I need to clean up the joint between the two panel and repaint it. Hopefully this time making a better job of both the joint and the paint finish - I think my standards of what is acceptable have gone up since I did this the first time.
     
    The bogie guards need to be replaced and the white metal steps repaired or replaced with some more convincing ones, possibly made from some scrap etch. There are also no steps on the two ends, I might try to build some of those using the etching in the part built Mallard kit as a guide. The original kit just simply ignored the rather fine steps on the ends.
     
    One thing that made the valve gear a whole lot easier was using brass lace pins and soldering it together rather than the rather bulky rivets the kit came with. This was a tip picked up from Tony Wright at a Missenden weekend many years ago and put into practice first with the Mallard etch and now with the NuCast etch, albeit with a couple of bits from the Mallard etch.
     
    The running is not perfect, partly because the motor is not well retained so I suspect it suffers from not having a very good mesh on the worm, there is no etched gearbox, just a worm and gear on the rear drivers. The motor is only retained by some wire wrapped around it, I am going to have to come up with a better way of attaching it.
     
    At least for now I feel I have overcome the hurdle that had stopped the progress on this one. It does feel good not to give up completely, although I know it will never be a finescale delight, at least it stands a chance of running. And might soon join the long line of models Daniel and I have built that need painting - there is no getting away from it, I shall have to break out the airbrush soon - maybe as a New Year's resolution to not only finish building things, but actually paint them as well. Mind you, after painting comes lining, I suspect I'll need to work up to that one!
  6. GWMark

    A day of mixed motions

    By GWMark,

    Today Daniel and I spent the day in Princes Risborough community centre at the club's modelling Saturday. We both choose to spent the day working of value gear, in my case the valve gear of my NuCast GWR Steam Railmotor and Daniel on the inside motion for his Finney Hall.
     
    In my case it was adding the cylinder covers, soldering the slide bars and adding the eccentrics. It all went really well, with the exception of the eccentrics that just would not stay attached to the crankpin end. I must have applied about 5 lots of loctite, but it just fell of at the slightest touch. I shall have to look into that some more. Despite this setback I'm really pleased to have seen the rail motor move, with all the motion down the right thing and the motor actually managing to move the large white metal lump. I'll do another post on this with some pictures/video when I get the eccentrics to stay attached.
     
    Daniel completed the second set of his Hall inside eccentrics - lots of eccentricity going on! Towards the end of the after it put it all together for a test run. It was good to see this, his first attempt at working inside valve gear start to move. The video below is a short clip I took of his test run using my phone, so please excuse the quality.
     

     
    The blutak is only there to hold things temporarily, it will all get taken off and painted before being finally fixed with loctite once the set of Alan Gibson wheels he has are added.
  7. GWMark

    Daniel's Various Project

    By GWMark,

    I realised after Captain Kernow's comment on my last post that I had not been true to my word and posted some of my son's projects. So this post is really to redress that. I apologies for the heavy photo content. These are things Daniel has put together either at the Missenden weekends or when he was at home from University during the summer.
     
    The first item has been here before, at least in incomplete form, it's the High Level Hawthorn Leslie that he has been building. All finally ready for painting.
     

     
    The roof is not attached yet, since access to the cab is needed for painting and installing the backhead - which is not in place in this photo but all done ready to go.
     
    The next item is a white metal kit he picked up a long time ago, the floors are plastic and I noticed after I took the picture the floor of the crane has come loose, so will need to be secured again.
     

     
    It's an ABS models kit, soldered together, expect of course for the plastic floors. Like me Daniel has an aversion to glue!
     

     
    This next item is somewhat braver, a Falcon Brass 6 wheel tool van. I've heard these kits described as unbuildable by others, but I think he can be justifiably proud of the end result. Again the roof is not attached it will be once the model is painted and glazed. He really enjoyed putting all that strapping on, the RSU got a lot of use. I think this makes a nice and somewhat different addition to any yard scene or P-way train. I think his idea is to add it to the crane and a couple of other vehicles he has planned to make a works train.
     
    This next item is a resin bodied kit from Dean Sidings, a Taff Vale C Class. The kit is designed to be fitted to a Hornby 14xx chassis, cut up a bit to fit. However the chassis Daniel had was of a different vintage and would have needed to be cut through the motor to fit. So that wasn't happening. Rather than buy another Hornby chassis he decided instead to make an etched chassis by taking a comment 14xx chassis, cutting of the leading wheel and building a trailing bogie out of bits of scrap Nickel Silver. This way he got to keep the ashcan at the right end and come up with a chassis that runs really well.
     

     
    And finally, this is Daniel current project. It was started at the Missenden weekend back in October. He also spent a day at the club modelling Saturday building the working inside motion that can be seen resting on the ballast in front of the chassis. It is a Martin Finney kit, now available from Brassmasters, for a GWR Hall.
     

     
    The working motion is a rather wonderful thing, and I have to admit I like it a lot and am thinking of doing the same for the new Saint chassis I am building. There is something rather pleasing about building all these little bits up and seeing them move. Of course he has not yet got to the stage of trying to sandwich it all in between the frames yet.
     
