The Brassgoggles Model Making Club (the second non-SP model making thread).

[The Bullet]

Just had one of these incredible phone calls:
"Taking down my 3.5" gauge layout, a circle of 9m diameter, raised track, do you want it? It´s free."

So now I have a lot of "scrap metal" in the garden.

The big idea is to re-erect it inside a friend´s 5" gauge layout. This is more suitable than my garden.

[The Bullet]

Another Kraftdampflok arrived today:





Need to find a matching tender for it.
Steam test might take place this weekend.

[The Bullet]

*dusts off the workbench*

Where is everyone?

[James Harrison]

Still here, still watching, still needing to finish 'the big project' before I can turn back to my models in any meaningful sense 

That's a really nice catch there - 19th Century/ Pre-WWI?

[Madasasteamfish]

Still here, still watching, still needing to finish 'the big project' before I can turn back to my models in any meaningful sense 

In the same boat (in the sense I have my own'big project'). But I do have some things brewing, I suppose I should see about uploading some photos, as I'm within the proverbial gnat's *unmentionables* of finishing another objective for this year....

...and it's only May! 

[The Bullet]

Working on another gem right now.
Elektroautomatische Kupplung by Bing.
Wagons equipped with a special coupling that can be triggered by a special contact in the track.
I will show pics once I have finished testing.

[Madasasteamfish]

Well whilst I have several other things going on, I've managed a quick win with 1 of my ongoing projects, namely giving my V2  new identity.
This is how it started out

I acquired some new eteched nameplates and affixed them to the plastic ones the model came with (although that did necessitate filing them to size as can be seen with the before and after here).




And with the nameplates came an eteched version of the correct smokebox door number plate (although the adhesive has left a small bloom I reckon it could be hidden with some weathering.

And the final piece...



I still need to amend the cabside numbers (at which point I'll also add the etched builders plates) but that will be a 'roundtoit' job, or at the very least when the majority my possessions are no longer in a series of boxes.

All in all I'm quite satisfied with it as a first attempt at reidentifying a loco and although the rivet counters might object to the Darlington shed code,  as per they can get stuffed!

[James Harrison]

My next build project has spent quite long enough looking forlorn and forgotten. 

I'm not going to announce quite what it is yet - I wanted to be doing it a different way, but with various bits on it having been on order 8 months and more I've lost patience and am looking for other ways of achieving it without having to race old age. 

What I will say, at the moment, is that it involves an old Ratio 2-4-0 kit, a new Dapol City of Truro kit, and a Lima 4F.  Because this means it's going to be almost entirely plastic I have doubts - which I hope will prove unfounded - about the robustness of the chassis.  So until I've got it built beyond that stage I'm not going to say too much about it.

[The Bullet]

GAH!
TIGER has a leaking flue.
Steaming was poor so I took the flue brush and, about half was in , the brush was stuck solid.
Pushing an pulling brought nothing but a hiss and water escaping from that flue.
I will try plugging it and see if the boiler still makes enough steam.
Boiler will be lifted and repaired in winter as the Foden is taking up all workshop capacity.

A&P loco will receive a proper steam manifold for blower and whistle as the banjo bolts sill leak and obstruct the flow of steam to the blower.

[James Harrison]

The first few hurdles with my latest project have been successfully negotiated, so I'm hopeful - famous last words - that what I'm planning to do will actually work. 



The starting point - this pile of bits - is a Dapol 'City of Truro' kit, a Ratio Midland Railway 2-4-0 kit (or rather, the loco body and chassis) and, not shown in this photo, a Lima 4F.



The first thing I did was to build the chassis from the 2-4-0 kit.  This kit has not been available for many, many years, so the mouldings are very old and with that goes the prospect of brittle plastic.  Truth be told I didn't want to build the whole thing from plastic.



Then I started prepping the City of Truro driving axles.  As anyone who has built this in recent years will be aware, something weird has happened to the tooling with the result that the wheels aren't properly quartered if built straight from the packaging. 



