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.

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.

A small detail but it all adds to the fun.

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

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

New

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.

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.

I’m happy with that so far.

I managed the first bit of modelling for nearly a week a few days ago. I need a number of 1/4 round brass rings to represent the brass cover over the joint between boiler and smokebox on my ex NER engines. Thankfully many of them used the same boiler so that simplifies things a little.

In the past I have used copper wire rolled into a ring and soldered to a piece of sheet, then filed to half thickness. Remove, re-roll with the flat side innermost and repeat. Which, not only isn’t very accurate, it’s tedious and perhaps more importantly the outer face of the final ring gets coated in solder. Neither solder or copper for that matter look like brass so I sought an alternative.

Some time ago I bought a length of 2mm x 1mm half round brass beading and using an Arbor made from rolled 0.7mm nickel sheet. I rolled a length and turned it down for my friend’s G5. Although much better than either of us could have managed by hand, I wasn’t satisfied with it because the rolled Arbor wasn’t very rigid and being thinnish sheet which was rolled, I couldn’t tighten up the chuck too much to get a better grip without crushing it. If I’d had a collet big enough (just under 32mm) that would have worked, but ER32 collets only go up to 25.5mm and my set only goes to 20mm at present. So the three jaw it has to be.

I decided to see what I had that I could make a more rigid Arbor from, and in amongst the bits and pieces that my local Agricultural repair guy had given me, I found a short length of 1.25″ thick walled steel tube. which just happens to be just under 32mm.

I faced off each end so that I could be sure that it sat square in the chuck and turned a 1mm long recess in one end so that I could fit (with the aid of superglue) the ring with 1mm of the width protruding. It worked perfectly, aside from my first attempt was a little short, so I made another.

The first one will go in the spares box for my J71 kit which has a smaller boiler.

Still flitting between the 8F and the N10 and managing to make good (for me) progress on both.

On the N10 I was able to get the brakes fitted – I did cut the brass shoes off and fit some 3D printed shoes that I had drawn up and a friend printed for me.

On the image of LNER no 1138 which is my chosen loco I noted that there is a tap and a clamp at the side of the ashpan.

You may think that I have made a bit f a mess of cutting out the hole for the clamp but although I have seen some photos with overlapping round holes in the frames for the clamp, on 1138 it looks to have been crudely cut out with a gas axe.

As you can see from the comparison so I was able to get away with not managing to cut out round holes so easily.

Both the clamp and the tap could really do to have been a little higher up the frames but due to the way that Jim has designed the ashpan mountings it was difficult to make the holes higher up so I’m working on something even if a little low is better than nothing.

I also popped the air tank in the lathe and cleaned up the ends. To prevent the cast rivets from being damaged I wrapped the casting in a strip of aluminium sheet recovered from empty shaving foam cans. This is a bit thicker than the aluminium recovered from drinks cans so does a bit better job of protection. A note of caution. I also use antiperspirant* which comes in exactly the same cans but is much higher pressure so I don’t tend to use them for recycling.

In between fitting the oil boxes to the 8F, I have also made up an ash pan for the N10 and fitted the driving wheel springs (which retain the hornblocks).

I was pleased that it ran nice and sweetly without any adjustments. My buying and repairing those two Shogun motor gearbox units has proved fortuitous although I didn’t know it at the time. Having elected to drive from the rear axle none of my other gearboxes were long enough to clear the cab and bring the motor into the firebox. The Shogun units are and I will earmark the other one for the N8/9 that’s in the stash. As I can foresee that having similar issues, if I want to drive from the rear axle.