Erudhalion

If it's of any help, on my 2021 I fitted the brake shoes as close to the tread as I thought I could get away with, and the wheels are removeable, although it is quite fiddly. With the newer etched chassis I had to fit the brake shoes quite far from the frames themselves on the ends 0.7mm wire "stalks" in order to clear the flanges when the wheels move side to side. This gives the shoes a degree of flexibility which eases the removal of the wheels. Looking at your chassis, it occurres to me that I have forgotten the sanding gear completely. I don't think the instructions mention it at all, and I haven't come across any likely pieces in the kit. I'll have to make something up with brass rod.

Thank you very much, I'll check my chassis and see what the situation is.

I realise it isn't exactly the same product, but I've used Bircheood Casey Perma Blue (which is also meant for steel) on brass. It sort of works, but I seem to get thick black layer that chips easily if I leave it too long. I have used a cotton bud to rub it on and that works better, but the result isn't perfectly black, although good enough for coupling hooks and the like.

Just out of interest, what's the total amount of sideplay on your chassis? I was looking at my etched chassis on my 2021 the other day and wondering what kind of radius it could get round, and if I might need to increase the sideplay on the middle axle.

I assumed that was the case, because some of the parts don't seem to need to be the way they are for the pannier version. That is a useful tip, I was thinking of ordering some wagon and coach wheels from them, I'll add some injectors too.

I finally managed to get something done this weekend. I made a throatplate/motor support out of brass and soldered it on to the top of one of the frame spacers. I'm in the process of making a curved plasticard piece I will epoxy to the front of the throat plate, in order to close off the bottom of the boiler and hide the motor and flywheel completely. The reversing rod, sanding rods, handrails and toolbox to the running board went on next, followed by all the various tank fittings. I drilled all the way through any locating dimples (like the ones for the handrail knobs or the buffers for the tank fillers) so I didn't have to solder them from the outside. The instructions don't mention the four tank supports or the handrail knobs, but it seemed wise to do them at this stage so I could solder them from the inside. As I was doing this, I realised I should have done the same for the handrail knob at the top of the smokebox (and possibly the smokebox door darts too), but at this point they are inaccessible from the inside. The photo above also reveals the other less than ideal choice I made: soldering the injectors on at this stage. The castings are very fragile and because they are mounted between the running board with the overflow pipe gping through a hole in the running board itself, they made place the tanks in place very fiddly. Ine consequence of this is that the left hand injector got somewhat mangled in the assembly process and doesn't line up properly with the hole in the running board anyway, so that will need sorting out somehow. Having done all that, I fixed the chimney, dome and safety valves to the top of the boiler, and checked the clearance between it and the motor. It is a bit tighter than I hoped, but there is a small gap, so it should all work. (The photo looks like the motor touches the top, but that isn't the case, although I did file a bit of a dimple in the underside of the top of the boiler just in case.) After soldering the tanks and boiler top on, it is starting looking like a loco. Exciting! Although now that I'm looking at this photo, I've noticed some rather messy soldering of mine around the front corner of the tank. That will need tidying up. Having said that, I think I'm finally getting the hang of soldering whitemetal. I was a bit worried of melting holes in stuff, but I realised that you can actually leave the iron in contact with the metal for a pretty long time and get the solder to flow nicely.

The boiler is now fixed to the footplate. I've opted not to go for the opening firebox door, it seemed to me it would be too fiddly and fragile, maybe next time if I'm feeling braver. Everything seems to fit like I'd hoped, although the tanks aren't fixed in olace yet. The wires are just for testing purposes, I'll replace them with something thinner and I'll route them down the sides of the gearbox. One of the things I hadn't noticed before is that the front half of the cab floor is missing, presumably to make space for the recommended gearbox. My arrangement fits enirely under the floor and in the boiler, so I'll make a new floor to cover up the gap. I'm planning to go for an open cab, so I think it would be quite noticeable otherwise.