Test fitting the axles into the chassis revealed that everything was far, far too snug.  I opened out the axle holes with a file and then thinned down the axles.  I also found that the leading axle had the effect of lifting the chassis to the point the leading pair of drivers were floating in the air. 



To fix this issue I cut a slot into the chassis. 



Eventually I got the two sets of bits to play nicely together.  You can also see in this photo that my solution to the quartering problem with one of the axles was to cut a slice out of one of the axle halves.  This means I could rotate the offending wheel and its half-axle to correct the problem. 



When I reached this point I felt confident enough to start painting the wheels and chassis. 



Once I'd added some weight to the chassis it started to roll along quite nicely. 

I'm at the point now where the axles need to be permanently secured into the chassis, and I want to make absolutely sure I have a smooth, free-rolling assembly before I do that.  There are outside frames that need to be added and coupling rods, both of which are going to contribute to rolling resistance - potentially to the point of locking the whole thing solid if I don't take care - so a little time and attention now is likely to be the difference between success and failure. 

[Madasasteamfish]

Watching with interest, and somewhat intrigued...

[James Harrison]

With the chassis looking like it was going in the right direction I turned my attention to the outside frames. 



I decided to mate the frames from 'City of Truro' to the running plate sides from the Midland engine.  Before I did that though I had to spend some time licking the frames into shape.  Swindon built their frames square.  Gorton, on the other hand.... Gorton didn't.  This meant spending an hour or so patiently filing away until I got the right curved shapes. 



And then work started on the boiler.  Firstly, smoothing off all the details I didn't need.  And then cutting off the running plate, to try to get it slim enough to fit between the frames. 



However it was still too fat so I cut the splashers off, sanded the cut, then glued them back on.  That got me about 0.5mm. 



Then the outside frames were carefully pared down to reduce their width.  The problem at this point was that width over the frames was somewhere around 29mm whereas the length of the axles was only 27mm...



With that done I made up some packers to hold the frames at the right spacing. 

[James Harrison]

And then the coupling rods kept locking, and springing off, and falling apart. 

After several attempts to fix the issue I'm thoroughly and completely  -ed off with it. 

Luckily Bachmann sell spares for their ready-to-run City of Truro, so I've put in an order for driving wheels, coupling rods, chassis block and keeper plate.  I can't be doing with trying to get lumpen shapes of plastic to act as a functioning loco chassis. 

[The Bullet]

News on the O-gauge layout:
I finally found the gremlin that had been teasing me for years.

Every few months I had a major short circuit on the inner section of the layout.
Switching off the sidings had no effect so it must be in one of the mainline curves that are always powered.
I tried various methods of finding it: connecting a light bulb in series and walking around tapping each section of track with a long rod, isolating sections and testing for resistance, the old "20 amps and see where there´s smoke" method, but all came to no solution as the short circiut always disappeared before I could track it down.
The issue was a set of points.
After the whole train had passed it, something happened and the short was established. Knockong on different pieces of track on the other side of the room could remove the short.
This is why I never found it.
But this time the point blades were welded together by the short. So upon testing the point would not switch. Found the culprit. Problem solved.

[Madasasteamfish]

Well the roundtoit job has happened

All in all I'm quite pleased with my first attempt at properly reidentifying a loco. The only other task left is doing something about that horrible plastic coal load....

[James Harrison]

Very nice!

[James Harrison]

Well, my spare bits turned up and after two or three weeks of messing around and fettling and rebuilding, I got back to the point where everything had gone wrong on the previous try. 

Except now I have a loco that freewheels very sweetly and reliably, with a minimum of fuss.  All around, a much better result.  And with that done, I was able to push forward with the model again. 

Next on the to-do list was the cab sheets.  I'm not sure quite what was in the drinking water in 1880s Gorton, but it must have been potent.  There's only one or two straight lines in the cab sides - as shown in the photographs in this short history of the class.



I first cut some blanks in plastic sheet.  The bottom edge was, oddly enough, the easiest bit to draw out (because the sheets I'd cut the outside frames from were still around, and I was able to use those as a template).  Once that first line had been drawn though I was left to my own devices.