    Daniel tells me the wheels are temporary, sine they are slightly the wrong size. He has a set of Gibson wheels he will fit once he is happy with everything and painted the chassis. Neither of us like taking Gibson wheels on and off more than we have to. The blutak is also a temporary feature to keep the motor/gearbox aligned until the rest of the chassis is complete.
     
    There is a common theme with Daniel's projects, none of them are painted. He does have a plan for this, sadly it involves me doing it! To this end I have enrolled on the Painting and Lining course at the Spring Missenden Abbey Railway Modellers weekend. I'm not sure if I will get to paint many of them there, but Daniel tells me he is generously giving me items to perfect my skills on - no pressure there then!
  8. GWMark

    Neilson 12" Mineral

    By GWMark,

    Not to forget my other project, and true to the promise I made myself about not starting new projects until I finished some of the ongoing ones, I have fitted the crossheads and connecting rods to my High Level 12" Neilson that I have been building at Missenden Abbey.
     
    It's not running perfectly yet, but I did some fetling this evening and have improved it somewhat.
     

     
    Still some way to go before I am happy and will attach the rest of the bits - I have assemblies for the brake gear and the 'Hubba Bubba" pipe and cab fitting ready to go in, but I would rather get the running sorted first. Some of the bits are a little delicate and the brake gear might just add confusion to the running issues.
     
    This is probably not far, in terms of what is needed, from completion, but the fiddling at this stage always seems to take longer than expected. I will probably share my time between this, the Nucast steam rail motor and another project to replace the chassis in an old Finecast Saint I built many years ago that has never run very well - but more of that story in a future post.
  9. GWMark

    An old project resurrected

    By GWMark,

    The very first locomotive kit, if you can call it a locomotive, was a NuCast Steam Railmotor. In retrospect this was a poor choice for a first kit and could easily have put me off kit building for life, but I have liked the look of the rail motors since I first heard about them and the guy on the exhibition stall where I purchased it said it was not that heard to make. Oh well, you live and learn.
     
    Anyway, I started on this kit back in 2004 (as far as I remember), managed to solder the body together but got totally flawed when it came to the valve gear. SO it went back in it's box for about 4 years. I then tried again, using a Blacksmiths etch of valve gear, but again failed to make the thing go together. So back in the box again. A couple of weeks ago I thought to myself I would give it another go, so out it came again.
     
    The body was looking a bit sorry for itself, it had been stored on its side in the box on top of a kitchen cupboard. Perhaps it got a little warm, or perhaps it was just sheer weight, but the sides had sagged badly and at some point the buffers had taken a knock, near mind those are both easily solved problems. So I thought I would start with that troublesome valve gear.
     
    I decided to try the original Nucast etch again, it was somewhat more substantial than the Blacksmiths one, but had mostly the same dimensions. It would also mean I could save the Blacksmiths etch for an etched version of the 56ft rail motor I picked up on an exhibition stand. This was missing the bogies, casting and a crosshead, maybe I could make a second rail motor out of this, but that will hopefully be another entry in the future.
     
    This time I managed to get the Nucast etch to go together fairly well, a little fiddly, but it did all fit, or at least I thought it did. Then I found the wheels I had, 16mm Romfords as recommended in the instructions, had too much throw and caused the piston rod to need to be cut so short to avoid going out the front of the cylinder that it would fall out of the rear of the cylinder at the opposite end of the stroke. So off came the Romfords and on with a set of Gibson wheels instead. That solved the problem.
     

     
    The picture above shows the assembled vale gear, except the eccentric has been removed since it turns out the eccentric is too long and would cause the gear to jam at each end o the stroke. Looking at the Blacksmiths etch the eccentric on that set is smaller. So now I have the choice of making the Nucast rod shorter or stealing the rod from the Blacksmiths etch. I think I will at least try the former so that I can keep the Blacksmiths set complete.
     
    The other things that still needs resolving are the cylinders, which do not line up and slope downwards to the rear rather than being level with the wheel centres. Also I need to do something about attaching the eccentric to the crank pin, since to ream these out enough to fit over the Gibson crank pins would mean there would not be enough material left on the little cranks. I also need to look at a better way of attaching the motor to the motor/bogie mount as well, currently it is simply held in place with some wire wrapped around the mount. I had thought to replace the worm and final drive gear with a proper gearbox, but it seems to run well enough and that would mean changing the way the bogie is mounted to the body.
     
    I have to admit that it is really nice to see this motor bogie trundle down the test track with the valve gear moving as it should. Hopefully it will not be long before I have a completed rail motor.
     
    Another slight confession, as I finish this I do now remember that I did start to make a K's kit when I was a teenager, back in the dim and very distant past. However that was never finished, it did convince me of my hatred for epoxy as a method of construction however. That effort is now lost forever thanks to a house fire in the late 70's. So when I say this was my first kit, it was my first kit following my reintroduction to the hobby.
     
    The thing that is encouraging about all this however is that I think it must mean I have got just a little bit better at building loco kits over the years. So maybe there is hope for me!
  10. GWMark
    ...or at least that is the battle cry when the day starts.
     
    This autumn's Missenden Railway Modellers weekend has come and gone again, all to quickly as usual. After some organisational changes the team did splendid job of organisation so that it was seamless to those of us that attend, a big thank you to them.
     
