That was tough!

A couple of hours more this evening working on the Pug.  All spent on the firebox build, and if I'm to do it properly, an intensive and painstaking job.

It started off by the curving and building of the firebox itself.  The tab and bend method works very well, helped by the half-etched lines that help form an even curve.  I started by tack-soldering the ends in place, and then filling the rest of the join around the entire edge with a fillet of solder.

After this can fixing the lost-wax brass castings of the steam turret and the safety valves.  The ends of the steam turret are drilled out slightly and some 0.5mm wire soldered in to represent the pipes.  They aren't quite even, but I had a heavy handed fitter in the shed at the time of the last bout of maintenance ;-)

The handwheels are so delicate that I really didn't want to flood them with solder, and I am already using two different grades to stop previous work falling apart - 188 degree and 147 degree on this.

I then had to switch to the 70 degree solder to start on the firebox back.  The gauge glasses are now in place and the holes drilled for the wire on which the firehole door handles and the regulator will be mounted.  The casting is only propped in place at the moment, and the gap around the edge won't be there when it is soldered in place.

 

And that's it for the moment.  I'm out of the country for work tomorrow, so it'll be the end of the week before I can pick up a soldering iron again.  And yes, soldering these sort of details is tough on the eyes and the fingers!

A start

Well, in Sunday I had some free time to make a start on the High Level Kits chassis kit for the Dapol Pug.

After five minutes the Dapol body was reduced to its constituent parts:

There is one typo in the instructions that confused me at the outset - it refers to unclipping the cab at the sides and FRONT of the cab, where a quick look at the model showed that the clip was at the REAR.  Simple to spot, so not exactly a deal-breaker.  The metal weight is the source of ballast for the original model, and the space where it sits will be occupied by a motor in future.  I'm going to have to be slightly cleverer to get more weight into my model.

One of the next steps is to remove the hideous cab shutter that formerly disguised the motor that intruded into the cab.  This was done by using a miniature drill with a burr in it to carve away the mass of the shutter, then finished off with a scalpel.  I managed to do it without breaking any parts of the cab, nor carving off the beading around the opening, but I made one slip when trimming the very last bit off.  I hadn't realised that I was so close to the back of the cab window and scratched it with the tip of the scalpel.  So that's a bit of disguising that needs doing in the weathering stage.  Ho hum...

 

It's a fantastic improvement to get rid of the shutter and to be able to look straight through the cab.

 After that, things went well, with the replacement cab floor fitted, some dummy front frames, and then onto the two coal bunkers that are in either side of the cab.  These are exquisite pieces of design, all folding up from a single piece of nickel silver.  They are finished off with some 0.4mm brass rod and etched handles for the injectors.  This shows just how small and delicate they are.

The piece of wire sticking out the front of the bunker is as yet unidentified.  It may be a handle for the coal-door, but it isn't clear yet.  Therefore I've left it overlength until its use is clear.  I don't want my fireman catching his shins on it.

And after three very satisfying hours, that is it :-)  More tonight if I get chance...

Anticipation...

After another bout of five or six wagons having new couplings fitted, and generally renovated, I fancy something different.

So before diving straight into a full etched kit, I thought that I should warm my skills back up on an easier RTR conversion.  Rather than a simple conversion using drop-in wheelsets, I have two of High Level Kits' replacement chassis for the venerable Dapol Pug.

I bought these two bodies over a decade ago, and made a start at scratchbuilding a chassis for one of them using hand-fretted frames.  Since then the HLK chassis kits have arrived, and I've parked my effort to one side.

So this is what I have: one stout white box, and one body with original chassis and motor.

 

The body will be backdated and repainted in L&Y colours, but that is for the future to worry about.  In the meantime, what's in the box???

 

A comprehensive range of plastic bags, full of all sorts of bits.  Several sheets of very comprehensive instructions, including a cross-reference to an article in Model Railway Journal.  I've added some Alan Gibson wheels, and with the kit I bought a suitable motor and gears.