High Level was my first option, but if I remember correctly when I was looking they were having some supply line issues, and seeing how I was ordering some items from Wizard Models anyway, I thought I'd try the Comet gearboxes. Anyway, I've partially assembled the main boiler components and hacked away at a few bits at the back (before soldering, as suggested by @cctransuk) and it looks like everything will fit inside as I had hoped when I did the CAD drawings in the first post.

I can't remember why, but I didn't order the motor and gearbox from Branchlines when I ordered the kit a couple of years ago. I've gone with a Comet two-stage gearbox with the extender. Unfortunatley I can't drive the centre axle because there is a frame spacer in the way. I also soldered the extender to the main gearbox yesterday evening, so rear axle it is, at this point. If the central wheelset was driven, wouldn't that limit its side play? Would you have to give the leading and trailing axles more lateral slop to make up for it? That is a much better idea than mine, which was fixing something to the underside of the motor to close the hole in the boiler casting. I'll have to use plasticard though, I haven't got any brass or nickel silver of a suitable thickness.

After a reasonably fruitful evening a couple of days ago, I have got the footplate and splashers assembled. The footplate was not remotely flat, but I have got to a poit where I think it looks all right. There was a fair bit of hacking away at the inside of the splashers to get enough clearance for the wheels and crankpins, especially on the middle drivers. It all seems to be ok and to turn smoothly, but my testing facilities are a bit limited at the moment. Once I've worked out how I want to do the pickups I'll deploy my best German and see if I can use the test track in my local model shop. Before I do that though, I need to sort out the problem I mentioned in my previous post and make some space in the firebox area for the gearbox. Ideally, I would like the lower side of the motor to sit parallel to the running plate and at least aligned with where the bottom of the boiler should be, something like this: However, the rear end of the gearbox needs to go exactly where the back of the firebox, rear tank support and front of the cab are. These three pieces all need soldering together, and form a pretty substantial chunk of whitemetal, as you can see when I hold them together with tweezers. Without modification, with the back of the gearbox as far back as it goes, the motor has to lean forward like this: All going well, I should be able to file away the lower front portion of this chunk and fit everything in. I was also thinking that I could glue a curved piece of plasticard to the bottom of the motor to act as the bottom of the boiler barrel, obscuring the motor ad flywheel from view, but I'll have to wait and see if that is feasible. I can then solder the drive extender to the main gearbox, and think of a way of holding the motor and gearbox in the correct position while also allowing the body to be removed.

It has taken a while, but I have finally gathered all the bits I needed to get started. I went for the Poppy's Woodtech jig, and it did it's job very well, I thought. I also had to resort to fashioning my own crude imitation of a Markits wheel nut driver, as Wizard models hasn't had them in stock for a while. The chassis went together much more easily than I thought, and seems fairly free rolling. I somehow managed to swap the left and right frames, but luckily that doesn't seem to have caused serious issues. I didn't have the benefit of the half-etched locating slots for the rear guard irons as they are now on the inside, but I managed to fix them in the right position. However, the half etched detail on the brake and reverser brackets is also now on the inside, while there are some markings for CSB mountings on the outside which might need filling in. Next I tackled the gearbox. I had ordered a Mitsumi motor with the other black motor as a backup. THIS was lucky, as the Mitsumi transmographied into a 4 digit LCD display on its way here, and then the replacement got lost in the post. I encountered a couple of problems putting the gearbox together. The smallest helical gear is quite a tight fit on its axle. The instructions suggest leaving it loose and fixing the axle to the gearbox sides, but at the moment I've left the axle loose and it goes around with the gear. For some reason, I was forced to file back the inside faces of the bearings i order to slot middle gear between the sides of the gearbox. Luckily the drive extender went together without issues, although I did choose to file the lower corner back a bit to ensure that it would be covered by the ashpan when viewed from the side. For the moment the drive extender is free to rotate while I sort out the clearances in the body and decide on the position. I also ended up epoxying the motor to the gearbox, which was not what I would have ideally wanted, but considering that I couldn't find suitable mounting screws and was a bit concerned about drilling holes into the motor, it seemed the best solution. Once the other chassis details went on, I mounted the gearbox and tested the whole thing out. It was a little stiff at firss, but quickly loosened up with a few minutes of running. A quick test with some of the main body castings revealed that there is a lot of metal in the area where the boiler meets the cab front, which makes the vertical motor position I talked about in my original post totally unworkable. It also gets in the way of mounting the motor horizontally, but I think I can file away enough metal to get it to fit. I also still need to permanently fit the connecting rods, and think of the best way to attach the balance weights. Im leaning towards epoxy at the moment, but I don't know if there is a better way.