    My project this autumn was the continuation of a High Level 12" Neilson Mineral loco that I started a couple of session ago. Although there were some problems, well only really one, me. I managed to loctite the final gear off centre and had problems then getting it to run well with all the bits between the frames. Fortunately Tony Gee was on hand with his hammer and more courage than I have and managed to move the gear for me. As always with these things having the tutors there is a great source of knowledge and courage to draw on and means rather than simply give up as I might at home on my own I was able to move forward, albeit that I didn't dare wield the hammer blow!
     

     
    It is running really rather nicely now, with consistent walking pace speeds and only a slight wobble when going backwards at higher speeds. My excuse is the really thing was probably a little bit that way.
     
    We also had the 7mm modellers in the loco construction room this time, which meant we had two tutors, Kevin Wilson on the 7mm side and Tony Gee on the 4mm side. This was really helpful since it meant there was always plenty of advice on hand, not only from the tutors but th either attendees. I managed to borrow a really rather nice pillar drill from Kevin to drill out all the 0.5mm holes in my castings for the van area, something I would have struggled with otherwise. So although the picture above may not look that complete I have a whole set of sub assemblies waiting to go on. The dome, cab instruments, brakes and cylinders are all sitting in a little plastic box waiting there turn to be attached.
     
    Now it's a wait until March for the Spring weekend, next time I am planning to branch out and do Iain Rathbone's painting and lining course - it's probably about time I learnt to paint them!
     
    As has become tradition my son Daniel was also with me, his project of choice this time was a Martin Finney Hall, maybe I'll get around to posting some pictures of that project and the High Level Kit that he finished at the previous weekend.
  11. GWMark
    It has been a couple of weeks since my last post regarding the Mallard Duke. You may recall I had a bit of a problem with it that meant a slight rebuild and some remedial actions. That complete I have now done a bit more detailing, but more importantly I decided it was time to have it move itself along the rails. So I completed the task of making up the cranks, reaming them out and fitting them. After a bit of tinkering I had the cranks in place and quartered.
     
    I then looked at fitting the coupling rods. I decided I would used the Alan Gibson crankpin system, but instead of screwing into the wheels the screws go into the back of the cranks, a bush sits on the front, onto this is fed the coupling rod and then a nut added. Once the nut was tightened down it gave a fairly rigid fit, but I did have to countersink the cranks - somewhat hard after I had force fitted them on and quartered them. I did it with a burr in my mini drill without removing the cranks. I careful created a depression into the back of the cranks into which the Gibson crankpin sat. Partly this was required as if I left the screws proud of the back of the crank they caught on the rivet detail of the outside frames. It is all very tight in OO, I hate to think what it would be like in EM or P4 - lucky I don't work to those more exacting standards.
     
    After more tinkering it ran reasonably, I did have to replace the pickups again, the little sprung loops were exerting too much pressure on the wheels, so I went for more springy wire and reduced the drag the pickups placed on the wheels. Setting up the wheels on the axles was a bit of a chore, clearances are very tight and getting the same amount of axle either side of the frames was difficult.
     
    The next thing was to solder in the subframe that holds the inner frames in place and setup the fixing method for the frames. I also took the opportunity to add some lead in the firebox, the loco now sits happily on its wheels without the need to hang the tender off the back and will actually run as an 0-4-0 if the front bogie is removed.
     
    Other little jobs including tender handrails, vents, fixings and lamp irons. Both the loco and tender now have turned brass buffers, the sprung heads will be fitted after painting.
     
    The loco needs a top feed, pipe works for the top feed, clack boxes, lamp irons and the rest of the smokebox dart - once I make the part of have fitted no longer point at the sky! Not to mention of course the handrail, once the positions of rat handrail knobs have been marked out and drilled.
     
    Below is a video of it running, it is not perfect, there is still a slight tight spot I think, but it runs reasonably well.
     

  12. GWMark

    Duke relocation

    By GWMark,

    Just to close this sequence of entries for the bank holiday weekend and my attempts at fixing the mistake of a few years ago I thought I would show where I was in the process of getting the dome and chimney in the right places. Basically I had fitted the smokebox and boiler the wrong way around and this resulted in the chimney and dome being further forward than they should have been.
     
    Today I had less time than I had hoped, domestic duties meant the toolbox was employed on garden gates rather than etched brass models for most of the afternoon. Also I persuaded my son to get out his E2 kit that he started several years ago and to have a go at finishing it. So of course I ended up spending time with him putting pickups on the Wills etched chassis and spraying the body with primer for him. However I did get some time on my Duke, I filed off the front, incomplete, boiler band where the dome had been incorrectly fitted. I also filed a gap in the rear boiler band to make space for the dome in its new location. Then I soldered a new boiler band on to represent the front band, now a complete circle rather than having a gap at the top.
     
    Finally I made the hole for the plug of the dome to fit in before trial fitting the dome.
     

     
    I seems I need to file back the boiler band under the dome slightly more as it is sitting on the band rather than butting up to it. Also I need to tidy up around the chimney and polish out some of the scratches the filing has left in the boiler. The than that there are two small components to go back on the footplate in front of the smokebox door casting. Once that is done and the dome soldered in I am back on I will be back to where I was on Friday!
     
