I also managed to progress the N10 a little further this week.
The first job was to drill out the Westinghouse casting. I have a couple of really nice brass castings in the stash which I believe are Alan Gibson but I’m not 100% sure. On the back of the mounting brackets there were a couple of spigots so I drilled a couple of corresponding holes in one side of a clothes peg and pressed the spigots into it giving me a secure grip when gripped in the drill press vice using another piece of clothes peg on the other side with a small parallel laid on it’s side to support them.
I drilled through the cast nuts on the right hand side then drilled a hole for the pipe that leads from the governor in the left hand side. While I ad the drill press out I also drilled the governor that I made for the last pipe and fitting.
lastly for now I assembled as much of it as I could prior ro fitting. In order to fit it to the etched mounting plate I cut and filed of the spigots on the mounting brackets and secured the casting to the bracket with 298 degree solder. Next I fitted the governor and the pipe that leads into the smokebox which is a little long at the minute and isn’t soldered in until I have it all mounted on the footplate.
On Thursday before leaving for Guildex on Friday I stuck the smokebox door onto the 8F. I had planned to do it earlier in the week but realised that the handrail wasn’t parallel to the hinge straps. I removed the handrail and moved one of the holes slightly before resoldering the handrail knobs back in. I also took the opportunity to add a small turned washer to the back of the smoke box door locking handles. I had neglected this detail when I added the handles at some time in the past.
This is my rather Heath Robinson set up for holding the loco body vertically so that the epoxy didn’t allow it to slide out of position.
Those who dropped by the Technical stand on Sunday at Guildex were able to view both the 8F and the N10 in their current state, as I had them on the Sunday Display of members models.
Although the next logical step would have been to fit the brake shoes, I didn’t do that. I moved onto the cross beams instead.
As supplied, they are flat castings tapering from the middle with pins asct in at either end. They also had a hole in the middle. While nice castings they are a bit generic and some time ago a fellow member of Western Thunder sent me some 3D printed brake shoes and some thick washers to beef up the centres of the beams along with instructions on how he had created his linkages.
I started by cutting off a strip of 0.7mm nickel and then I drilled a series of holes in the strip to create the holes for each clevis to attach and to mark the beginning and end of a slot. Then I used a 1mm mill drill that I had previously bought from Amazon and pecked away at the slot until I joined up the holes.
Once separated and the ends rounded over, I was left with these.
The plan being that these too would be split in two giving me a pair of linkages for each side of the beam.
Although in theory I had one extra as ever one pair of them pinged off into the ether as I was soldering them together but I got there in the end.
Finally, I added the clevises which were provided in the kit.
This week I seem to have done quite a bit of work without a great deal to show for it but that’s how modelling goes sometimes.
I wanted to replace the cast brass brake shoes with 3D printed ones to reduce the chances of shorting. This meant that I needed to either file or mill off the cast shoes from the hangers.
I started by making a small jig to hold the hangers from another plug pin.
Machining Jig made from a Plug Pin
Before starting to mill off the brake shoes I first filed down the cast pivot pin and drilled a hole.
Then I milled off each side of the shoes
Then finally I gripped them edge on and milled away the final remains of the shoes.
Just to finish off the Westinghouse Governor discussion (for my part), on Tuesday our electricity was off most of the day (due to some planned work in the village).
Hence, after doing a few jobs outside, I was at a bit of a loss as to what to do next because I can’t see in the workshop without lights, so that was off limits. But it came to me that I could use Fusion 360 offline and I could also run my laptop on battery.
So I spent a couple of hours making my initial working sketches into a full 3d model of the Westinghouse Governor. Interestingly, I only used about 25% of the laptop’s battery charge in doing so.
I finished it off this morning but that consisted mainly of rounding off the edges of all the hex nuts.
The differences between this and my efforts with lathe and mill are clear, but given how small these things are in 7mm I’m still happy to use my analogue effort on the N10.
I need to remove my Spin Indexer from the mill to refit the vice to mill off the shoes from the brake hangers for the 8F. I plan to refit 3D printed brake shoes to the cast brass hangers.
