Ruston's Industrial locomotive and wagon workshop thread.

[Sandhole]

15 hours ago, Ruston said:

Rolled up canvas wind protection for the crew added, steam pipes and new clacks made (the Hattons parts are incredibly flimsy and had broken off) plus a running number decal on each buffer beam.

 

A Zimo MS490 decoder is fitted, along with a Lais Kungfu 871001 Stay Alive and an ESU 11x15mm speaker. Total finished weight 171g.

 

A work of art Dave.
One of your best.
Regards, 
Chris.

[Ruston]

On 15/05/2022 at 10:38, Sandhole said:

A work of art Dave.
One of your best.
Regards, 
Chris.

Cheers, Chris.

 

The cab for the Barclay is almost ready for paint. It needs a bit of filler here and there, and some rain strips. There is no flare at the rear of the bunkers on this one.

[Ruston]

The Barclay is now at the same stage as the GR. No cab handrails have been fitted as it will be having doors that would cover them anyway. The prototype on which it is based had doors from new. The GR may well also have doors fitted yet.

[Ruston]

Back on Page 24, I showed a Hattons Barclay that arrived on my bench having been remotored and the motor fitted in place with Black Tac of all things. The reason for the remotoring was that the owner wanted to make more space to enable the fitting of DCC sound. That quest is also one of my own and I have previously milled out a section of the chassis block for a Stay Alive to fit in.

 

This time around I am trying out a small coreless motor. It takes up less than a third of the space of the original and if the experiment is a failure I can easily remove it as the frame that I made to hold it is screwed into the original motor mount hole in the chassis block.

 

The motor is a reasonably tight push fit into the frame.

 

So far, I have turned it by finger power to see how freely it turns and how well the worm and gear are meshing. A powered run may take place over the weekend.

Edited May 27, 2022 by Ruston

[Ruston]

The coreless motor answers well enough. I fitted it to a completely standard chassis and plugged a non-sound Zimo MX617 in to allow it to run on my layout.

It certainly beats sticking a Hornby Peckett motor in with Black Tac! 😬

[Ruston]

And now for my next trick... Sawing the lady Barclay in half! OK, not quite in half and milling rather than sawing but the idea's the same.

It'll also mean sawing more than one, actually, and into more than two parts. I have two spare running plate/buffer beam/castings that are spare from the 0-4-2ST builds, so if this trick goes wrong it's no great loss.

[Ruston]

Here's why two donors are required. The cuts have to be made so as to overlap, and another section needs to be sandwiched between them to allow a dropped footplate.

The model is to be based on AB 1345, built in 1913 for the Dalmellington Iron Company to work their quarry line on the Waterside system. The low height was to enable it go go through a short tunnel known as the Quarry Brig, which was only 9ft high.

The prototype was on 3ft, dia, wheels but I'll be keeping the standard Hattons wheels, which are about 3ft. 5in.

[Ruston]

When I did the cut-down 16-inch Barclay that was based one on that worked at Provan Gas Works, it was a bit of a fudge. It was only the outer parts of the footplate that were cut away and the new, lowered footplate replaced it on the outside of the chassis block. The chassis block itself remained unaltered and a driver figure and the fact that it had a cab allowed me to get away with this. This one, having an open cab, means that I have to lower the entire footplate, which leaves the firebox hanging in the air.

 

This has been remedied by attaching blocks of brass to the firebox. They are glued to the existing firebox with epoxy and have been drilled and tapped 10BA so the firebox can still be screwed to the footplate.

The dome has been lowered and the hole for the Ramsbottom valves has been filled in. The chimney was cut down so that little more than the rim remained and has now been reattached.

 

[John Besley]

Going to be an interesting project

[Ruston]

Today I have been mostly watching paint dry and the weather would have to turn cold, just when it would be nice to have it warm for painting, wouldn't it?

 

Other than that, I undertook a risky procedure to do a bit of plastic surgery on the patient's face. I'm not sure if it's the tanks that are a little bit shorter on the earlier Barclays, or the boiler, or smokebox, that are longer but there is a ring on later 14-inch Barclays that stands out from the front of the tank that isn't on the older ones. The ring is 1.25mm deep on the Hattons model so I sawed into the ring, sanded down the remains of it that were on the smokebox and then sanded down the rear of the smokebox door to cut the depth of the ring down to just 0.4mm. The surgery was a success and the patient is doing well.

 

Unaltered smokebox and thinned down ring and door.

I wish that I'd bought a donor other than the Little Barford, with it's stripey front and layers of paint.

[Ruston]

It's almost there now.

[John Besley]

Wow that was quick, looking very nice

[Ruston]

The height from rail tops to the crown of the arch is 40mm.

[Ruston]

Progress on the Barclays and the Grant, Ritchie is held up by waiting for some custom decals for them, so in a bit of a sort out of abandoned and unfinished projects I dragged the constituent parts of a Hornby W4 Peckett from their various resting places.

The body was the original Osiris, on the CVMR and its chassis had been messed with in an abortive attempt to create a W6 using a B2 body. It wasn't working and although I haven't abandoned the idea, I decided it will be better done using a scratchbuilt chassis. I had previously opened the cab back but that got lost somewhere and I have used the back from a Peckett that had its cab replaced by one of the Pi cab kits.

I also had left over buffer beams from a Pi conversion and they have been used to create deep buffer beams that can take an extra set of buffers for use with chaldrons.

 

The body originally had the short dome with pop valves but that dome went on the dropped footplate Peckett, Ceridwen so this one now has Ceridwen's dome. The Salter valves are missing but I may leave them off as some of these Pecketts were converted to pop valves but retained the old dome cover.

Various bits of paint need touching up and finishing and, of course, it needs couplings.