    I would much rather have spent my time getting closer to finishing this, but I am pleased that the issue was pointed out and also that I managed to resolve it. Certainly in the past I might well have had the reaction of putting it back in the box and it never seeing the light of day again - much as I did with the first two kits I tried to build. Rather than do that I vowed to do something about it and do it quickly so as not to get despondent with it. And I have to saw it has worked, so even if I can't say I made big steps forward this weekend, it kind of feels that way.
     
    It even makes me think I might pull out those first two kits I tried, a Nucast steam rail motor and a SE Finecast Saint. The former has major issues with the power bogie and the later has a strange shape to the footplate and a white metal chassis that doesn't run properly. Why I thought trying to build a steam rail motor was a good subject for a first kit I can now now believe. Maybe these will appear in a blogpost some time in the near future.
  13. GWMark
    I thought I would document the latest steps in my efforts to resolve the build issue with my Mallard Duke. As noted in earlier posts I have built it with both the boiler and smokebox the wrong way around. The problem manifests itself in the chimney and dome being in the wrong place. This entry is about my latest steps to resolve the problem.
     
    The smokebox is simply a wrapper on nickel silver and white metal formers, so was relatively easy to remove and will be reattached the other way around. The boiler was a bigger problem, it could have been removed and turned, but there was a cut out for the motor which would have ended up at the wrong end. So I will have to relocate the dome, which means filling a hole in the boiler where the peg of the dome went through the boiler.
     
    I had decided I would fill the hole with solder, but obviously the solder would just fall into the boiler, so I got a bit of scrap etch to put inside the boiler, question was how to get it there. My solution was to bend the brass to shape, drill a hole and solder in place a brass lace pin through the hole in the scrap brass. The idea was to poke the pin through the hole in the boiler I needed to fill so that I could hold the plate up against the inside of the boiler tube whilst flooding the hole from the outside with solder. The next issue was to get the plate down the boiler tube and into position. My solution to this was solder a length of brass wire to the underside of the brass plate and use the wire to manipulate the plate in the boiler tube. I used low melt solder for this joint with the intention that when I applied the heat to flood the hole with solder the brass wire would simply fall off.
     

     
    With a little bit of fiddling, and bending the wire slightly I got the patch in place and proceeded to fill the hole with the highest melting point solder I had. I deliberately overfilled the hole so that I was sure when I filed it back to shape there would be no pits. Rather nicely the brass wire fell off as hoped and could be withdrawn from the boiler. I now had a mound of solder with a brass pin sticking out the top and no more hole in my boiler.
     

     
    After cutting the pin off as low as I could the files came out and I spent a happy hour filing back the solder to shape, attacking it with a brass wire brush and then the dreaded fibre glass pencil until I have a smooth surface which followed the contours of the boiler.
     
    Next I started to put the wrapper back, this time with the hole for the chimney to the rear and not the front. It is not completely soldered in place yet, but it is looking a lot better than the low point I was at yesterday.
     

     
    I still need to finish attaching the smokebox wrapper, add back the footplate detailing I removed and then look at removing part of the rear boiler band and the two parts of the front boiler band before adding a complete new front boiler band. Not to forget of course fitting the dome in the correct location. However I now feel a lot more confident that I can get back to were I was, only this time with the chimney and dome correctly positioned.
     
    I had been dreading sorting this out, but actually it was not as bad as I feared, although it would have been better if I had built it right in the first place. You live and learn, but at least it was not a fatal mistake and often more is learnt by making mistakes and correcting them.
  14. GWMark
    If you read my previous entry you will have seen that I managed to mess up somewhat when I did the assembly of the smokebox and boiler on my Duke. Both the boiler and smokebox had been assembled the wrong way around, this resulted in the chimney being too far forward and the dome being on the wrong ring on the boiler.
     
    I had thought of two option, reverse both the boiler and the smokebox or reverse the smokebox wrapper and move the dome without removing the boiler. I have had to go for the second option as there is a cutout in the boiler bottom to allow the motor to slide in. If I reversed the boiler I would have this cutout behind the smokebox and it would be very visible.
     
    In looking back at the instructions the smokebox is formed onto white metal formers, so I had tinned the wrapper and soldered it on with low melt solder. The edge of the wrapper, where it met the footplate was soldered with 145 solder. So tonight I unpicked along the footplate, bending the wrapper back slightly with a knife blade. The I filled the smokebox with boiling water and with a little bit or gentle persuasion removed the wrapper and the white metal smokebox front. Dipping part of the boiler in the boiling water I also managed to get the dome off without removing the springs - I really did not fancy having to redo those, they were hard enough the first time.
     

     
    The picture above shows what I am left with. I will need to clean off the solder that was used to attach the dome, fill the hole that the peg on the base of the dome went into and add the missing bit of boiler band. Then I should be able to remove some of the rear boiler band, drill a new hole and attach the dome in the new position.
     