So before spending time re-tramming the vice, I wanted to make sure that I didn’t need the spin indexer for anything else. Spoiler alert!, I did.
One thing that I have noticed in almost every photo of a loco fitted with a Westinghouse Pump, is that alongside the pump there is a Governor. You rarely see them modelled so I wanted to have a go. I did make one in the past for the Gladiator G5 but it only vaguely resembled the real thing.
As you can see from the 5p piece it’s a tiny little thing but I’m really quite pleased at how it’s turned out.
Although modelling has slowed down due to catching up with a few jobs around the house I have managed to do a bit more on the 8F.
I fitted the whistle albeit it still needs a drop of glue to secure it. Which I plan to do when I stick the smokebox door on.
That was to be the next job but when I came to dry fit it, I realised that the inner ring inside the smokebox was set back too far for me to be able to use epoxy to secure it. I would have needed to use that much that it would have run out all over. So I decided to make a couple of spacers to reduce the gap.
I cut a couple of squares of scrap etch (some of my older kits had quite wide edge strips which I saved) and then trimmed the corners off. I then used thick superglue to stick them to the short piece of thick walled steel tube that I used to make the quarter round transition rings for the N10 boiler/smokebox joint. Once secure I carefully turned them to size, initially taking off 0.05mm at a time, then working my way up to 0.1mm once I was confident that it wasn’t going to ping off.
In the end I only needed one spacer so one will go in the spares box.
Next I refitted the fall plate which had come adrift while handling the body and then I turned my attention to the cab doors. Like many I do prefer to make the cab doors articulate if possible and I had been pondering how I might achieve this before actually looking at the etches that make up the doors. Having examined them and worked out how they go together, I was pleasantly surprised to see that articulation is built into the design. in the end it was just a matter of soldering the two faces of the doors together then securing a length of 0.5mm wire through the “hinges” by soldering it to a half etched recess in the back of the doors.
I haven’t managed much modelling in the last week or so due to other things but On Tuesday I did manage to fit and chain a load on the bolster wagons.
Late last year Chris pruned our apple trees so I selected a couple of suitable lengths from her trimmings and put them on the end of my bench to dry out.
I turned and added knobs to the piano front and smokebox door as well as fitting the locking handles. They are only little things but I perfected a technique where I could knock out a knob in 5 minutes so I made a couple extra for my friend’s G5 at the same time. The locking handles came from the spares box.
Next on the hit list was the vacuum ejector pipe or rather it was bending it to shape and making and fitting the nuts or slotted retaining rings that were designed to be tightened with a ‘C’ or hook spanner.
I have to confess that it took three attempts to get these to where I was happy with them. For the first attempt, I used a small slitting saw. Unfortunately, it was from a cheap set and the arbour that holds the blades isn’t a very good fit and therefore the blade doesn’t run very concentrically. This combined with trying to cut too many slits for the diameter of the rod basically ended up chewing a third of it away before I gave up.
For the next attempt I kept things simple. I used a couple of pieces of bar with a couple of metric 123 blocks stacked on top of them to get me to the height of the brass bar held in the spin indexer collet. To make the grooves I used an Olfa cutter and reduced the grooves to six from the eight that I had tried on my first attempt.
This worked but I wasn’t happy with the grooves, they were not defined enough. But having got the idea I thought about what I might have that would make a better- defined groove. The next thing that I tried was a carbide 60degree thread cutting tool. Which I lined up on the edge of the 123 block, and by carefully running the point of the tool against the brass rod. After a few passes, the slots were acceptable.
C Spanner NutsC Spanner Nuts
Here is the finished pipe complete with fittings and bent to shape but not fixed in place yet. I still have the Westinghouse pump and associated pipework to fit in front of the tank which might be easier if I can temporarily remove the vacuum ejector pipe
Finally (for now), as I’m returning to the 8F for a bit. Having looked at lot of photos, many of them show, one or both of the tank filler locking screws unclipped and dangling down. There isn’t much room to leave the right hand one dangle due o the Westinghouse pump and governor fitting so I took the left hand one off and refitted it the other way up and slightly bent outwards.
