And back to the Buckjumper locomotive body build at Missenden...
One of the characteristics of the prototype I'm building is the handrail at the front of the locomotive is in three sections, not the more usual single continuous rail. The handrail on the front of the smokebox is separate and circular. It's also quite close to both the edge of the smokebox itself, and the front face of it.
I judged the location of the three handrail knobs by eye, and carefully drilled the holes with a 0.4mm drill in a pin-vice. The holes needed a touch with a reamer and then I could fit the Short version of Alan Gibson handrail knobs. However before fitting these, I had to make the handrail itself.
If you're forming a circular handrail between your fingers, it can often end up looking kinked or uneven. As this was a separate section, and I didn't have to worry about a straight leg on either side, I could employ something for better effect. So I borrowed a set of GW Models rolling bars from Tony Gee - the great thing about Missenden is someone will *always* have the tool you left at home. I fed in some 0.45 nickel silver wire, and rolled...
The end result was a nice smooth curve.
I cut it to slightly over length, for later trimming back, slid the three handrail knobs on, and secured them in their holes with the faintest touch of 100 degree solder. I'm quite pleased with the result, shown here balanced on a Missenden Mug (no, not Tim Shackleton...).
So that was how things finished after the very productive weekend. But inspired, I made more progress at home in the next couple of days...
Cheers
Flymo
So after setting the scene, what did I manage to achieve over the weekend on my Buckjumper?
I'd
last done a major piece of work on the locomotive at the Missenden
weekend in spring 2015. Since then I've done a little bit of tidying up
on the workbench at home but nothing major. The stage the locomotive
had reached was that I constructed the shorted out wheels for the split
frame chassis, put the chassis together, quartered the wheels, and made
sure it rolled freely as an unpowered chassis. I had put together a
High Level gearbox, reduced in width thanks to the inspiration of Steve
Duckworth in encouraging me to take a piercing saw to such a lovely
piece of engineering. It now sat cleanly in the insulated centre
section of the driving axle.
So the first thing to do this
Missenden was to see if all of my efforts had been in vain in my first
attempt at a split chassis. I cut a couple of lengths of electrical
wire and threaded one end through the terminals on the motor, then soldered
the other end to either side of one of the PCB spacers in the chassis.
Connecting
an ordinary 12 volt controller borrowed from John Gowers to my short 6
inch length of P4 test track I gently turned the power knob up and to my
amazement the motor ran. It's not conclusive proof that split chassis work for me, as I still see a number of problems with them that need to be
solved, but it certainly surprised me that it worked first time.
Apparently I was very happy for the rest of Friday evening and wouldn't
stop talking about it, according to the other members of the group.
This
shows the chassis sitting on the length of track at the top of my
workbench. As I said, the wiring is just a lash up and the more
permanent arrangement will be longer wires to slip the motor inside the
boiler and also the inclusion of a DCC chip.
The next stage on the chassis was to fit the brake rigging.
As
the steel tyred wheels were already in place along with the motor and
gearbox, and although I could have dropped them out I needed them in
place to judge where the brake blocks were going to go, I decided to
forego my usual technique of soldering and resort to superglue. I had
opened out the holes in the brake shoes and in the brake rigging to 0.45
mm to be able to use matching nickel silver wire to form the brake
rigging from one side of the chassis to the other.
This whole
process took quite some time for two reasons. Firstly the pre-etched
shape of the brake shoes didn't match the profile of the tyres of the
wheels, so there was quite a lot of filing required to make sure that
when the brake shoes were fitted to the upper mounting wires they were
located in the correct place. The second element was that because the
brake rigging came in separate sections I wanted to make sure that each
section was correct correctly located and soundly fixed in place before
moving onto the next. So it was a case of glue one section, do
something else/go and visit another group/have a cup of coffee whilst
the glue dried and then return to the next.
This picture is of
the chassis with almost all the brake rigging in place, apart from the
final length. This turned out to be the most problematic because the
holes at the end of the rigging were over etched and in actual fact were
not holes but merely cup-shaped stubs. This meant there was a little
bit of swearing and much bodging with lace pins (thanks to James Dickie
for the loan thereof) to get it into place whilst the glue dried. It
wasn't entirely successful as when I started working on the locomotive
on Sunday evening after returning home this section fell off due to the
brittleness of the superglue, so I resorted to a slightly chunkier
quantity of 24-hour epoxy resin to put this particular piece back in
place.
With the chassis done as far as I could, it was onto the body but that is for next time…
Cheers,
Flymo
Although feeling the heat from the sun today, I'm not sure of the
accuracy of saying such things... It's been a great summer the doing
things with the family, from messing about with motorbikes, and
generally all those other things which mean there is a temporary lull in
the pace of modelling. I still done one or two things over the period
since I last posted, and more of that in future days.
However two
things in the last two weekends have inspired me to dust off the
modelling bench and make a serious start on one or two unfinished
models.
The first was Scaleforum where I was on a demonstration
desk talking about how to model wagons in the pre-grouping period. I
had some great conversations with visitors over the weekend, not only
about period modelling but also about things as diverse as what types of
couplings to use, what is the best type of suspension, and how best to
do weathering (including a swift hands on demonstration of the use of
washes on the sides of wagons to simulate that lovely Edwardian grime).
Of
course, one of the best ways to learn weathering techniques is to
attend Tim Shackleton's weathering course at Missenden Abbey. It was
the Missenden autumn weekend last weekend, and as usual I participated
in the 4 mm loco modelling group. It was a great bunch of people to
spend the weekend with and was led in great humour by Tony Gee.
If you've never been to Missenden before, here's a few snapshots of what I was working on and how it was done.
This
was the set up in the loco building room. The light available, both
artificial and natural, in the room was superb and I very much hope
we'll be returning there on future courses.
As usual, I had my portable workbench with me. It's
been a great addition to my toolkit, enabling me to take it to
demonstrate at Scaleforum and then on to Missenden. I also had a few
comments over both weekends from people offering to beg, buy, borrow or
steal my beloved toolchest from me. Alas, I'm not letting go of it, and
you can go and find your own for twenty quid in a junk shop.
I'd taken along to separate loco kits, both of which
I'd started at previous Missendens. Both of them are also in the final
stages of completion with the chassis fundamentally builds and the
bodies to different stages of finishing. On the left is a London Road
Models LNWR Samson kit, which really only needs motor rising before it
is finished. On the right is the kit I chose to take further this
weekend, which is a Connoisseur Models GER Buckjumper.
I'd taken
it to the point where I had a rolling chassis with a motor installed,
and apart completed body that needed detailing. It was this I chose to
work on for the weekend.
I'll come back to what I did over the weekend in my next post.
Cheers,
Flymo