The Severn and Wye lines and other lines around the Forest of Dean did require low axle weights and reasonably short wheelbases, as far as I've seen, the 2021s were replaced by 16xx in BR days, and the only other classes I've seen photos of are Dean Goods and a single 14xx. I've been told by the Loco department at the Dean Forest Railway that the 57xx they've got is pretty much the limit as regards rigid wheelbase, and the current DFR line was part of the S&W main line back in the day, but if I remember correctly was relaid in preservation, so other parts of the network must have been even tighter and more lightly laid.

Thank you! That is great info, I didn't know about these books. Looking at the RCTS volume, it seems that 2024, 2032, 2041, 2068, 2069, 2084, 2087, 2093 all had B4 boilers and pannier tanks at the time, so any of them are potential identities for my kit. A quick search hasn't turned up any photos of the locos in question in pre war years, but I have found this picture, dated 1933, which has lots of interesting details. The same site actually has a couple of photos of 2021s in the Forest of Dean, but both are saddle tanks and date back to the end of the 19th century.

As I slowly gather together all the bits I need to actually start building, I have been thinking about potential identities for the loco. The Nucast kit represents an engine with a B4 boiler (RCTS classification), and my general aim over the past few years has been to build stock appropriate for a hypothetical layout set in rhe Forest of Dean in the early 20s. A quick leaf through RCTS Locomotives of the GWR volume 5 shows a number of possible 2021s whitch had pannier tanks and B4 boilers in the appropriate time frame. The kit comes with four different number plates, and of these, 2076 fits the criteria (fitted with a B4 boiler in June 1921 and pannier tanks in July 1921). It would be nice to know which engines were allocated to Lydney in this time period, but as far as I can tell, the only way to find out is consulting the National Archive at Kew, which isn't really a practical plan at the moment. I'm wondering how long engines remained allocated to the same shed, and weather it would be reasonable to assume an engine known to be in a certain location at a certain date would have been there 10 or so years earlier. This thread has some info about the 1901 allocation, but that is all I can find. A picture from the period would also help. I have found plenty from the BR period, both in the S&W books by Ian Pope et al. and online, but photos from the 20's seem very scarce.

Life, as ever, gets in the way of the serious stuff. This time it was, in rough chrinological order, a new job, a trip to Korea, a subsequent move to Düsseldorf, and marriage. However, things have now settled down a bit, and I have got back to modelling, although, alas, I had to get rid of the nice workbench I had made. Since my last post, the brakevan had progressed to the point depicted in the photo, when I was forced to stop due to the lack of handrail wire and an appropriate tube for the chimney. I have ordered the wire from Wizard together witha few other bits for the next project, which will be the 2021 pannier I ordered over a year ago. The kit went together well, I thought, and my soldering was, for the most part, not as messy as I feared, and my newly aquired glass fiber pen can probably sort out the worst of it. The fret supplied in the kit is very similar, but not identical, to the one assumed by the instructions, and as far as I can see some pieces are missing. Luckily my wife has donated some nickel silver sheets left over from her uni days to the project, so I should be able to make some replacements for the missing components. I am still missing the buffers, which will need ordering from mjt at some point. The ones supplied in the kit are nice turned brass items, but a bit generic for my liking. Hopefully, the brake van will finally come together over the next few days/weeks.