I have, as reference for building this model, the sum total of 5 photographs (only one of which shows an example of the class in the 1900 - 1910 period), a Maskelyne drawing of a rebuilt Sacre 4-4-0 of similar vintage and styling, and some wheelbase dimensions.

So I had to try and guesstimate dimensions off of photographs (happily most of the five are side or three-quarter views) and look to that drawing as a hint of how the top half of the sheets should look.



One piece of good luck is that the curve to the cab cut-out looks to be practically identical to the design used by Johnson on the Midland, and as I still had the upper halves of the Ratio cab sheets I was able to use those as templates to sketch in my cut outs.  I had to extend that curve down a little at the bottom of course, but I think I got the character of the thing.

I also had a curve to the front of the cab sheet to work up, and this needed a little bit of thinking about for how to get the right look.  From my model I knew, when offering the cab sheets up, where they needed to end - so that gave me my bottom end.  Offering them to the Maskelyne drawing I could make an educated guess where the top end should be.  The problem then became one of creating a curve between those two points.  Eventually I offered up a roll of sellotape to the cab sheet and used that as a template for the radius.  Which is possibly a bit exaggerated but better than an awkward free-hand mess.



We're still not done though because there's then the oval porthole that needs to be worked out.  Very pleasant and artistic to look at, but a complete..... to actually make.



The way I did it was to estimate where the centre should be, and then punched through and drilled with a 3mm drill.  Once I'd done that, I found an ellipse template and went through looking for one that was about the right size - I settled on the 6mm example eventually - and then I filed back to the edge of that template.



So right now, this is what I have. 

[The Bullet]

Wow, that´s a cab design I have necer seen before.
Wondering about the reasons.....

Work continuess in "My Way".
New frame is installed, new chimney made and installed. Working on the drivetrain (wrong reduction, several different types of chain), cylinder and steamchest are being worked on by a friend.
We need a bigger steamchest. The old one is so flat that the slide valve almost blocks the steam inlet pipe when moving past it.
New blower and blastpipe to be made. Pumps have been overhauled. 1001 "little" jobs are waiting.

The renovation has taken the shape of a "down to the last bits" dissassembly. Some improvements will be made but I will try to keep most of the original looks.
The plan is to have it running under her own steam before December, sort out teething troubles and then give her a repaint.

[James Harrison]

Wow, that´s a cab design I have necer seen before.
Wondering about the reasons.....

There's a driving wheel coming back into the cab, with other locos you see a combined cab sheet and wheel splasher, like this:



So my guess is it's an attempt to fair the splasher into the cab sheet.  It's certainly unusual. 

[Madasasteamfish]

As far as my own knowledge goes, Sacre's locomotives did have a tendency to be somewhat *distinctive*.

Then again 19th Century Gorton did have a habit of producing "unique" designs (like their double track turntable).

[The Bullet]

Wow, that´s a cab design I have necer seen before.
Wondering about the reasons.....

There's a driving wheel coming back into the cab, with other locos you see a combined cab sheet and wheel splasher, like this:



So my guess is it's an attempt to fair the splasher into the cab sheet.  It's certainly unusual. 

...or the pre-cut cab side sheet fell from the works crane, slammed onto the floor, badly bent and someone said "Hey, looks like it would fit. Let´s try this on."

;-)

[James Harrison]

My idea is, somebody thought 'let's make this as difficult as possible to build a decent model of'.  But hey at least it will be unique when finished. 

[The Bullet]

My idea is, somebody thought 'let's make this as difficult as possible to build a decent model of'.  But hey at least it will be unique when finished. 

If the loco will not be remembered for its performance or beauty, it will surely be remembered for THIS.

[The Bullet]

Since many years I have a coal-fired gauge 1 loco in my collection.
She has now been identified as LBSCs "Ford Pacific".

I only have a short description and one picture from the Hollingsworth book.
Does anyone have more info on that loco?

[Madasasteamfish]

Well, Dukeswood continues to plod along, with another rake of wagons progressing....


Once I've managed to get my hands on a few more wheelsets and some more of the appropriate transfers I'll have a complete(ish) ballast train (I might look to add another ballast wagon or 2 to round it out).