So apart from some etched L&Y number plates, the kit is complete.

Let's hope that I get some free time tomorrow to get started!

In the cradle

Two things came together this morning: Allan Goodwillie's post on the use of ad-hoc jigs to make modelling easier (here: http://www.scalefour.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=666&start=25#p3809) and me chasing another upside-down wagon around my workbench. Grrrr!!!!

Whilst fitting and tweaking S&W couplings, my activity seems to require one hand for a soldering iron to melt the parts in, and one hand to hold whatever I'm fixing, and then one hand to stop the wagon sliding around the workbench.  Now I'm not anatomically gifted, so this has become very much of a sweary language moment, particularly when I drop the part that I'm trying to fit.

So out with the camping mat and the steel rule and the craft knife.  A few swipes, a waft of the hot-glue gun and I now have this:

The central fence means that I can use it for either low sided stock on the left side, or taller wagons and vans on the right hand side.  A bit like these:

Held securely in the cradle, they are like this, with the innards exposed for easy work:

When I next go out to the garage, I'll look for a piece of board that I can glue it to.  Whilst it works as it is, a little more weight underneath will make it less likely to slide around.

A note on construction - if you're using a camping mat, unroll it and let it rest for 24 hours, to get the curl out of it.  Otherwise you'll find that your base and fences aren't straight and may even try and pull against the glue into curves.

Causes of poor running #137

Or idiot's mistake #6..  Look at it how you will :-)

As part of renovating my fleet of tired P4 wagons, a Coopercraft GWR open wagon with sheet rail came to hand.  I've had a preliminary look at it, taken off the old S&W couplings that were not as well-fitted as the ones that I build now, and given the wheelsets a spin to see if there was any wobble.

There wasn't, but one wheel was catching very badly on the brakeshoe.  Looking at the one on the other side, it was running well clear of the brakeshoe.  Odd to find.  So I popped the wheelset out, and looked at it carefully, and this is what I found.

Notice the difference?  When I had checked, and presumably adjusted, the back-to-back setting on this wheelset I had made a simple mistake.  I'd pushed the wheels along the axle until one was far back from the coning, and one was actually sitting over it.  So although the wheelset was to the correct measured back-to-back, it didn't sit squarely in the chassis.

A lack of care on my part, and something to make sure that I don't do again in the future, but if you get poor running from a particular piece of rolling stock, it's something else that merits checking.

A4 finished

No, not one of Gresley's finest, but the A4 turnout I was building.

I finished it off in a couple of hours at the weekend. This is the end product.


The sleepering through the turnout is Scalefour Society ply & rivet build. The dark brown sleepers at the ends are ones cut individually from C&L trackbases.

The whole thing is stuck down firmly on my test-track/reviewing board. This serves the purpose of allowing me to look at a vehicle to see if it is "right", to test the fitting of the Sprat & Winkle couplings, and to see how it runs through pointwork. Not as good as a full shunting plank or test track, but a sight easier to have on a workbench.

There is a tie-bar fitted that I _think_ that I got from the Scalefour Society.



Although you can see it is soldered in place, I have yet to work out a latching mechanism. I may drop into Maplin tomorrow to see if I can find some form of surface-mounted switch that does the trick, possibly in conjunction with an Omega loop as well to take up the extra movement.

What to do next? Hmmm... Let's wait and see.

Do you tin?

I've just spend a pleasant five minutes tinning the tops of all my rivets in my turnout sleepers

It may have been completely unnecessary (or it may not...) but it seemed that it helps speed the formation of the solder joint.

I've never done it before but it was rather therapeutic - just a pinhead of 188 solder cream and a wipe of the iron. Alas, two days away on business in Amsterdam mean that it will be the end of the week before I get a chance to do any more. Still, I have the 1:4 vee filed up and fitted now. One more decent session, as opposed to snatching a quick ten minutes at the end of the evening, and this thing will be built!