 

[ianblenk]

16 hours ago, Ruston said:

Progress on the Barclays and the Grant, Ritchie is held up by waiting for some custom decals for them, so in a bit of a sort out of abandoned and unfinished projects I dragged the constituent parts of a Hornby W4 Peckett from their various resting places.

The body was the original Osiris, on the CVMR and its chassis had been messed with in an abortive attempt to create a W6 using a B2 body. It wasn't working and although I haven't abandoned the idea, I decided it will be better done using a scratchbuilt chassis. I had previously opened the cab back but that got lost somewhere and I have used the back from a Peckett that had its cab replaced by one of the Pi cab kits.

I also had left over buffer beams from a Pi conversion and they have been used to create deep buffer beams that can take an extra set of buffers for use with chaldrons.

 

The body originally had the short dome with pop valves but that dome went on the dropped footplate Peckett, Ceridwen so this one now has Ceridwen's dome. The Salter valves are missing but I may leave them off as some of these Pecketts were converted to pop valves but retained the old dome cover.

Various bits of paint need touching up and finishing and, of course, it needs couplings.

 

Sorry, another question; what is the contraption on the rear of the chimney? Many thanks! 

[Ruston]

2 hours ago, ianblenk said:

Sorry, another question; what is the contraption on the rear of the chimney? Many thanks! 

Roscoe displacement lubricator for feeding steam oil to the cylinders.

[ianblenk]

3 hours ago, Ruston said:

Roscoe displacement lubricator for feeding steam oil to the cylinders.

Thanks for that, everyday is a school day!

 

[Ruston]

Another half-finished, half-arsed project that has arisen from the box of doom full of dismembered Pecketts . This one is to be a stablemate to the dropped footplate Barclay that I am working on and must pass through the same tunnel. It is based on a W4 that was built entirely cabless for Bolckow, Vaughan & Co. for use at their South Bank steel works in Middlesborough.

 

I have all the parts to build it except for a chassis (the one in the photo belongs to the last one shown), so I'll have to make one from scratch. It also needs a weatherboard to be made and deep buffer beams, as on the previous one. This time I will have to scratchbuild the beams as I don't think that I have enough spares to make a pair of deep ones.

 

[Ruston]

Getting there.

 

[Ruston]

Slight change of plan. Somewhere in these pages I showed a scratchbuilt Peckett frame. It was to make a loco that was based on w/n 492, which was basically and inside-cylindered W4 with deep buffer beams and larger wheels. That project was for someone else, who since abandoned it and so I've taken it on myself and the black Peckett with the large dome will now have that chassis.

The engine above will keep the borrowed chassis, which has now been modified. To get sound and a Stay Alive in previous Pecketts I have fitted the SA in the cab but when you don't have a cab it is rather difficult to cover and hide it. I also went to the trouble of milling out the chassis block on another so I could use a High Level gearbox and have the motor sit lower to make space for a SA under the tank. This time I am saving money, time and hassle by simply replacing the motor.

The Hornby motor is a common or garden N20 and sits on a rubber pad, on its side, held in place by a plastic cradle and four screws. If the cradle is chucked in the bin, the motor replaced by a 10mm square 6-pole job and glued in, it saves 3.2mm space above it. It just so happens that a Zimo MS490 is only 2.9mm thick and will occupy this space. Decoders on these are usually crammed vertically into the area of the smokebox but this space will be free for a SA. I will file the area between the frames, under the footplate, to take a speaker.

 

The motor sits on a bed of black tac, which is there only to support it whilst the epoxy that actually fixes it to the chassis block goes off. I put wires to it after it had gone off and it runs really nicely.

[Barclay]

I have a few of the 15mm square motors, with a 6 pole armature, but all the 10mm ones of the same type I've seen were rated lower than 12 volts. I assume this is something you can get round with DCC?

[Ruston]

4 hours ago, Barclay said:

I have a few of the 15mm square motors, with a 6 pole armature, but all the 10mm ones of the same type I've seen were rated lower than 12 volts. I assume this is something you can get round with DCC?

I've never worried about it. I think there's probably some CV or other that can be adjusted to limit the voltage to the motor but I use the same method that I used with DC and that is not to turn the dial up too much. If you stick to realistic speeds there's no problem at all.

The cut down Barclay is as finished as it can be for now. I am still awaiting lining decals, so can't weather the painted areas where it will go.

 

[Ruston]

The Grant, Ritchie is, I suppose, finished. It has taken so long because I ordered some custom lining and lettering decals for this, the cut down Barclay and a secret project, and when they eventually arrived they were not useable so I had to resort to Fox lining. I know some people get some great results with it but I'm not one of them. I also messed it up by applying a weathering wash. I thought the lining was all settled and dry but it wrinkled up in places. The weathering also went a bit TU and the engine ended up being far dirtier than I wanted it to be.

 

[Tullygrainey]

4 hours ago, Ruston said:

The Grant, Ritchie is, I suppose, finished. It has taken so long because I ordered some custom lining and lettering decals for this, the cut down Barclay and a secret project, and when they eventually arrived they were not useable so I had to resort to Fox lining. I know some people get some great results with it but I'm not one of them. I also messed it up by applying a weathering wash. I thought the lining was all settled and dry but it wrinkled up in places. The weathering also went a bit TU and the engine ended up being far dirtier than I wanted it to be.

 

Still looking pretty good though, despite your reservations. I think it's the sort of loco that ought to look pretty scruffy. The attention to detail really brings it to life - the oil cans and the rolled up canvas screens etc. I like it.

 

Alan

[AlfaZagato]

I'm surprised you didn't seal the transfers before weathering.   Do Fox Transfers hold up to paint?