The next part on my hit list was the coal rails. Unusually for one of Jim’s kits I had a bit of a fiddle to get it to sit correct and ended up filing the curve to get it to sit better against the rear of the cab.
After looking at the drawing to see how the rails were mounted on the full sized loco, I made up some mounting strips cut from some 10 thou nickel sheet.
Then it was the turn of the cab handrails. These are, like on many locos of the period, tapered from the bottom up. I made them by putting some short lengths of 1mm nickel rod into my Dremel laying it flat on the cutting mat and running a diamond file upon it to create a subtle taper. It doesn’t look very tapered in the photos but it does taper from 1mm to 0.7mm over the 30mm or so. I also turned up some washers for the top to take up the difference in the etched holes and some collars for the bottom which gives a bit more area to create the soldered joint while looking prototypical
Homemade Tapered Handrails
I have also fitted one of the cab doors. Most photos show one of the cab doors open but the design of the kit doesn’t make that easy, so some more thought is needed before I fit the other one
I finally got all the cab furniture fitted. I made the individual pieces up last year while out at shows, but I’ve only just got around to fixing them in place.
If you are wondering what the little round bung is on the splasher/locker in the last photo. There was an etched hole presumably so that the reverser cold be fitted at that side or it was just a mirror of the splasher on the other side so the hole came with it. Either way, I just turned up a small bung to fill the hole.
It was at this point that I permanently fitted the boiler in place. Tom Burham had kindly shared some photos of how the brass transition cover was retained by cladding band clamps so I endeavoured to add those. I managed it but I confess that the front one that is fitted to the transition ring is barely visible when you turn it upside down let alone from normal viewing angles.
I also fitted the clack valves. I had to make a small top hat type bush to sleeve the pipe as it passes through the foot plate
You will also note that I have fitted the filler cap locking screws that I had beefed up in the last post.
Moving on I did a few easy bits and fitted the pipes to the vacuum ejector elbow and clack valves. All of them are Connoisseur castings from Jim’s specific pack of upgrades.
From there it had struck me that ex NER engines would have probably had wooden roofs and a quick enquiry to Tom Burnham confirmed this was the case. So, I added canvas from my usual recycled spectacle lens cleaning tissue.
Next up it was time to start detailing the tank fronts and first up was the locking screws for the filler caps. As they come, they are very two dimensional, flat etches. I added some half round beading and I filed a piece of 1.6mm rod to half round to represent the bottom hinge.
Not perfect by any means but a little better than the flat etch.
Then I moved on to the sander operating rod and the tank front handrails, not forgetting the tank front lubricators
As has been mentioned plenty of times it’s the detailing that takes the time. The N10 is no exception. Some time ago I bought a number of Ramsbottom safety Valve cover castings from Gladiator (@Genghis). I have allocated one to each of my ex-NER locos. Oddly the one that I had added to the N10 box had a slightly strange double sprue fixed to the base which had I wished to fit it through the fire box would have needed quite a hole.
I find that cleaning up and making castings fit the firebox/smokebox etc that have bottom feed sprues is nigh on impossible without removing the sprue first. Or if there is a way of doing it I haven’t worked it out yet.
Mostly, I grip the casting by the sprue and drill down from the top but in the instance gripping it by the sprue wasn’t feasible. So I turned down the end of a length of brass rod so that it fit the hole in the top of the casting and soldered it in to use as a mandrel.
Then I cut off the sprue as near to the base of the casting as I could and used an end mill in the tailstock drill chuck to remove the remaining spigot to get t to sit down flush. Or as flush as the raw casting would without any additional cleaning up. From there it was a simple matter to wrap some emery cloth around the boiler and rub the casting base until a good seat was obtained.
One of my pet hates irritations is looking down model chimneys to find them blocked solid at the base. The Connoisseur chimney, although very nicely cast has a spigot on the bottom and is solid for the bottom 25% or so of the chimney. So again, I gripped the spigot in the lathe chuck and carefully drilled out the bottom of the chimney until it broke away from the base. I finished opening out the hole with drill bits turned by hand and finally an end mill held in a spare Jacobs chuck.