    As for the wrapper, it will need a little bit of work to remove some surface solder and to get it back into shape, but I hope I can resolver it the correct way around. Then refit the smokebox front and the two little fillets I removed from the front and hopefully I can start to move forward again. One thought had been to use the RSU as a way to reattach the former from the output, but I have never tried an RSU when it comes to attaching brass to white metal. Has anybody else tried this? Filing the I can just about get a soldering iron into the smokebox from below, at least I could do some from the inside.
     
    I've yet to come up with a method to fill the hole, any suggestions are welcome. I did think of using a plug of white metal that I could solder in and then file to shape. Not sure how well that would work.
     
    I have to admit I was sorely tempted to put this kit back in its box and move onto something else, but I decided that would be a bit defeatist and against my new policy of finishing this - but it was very tempting!
  15. GWMark
    I've recently made myself a promise not to start any new projects until I finish some of the part built, stalled projects. We will see how long that one lasts, but by way of a start on this new resolution I got my Mallard Models GWR Duke out of its box and have done a little work on it over the last week.
     

     
    Although it may not look like it has progressed much, there has been a fair bit of fettling going on. I removed the pickups I had put on before, they were a little fragile and prone to get caught and short on the body. It now has much neater pickups made by winding some springy wire around a small diameter rod to create a spring. It means the pickups are very much shorter and less prone to getting in the way or moving around and creating shorts. The rear wheels have the pickups mounted on the underside of the frames, the front drivers on the top surface of the frames. They still need a little adjustment, and I managed to bend one so have a short again at the moment, but I think they will work out better than before.
     

     
    I have also put some work into the balance, with lead added where possible and making the tender bear down on the loco to help move the balance aft. There is still some room in the firebox for some more lead, but I want to get some sheet lead to cut to profile rather than using the lead shot. I should be able to add about 5mm thickness of lead against the cab bulkhead - inside the firebox. Also by the time there is a white metal crew on the footplate I should have more weight to bring the balance back.
     
    The dome and safety valve went on, the former being a large white metal lump that had an adverse effect on the previously mentioned balance. The cab roof was rolled and soldered on tonight, along with the ribs underneath and progress has been made on the tender with the addition of the axle boxes and some white metal castings since the loco last graced these pages. I have also put the steps in place, although I managed to melt part of one of the etched steps (middle tread overlays) with the RSU when I removed the probe before taking my foot of the peddle - actually I sneezed so it was not entirely my fault. There is still need for a considerable amount of cleaning up to remove some of the excess solder. Also the fall plate has been put in place and the ride height of the tender and loco is now much better.
     
    I also found I am missing the tender tank vents, hopefully I'll be able to pick some up at Railex this weekend.
     
    I've started to make up the cranks ready for the fitting of the rods, but I want to get the thing balanced better before I put the rods in place. Drive is to the rear axle via one of Chris Gibbon's very neat gearboxes. this means I can keep all the cab detail whilst keeping the gearbox between the frames and nothings shows below the frames. The motor is a Mashima 1020 mounted vertically in the firebox - not sure if this will ever be up to pulling much of a load - we shall see.
     

     
    Still lots of little jobs to do, making up the last of the cranks, tank vents, smokebox dart, lance cock, more cab detailing, handrails, buffers, lamp irons, sand boxes, the list seems to go on forever and all that is before any thought of painting, transfers etc. Although my new resolution may not include painting as I might well go for a batch painting session or save up the models to take to Missenden and do the painting there under the expert's eyes!
     
    [Edit - addition of the two later photos to illustrate what I was trying to describe]
  16. GWMark
    I completed most of my Black Hawthorn at Missenden Abbey, however there were a few bits to finish off that I thought I would do at home, pipe runs, stays etc. Of course I didn't get around to it until today, needless to say those "little" jobs took a long time, very fiddly in places those pipes. However here it is, I think it is now ready for painting, after a bit of cleaning up.
     

     
    I added some lead shot in the smokebox before putting the door on and also in the base of the bunkers on either side. In all I managed to get the loco to weigh in at 84 grams. However that was with the backhead (white metal) not in place, so that might add another 5 grams, plus a white metal crew. Still I think it is not going to win any tug of war competitions anytime soon!
     
    I already have my next High Level kit underway, a Neilson Mineral, I do like these little kits, they are so well thought out and everything fits. Maybe I'lll post a picture on the progress of that kit next time I have it on the workbench.
  17. GWMark
    For some time now I have been thinking about ways to make things other than the locomotives move on my layouts. Radio Control servos have become an accepted way to control the points and semaphore signals, but we could use them for more if we had a good way to integrate the proportional control of them into our control systems. So instead of just having something move between two positions we could make it move to any point we wanted.
     
    It was with this idea in mind that I started playing around with ideas for how to get better control of servos. The obvious thing we all have is a speed control on our layouts to control the speed of our trains, so what if we could use that to control the position or speed of a servo. Given that I am a DCC person, the natural choice was a DCC decoder that instead of driving a motor could drive a servo. My first prototype was simply a decoder, based on an Arduino processor, that moved a single servo at the speed set by the throttle. This would allow me to position one servo to any point I wanted in its travel, setting a speed of zero would stop it. This was a good first step, but something like a crane would need more than one servo, it would be a pain, and a little expensive to have a decoder per servo. So the next step was to control multiple servos from one decoder. What I did was to write code for the decoder that would use a combination of a function and the throttle setting. Turn on function 0 and the first servo could be controlled by the throttle, turn on function 1 and you control the second servo. Turn on two functions together and you control two servos. Added to this I allowed the maximum travel to be defined, and the minimum time for that motion.
     
    So now I had a way, via DCC CV's to define the two endpoints of the movement of a servo, expressed in degrees, and a time in seconds that it should take to move between those points if the throttle was set to full speed. This gave me what I wanted to control something like a crane with 3 servos for the rotation of the crane, the angle of the jib and the winding of the chain. The prototype decoder was shown to my local MERG area group, who liked the idea so much we ended up doing a couple of tutorial evenings during which about 20 of the members built the electronics and learnt how to program the servos and DCC library for the Arduino.
     
    ​Following on from this the idea of extending the decoder to also control stepper motors was introduced. In fact the motion obtainable from stepper motors was much better and smoother than the servos. I introduced the idea of either having the stepper motor run continuously or confining it to a number of steps in each direction, so that it behaved more like a servo. Next came the addition of lights to the decoder, so that we could put warning lights on our cranes. Until I ended up with a DCC decoder that could drive 3 servos, one stepper motor and 4 lights (with various effects). If anybody is interested the code for what I did is available on GitHub.
     
    I have been working with one of the members of the local MERG group to automate an LGB cement mixer in G scale. He now has a cement mixer mounted on a wagon that drives up to you, with the mixer turning via a stepper motor, swings the delivery chute out towards you, using a servo. Turns on a warning light. It then reverses the direction of the mixer and dispenses Smarties down the delivery chute into the hands of the waiting admirers!
     
    I also took the Arduino DCC decoder idea a slightly different way and created a decoder that could play sound effects, essentially a primitive sound decoder. The effects were recorded sounds files placed on a microSD card that was then inserted in the Arduino system. A particular function key would trigger the playing of a particular sound file. These effects could be adjusted to match the speed setting of the throttle, and hence give a synchronised chuffing effect. Nowhere near as good as a commercial sound decoder, much more a toy, but the bits for it cost me less than £10. It was more for my amusement than anything else, but it was fun to try.
     
    This has been another diversion for me from building rolling stock, working on my layout or all those other projects I have started but not finished, but it has got me to learn a lot more about the DCC protocol, I now understand exactly what gets put on the rails and makes the locos move. Also I have something that is at least able to animate scenic items under the control of the same DCC handset that I drive the trains with. Plus I have enjoyed working on it, so does it matter that it has diverted me from other things - it's only a hobby after all!
     
    ​Maybe the thing that makes this an enduring hobby is that there are so many ways we can go, just because I am not good at painting a back scene or my weathering skills are a bit dodgy it does not mean I can not enjoy some other part of the hobby. Equally I like making locos, but if that's all I did I would probably get bored with it after a while. It makes you think, or at least it does me.
  18. GWMark
    This post is a bit of a cheat, since it is not my work I am showing. In my post yesterday I showed the stock I weathered, including Daniel's (my son) first loco build at the age of 11. Eight years later he is still going and here is his latest project, as promised.
     

     
    The loco is a High Level kit of a Hawthorn Leslie, he has been working on it over successive Missenden weekends under the tutorship of Tony Gee (t-b-g). It's now really at a stage of a few final tweaks before painting, a job I suspect I will be asked to undertake.
     

     
    When I look at the soldering work now and the the finish he is achieving it has come a long way from that first GEM kit. It helps of course to be working on a first class kit and to have advice from some really proficient loco builders (not me I hasten to add). He is a great proponent of resistance soldering, every time he goes back to university I have to check he is not sneaking off with my RSU! Importantly it runs as well as it looks, being a very smooth, slow running loco, helped of course by the excellent 108:1 gearbox.
     
    He has now moved on to build a chassis to go under a Taff Vale C Class. It's a resin body from Dean Sidings, but he has chosen to go down the route of taking a Comet chassis for a 14xx and turning it into a 4-4-2 instead of using the chopped up 14xx chassis from Hornby. Perhaps more on that as he progresses with it.
  19. GWMark

    More weathering

    By GWMark,

    I was rightly criticised on two counts by Daniel for my previous post, I didn't include any pictures of his stock and I also said all his stock was all ready to run. So by way of redress here are a couple more pictures from my weathering efforts on his stock.
     

     
    The 4MT is a Bachmann model, Daniel has added the crew, lamps, detail parts and a real coal load. I made an attempt to weather it. This loco is due to haul a rack of coaching stock bunker first, so hence the ugly tension lock coupling is still on the front and the lamp is not visible as it is on the bunker.
     

     
    The 56XX is from a GEM kit with a Comet chassis. The actual loco was built by Daniel about 7 or 8 years ago now, it was his first attempt at soldering white metal kits and well maybe not the best example or up to his current standards it is not bad given the vintage of the kit and the fact the builder was 11 or 12 at the time. Up until now it has run on Hinton Parva at exhibitions unweathered, but now it will feature a somewhat patchy weathering job. If I am allowed to I think I will revisit this one and add some detail in different shades.
  20. GWMark
    I see it has been a while since I posted here, this doesn't mean I have done nothing, just not written about it. I even failed to do my post-Missenden entry that I normally do - more on those projects in another post.
     