This is the chimney base before any cleaning up after drilling it out. It’s not going to take much effort to get it to sit flush.
A view from the top. Hollowing them out does make locating them centrally more difficult but worth the extra effort in my view.
hese are a little out of order but I thought continuing the discussion about the inside motion created a better flow for anyone reading this in the future.
I started by making a replacement for the upper handrail support. These are included on the etch but are quite vulnerable during handling and assembly so I managed to knock one off. I made the replacement from a strip off the nickel chassis so it’s a little more robust.
Then I moved to fitting the sand box fillers and sanding levers which I figured would be much easier to fit before I fit the boiler in place.
As it happens the sandbox filler caps were missing from my kit or at least, I haven’t found them yet. I know that Jim would have happily let me have some more but I bought the kit some time ago and it was easy enough to make some replacements.
I started with some 5mm brass bar and turned a short length to 4mm. Next, I turned a section to 3mm leaving 0.5mm at 4mm to give a step.
Repeating this, I turned a 0.9mm spigot on nth end again leaving a 0.5mm step at 3mm. Then I popped them in the spin indexer and took some off of each step to leave me a pair of flats on both the 4mm and 3mm steps. These once parted off gave me the oval sandbox filler caps.
And yes, I know that once fitted the right way up very little can be seen but I know it’s there…
Here they are fitted along with the sanding levers. I also turned some small upstands for the levers.
Those with a keen eye will also note that I filled in the back of the splashers so you can’t see the back of the wheels when looking between the frames.
I also fitted the inner tanks and filled them with strips of lead shaping it to clear the middle wheels.
Not having much time yesterday, I decided to put a top coat on a couple of the inside motion sets to see what looked like. When priming I had done the first set in light grey but the detail could barely be seen so I switched to red oxide.
With the top coats, I sprayed the grey primer with Vallejo Oily Steel (I initially tried brush painting it but that wasn’t going to work) let down with screen wash and the red primer with Vallejo Model Air Silver with a small blob of Vallejo German ‘Cammo’ Black-Brown mixed in. Both were then washed after drying with a wash of Vallejo Charred Brown.
Grey Primer
Red Primer
In fairness, the ‘Oily Steel’ coat didn’t really need much in the way of further weathering from the wash. But the Vallejo Model Air Silver was much easier to spray.
I’m going to try some further tests using a black primer.
In between messing about with the smokebox rings, I also detailed up a few of the other parts using either additions from the spares box or those that I made up from scratch. Starting with the roof, I added the outer skin, fitted whistles from the spares box and the roof vent. The latter I attached to a strip of etch that I bent to allow the vent to be open but so that I wasn’t relying on a solder joint purely on the edge of the vent.
Then I rolled a strip of brass angle to cover the firebox to cab joint.
Then I prepared a few of the cab fittings starting with the cupboard at the back of the cab I made up a couple of door knobs
Plus a third knob for the coal space shutter.
I also fitted a brake standard from my spares box.
This is as much as can be added to the cab floor before fitting or it won’t fit past the beading in the cab openings.
Sticking with the cab I fitted the reverser and made up a mounting/fixing for it.
There has been some discussion on Western Thunder about various alternatives to using an arbor/mandrel to turn the rings and suggestions of using a 3D printed mandrel. This discussion reminded me that in some of my more vintage kits there are some thick walled brass tube that has been turned down to make the boiler and smokebox from.
Now what’s no so clear in the photo above is the nicely turned transition ring which is what I’ve been trying to replicate.
Now I may not use these for the kit boiler as they will be quite a heat sink but thinking about it hasd I remembered that I had them I could have used one of them as a mandrel for turning the rings.
Sticking with the theme of transition rings/covers Tom Burnham emailed me to share that on the full sized locos that the brass cover also incorporates a flange for securing the cover to the boiler. This sits under the leading cladding band which as a result appears slightly thicker than the others. After learning this I set out to replicate it in miniature. By good fortune in amongst my saved scrap etch stips was a piece a little thicker than the supplied boiler band and exactly twice the width.
At this point the inner tanks and the boiler are just sat in place for the photo so there will be some adjustment when the boiler is finally fitted.
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