    This week I have been doing some weathering, mostly of Daniel's RTR stock that will be appearing on Hinton Parva when it goes to Quainton for the May Bank Holiday Steam Gala. However I also thought I would have a go at my GT3 since it now has the transfers on the tender, from Cambridge Custom Transfers. So here it is with a first attempt at weathering it - looking at the picture I think I will add a few more touches to it. However I am thinking of changing the chassis for the HighLevel one when it comes out, so maybe some of it will wait until after that.
     

     
    My GT3 will also be on Hinton Parva when it goes to the Quainton event.
  21. GWMark
    The project I undertook as a quick diversion ended up, like all the rest of my projects, languishing in an unfinished state for quite some time. However, spurred on by the desire to take a couple of locos to the weather course at Pendon the other weekend I actually made a push to finish it off. All it needed was plates, transfers and some bits that had been painted separately to be attached.
     

     
    I also needed to do something about the bright brake gear I had added, it was still raw nickel silver, so that was chemically blackened at the same time, along with the coupling rods. As you can see it probably still needs a second application and the transfers have not sat down well on the paint finish. In the end I did not get around to weathering it, so I can still take some time to do the last few bits of finishing. It was painted with LifeColour acrylics, with the transfer applied straight to the paint finish. In retrospect I should probably have given it a high gloss finish for the transfers to adhere to and them sprayed it with Dullcote afterwards. Given that I think the transfer look too low, I may replace them and redo it, so maybe that will be my chance to get it right - transfers always end up looking wrong to me.
     
    It also now has a DCC decoder fitted, which coupled with the weight of the white metal loco, a good motor and gearbox arrangement and a reasonably square chassis, has resulted in a very nice, slow running loco.
     
    I have yet to decide on coupling arrangements, I have been playing with Dingham couplings for my shunting puzzle and may outfit this local for those. The other options are Sprat & Winkles or tension lock bars. I need to think about it as I now have stock with all three type of coupling - I can see some barrier wagons in the offing so that I can convert between the different couplings.
  22. GWMark

    Hot Spots & Speedos

    By GWMark,

    Continuing in my catch up of things I have done in the last 12 months…
    I am a bit of a sucker for gadgets, so when I came across a chip that offered simple and cheap WiFi I started to think about using it for model railway purposes. I found on ebay a little board that had the WiFi chip on it, along with all the circuitry needed to make the thing work, the ESP-01 board. It was available for about £4 from the UK or about £1 direct from China - I had to have a play. The chip in question, an ESP8266, is not just a WiFi chip but also an embedded microprocessor, with input/output pins and all the usual features of such a processor.
    So I came up with the idea of adding a rotation sensor to a wagon wheel and programming this chip so that it counted the wheel rotations, did a simple bit of maths to work out the speed and offered a website that gave the current speed, average speed and distance travelled. Almost everything I needed was already on the little board I could buy from ebay, all I needed to do was to interface a rotation sensor and write some software to download into the processor.
    Since I wanted to make this battery powered rather than rail powered - because I wanted to use it on both DC and DCC and wanted the peer to stay on when the train as stationery - I went for a rather large wagon to house the circuitry and battery, a Parkside Dundas kit of a GWR Mink G.

    The wheel sensor consists of an LED and phototransistor built in to a single unit, known as a photo-interrupter. I small brass strip was soldered to a 2mm wheel bearing and inserted on the axle of the wagon. A slot was cut in the bottom of the wagon, above the axle, for the sensor to poke through and the sensor built onto a small piece of stripboard with a socket for the ESP01 board.

    Every half revolution of the wheel the light beam is interrupted. So using simple maths, pi * d is the circumference of the wheel, the time between the beam being interrupted is measured in microseconds and hence the distance covered in the time can be worked out and the speed, allowing for the scale, can be determined. Remembering of course to divide the distance by 2 since the beam is interrupted twice per revolution.
    It was fairly easy to write the code that was to be downloaded into the little ESP-01 board, this basically allowed the board to connect to my household WiFi whilst at the same time being a WiFi hotspot of its own. This meant I could connect a laptop, phone or tablet to the WiFi hotspot housed in the wagon and use the wagon anywhere I liked. As well as being a hotspot the software was also a web server, so I standard web browser, such as the one you are reading this with, could connect to the wagon and display a page with all the data about the wagons speed and distance traveled.

    I still have things I want to do to this; the switch will be changed and made accessible without having to remove the roof, which is currently held on with a magnet. I want to replace the battery with a possibly smaller rechargeable one and have it charged via the track power - when it is available. I also want to add more to the software so that it not only has the current speed and distance, the speed and distance for the current trip but also for the lifetime of the wagon. The definition of "trip" is based on a configurable period of non-movement - i.e. if the wagon doesn't move for a given time, default 1 minute, a new trip is started. I also want to improve the configuration interface via the website it offers.
    The other thing I am thinking about would be to provide an application on my laptop that gathers the data every few seconds and draws graphs of speed, acceleration etc, just to see how comfortable we make trips for little passengers!
    Clearly this is just a bit of fun, but I can see a lot of other possible uses for this sort of cheap WiFi technology, especially for the likes of garden railways to setups in which lots of control wiring is difficult. These things are really a spinoff form the current buzz around the "Internet of Things", but I think us modellers can take advantage of this trend.
  23. GWMark
    I noticed it had been a very long time since I wrote anything here, March of last year. I didn't even do my customary write-up following the Missenden Abbey weekends last Autumn and this Spring. This does not mean nothing has been happening, just that I have written nothing about it.
     
    Both Daniel and i went to Missenden in October and then again this March, in fact the March weekend may be the last for a while with both of us going as Daniel is about to depart for University life - although there may be an outside chance he will come back for the Missenden weekends.
     

     
    My little Black Hawthorn is now nearing completion, the motor and gearbox are fitted, the coupling rods, piston rods, steam glands are all in place. Pickups have been added and the frames treated with metal blue. It runs nicely, very slow with little hint of rocking. The addition of the buffer beams has added some weight to it as well to help with pickup and traction. I even had it pushing a rake of 15 wagons, which is pretty good for something so small and fairly light.
     
    The brake gear is made and just needs fitting. I need to add pipe runs, safety valves, handrails and sandboxes. There is also a back head to be detailed and fitted. In all not far to go with this one now. The fuse wire you can see coming from the front of the cab is a pipe run that needs to be trimmed and attached still.
     
    As for Daniel's project, the Hawthorn Leslie, that is also taking shape. He too now has a running locomotives, although it is lacking piston rods, cylinders and some other vital parts.
     

     
    As always the close-up picture reveals something to be improved, Daniel is not pleased with the Sandbox and intends to remove and reposition it so that it sits down flatter. The smokebox front also needs a little bit of cleaning up after he discovered a misplaced overlays which he moved during the last Missenden session. In general he too is pleased with his progress and the way his model runs.
     
    Hopefully I will finish mine soon, probably the next time I will go to Missenden I will start another project. We are not sure with Daniel, maybe once exams are over he will do some work on it over the summer holidays.
  24. GWMark
    The Missenden Modellers sprint weekend is over for another year, once again the weekend went really well, with both Daniel and I making significant progress on our projects. My High Level Black Hawthorn has seen some significant progress with the super structure, with a few steps back along the way. I used my newest toy, the RSU for some items, to great effect, but was a little cautious of some things, so used the standard iron and regretted the mess I made with it compared to the neat soldering I achieved with the RSU.
     

     
    I still need to put in lots of practice with the different ways of making use of the RSU. It proved a great way of adding the cylinder wrappers and the riveted end plates, both of which has been very neatly added.
     
    Daniel on the other hand corrected his issue with the misplaced frame spacer on the Friday evening and moved on to the footplate and cab. He made great use of the RSU to solder the overlays on his cab and the detail parts to his saddle tank.
     

     
    His saddle tank is not yet attached, it is merely laid in place on the footplate.
     
    Hopefully we will both get a chance to progress these models before the next Missenden outing, it would be embarrassing to go back again with no progress between weekends.
     
    As for my setback, I managed to touch the barrel of the soldering iron on to one of the white metal springs, which is now partially melted. I also noted that the cab has sprung out when soldering the rivet strips to it, so that will need to be redone to make the back and front parallel. Both should be fixable however. None of the problems we have had is a fault in the kit to be honest, it is things we have bought upon ourselves.
  25. GWMark
    Following our last visit to the Autumn weekend at Missenden I was sold on the idea of an RSU, fortunately I had a "significant" birthday a few weeks again and my wife bought (let me buy) an RSU as a birthday present. With about 3 weeks to go before the next Missenden weekend I as keen to try out my new toy. I did not want to go straight into attacking my High Level Black Hawthorn that I had worked on last time, so I looked around for an alternative. Fortunately I found a wagon kit I picked up a while back on a second hand stall, a Sprat & Winkle kit of an LSWR 8ton Cattle Wagon. It was a bit of a sorry old set of etches, badly tarnished and a little thin. So I decided it would be a good trial project to see how I got on with the RSU - expecting with all new tools that my first efforts would be pitiful and I would go through that period of thinking "why did I buy this" - but how wrong could I be.
     
    The technique I settled on was to first tin the small parts with a conventional iron and then use the RSU to attach them to the main etch. I had a sheet of mild steel and a few rare earth magnets, so I tinned the strapping and set to with the RSU. The results were way better than I could have hoped for on a first attempt, lovely clean, strong joints. No excess solder to cleanup and parts in just the place I wanted them. No more small bits getting swamped with solder or begin left attached to the iron when I took it away.
     
    The picture below is the result of two evenings of about 2 hours each, much of that time was actually taken up in cleaning the etches before tinning and removing/cleaning up the tags. I have done no work to remove any excess solder, this has only been washed to remove the carbon deposits from the RSU probe.
     

     
    I was pretty impressed with the results, more done to the quality of the tool than the workmanship, but it is exactly what I had hoped for. Best of all that job I hate most is now rendered less frequent, cleaning up surface solder. I still have a long way to go, and lots of experiments to try, but so far this is looking like a good purchase.
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