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.
Although much of my recent modelling time has been spent on the N10 the 8F hasn’t been entirely neglected. I did manage to get the GWR esque lam irons fitted to the front of the loco.
The 3D printed Silvertown Lubricators have now arrived so I will be making a start on piping them up.
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 working away on detailing the loco body, while awaiting the lubricators I decided to fit the handrails Oridinarily I would fit the hand rails last but with LMS engines having small finials on each end of the hand rails I thought it prudent to do them before paint so that when I fit and file them back I don’t damage the paint work.
I started with the smoke box door and fitted both the handrail and the lamp iron.
The finials (or whatever they’re actually called) are made from 1.4mm nickel rod drilled out .8mm to accept the 0.8mm piano wire which I use for the handrails. They are soldered on to one end of the hand rail and filed back to size the handrail is then fed through the handrail knobs via the cab and having cut the piano wire to length the second finial is soldered on and again carefully filed back.
From the photo it looks like the left hand, handrail rises up slightly at the front. I had to resolder this end knob in as it has loosened during fitting. So I will revisit it to make sure that’s it’s aligned better.
Finally yesterday I made and fitted the two small grab rails on the dropped section of footplate.
In some of the photo that I have these grab handles have small washers around the base of the rods. These were turned from 1.6mm rod drilled to accept the rod and parted off at 0.5mm thickness
As and aside, due to the lack of rigidity in something as small as 1.6mm a normal 1/8″ or thinner metric 2mm parting tool still exerts a lot of tool pressure meaning that the work piece is more likely to bend than part of. To get around this I ground up a very thin parting tool which is excellent for parting thinner material.
The cutting tip of the tool is only 0.8mm thick so tool pressure is greatly reduced
I also ground it to the left hand side of the tool meaning that I can get very close to the chuck which reduces stick out and increases rigidity.
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.
LNER N10 Chassis
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.
After several sessions at them I finally have all the oil boxes on the footplate aside from the large Silvertown types on the right hand side of the locomotive – they are the next job.
I started with the ones at the front which needed the associated pipework down inside the front of the frames under the smokebox. Again I made use of the Finney cable clip etches.
Then I fitted the ones that sit flat on the footplate including those that sit just inside the frames in front of the firebox. Lastly I fitted the ones at the rear of the smokebox that have pipes passing through the footplate.
Finally I did the two that initially, I thought sat at the inside of the footplate. However upon closer inspection, they actually sit on a bracket mounted to the inside of the frames.
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.
Modelling time in the last week has been a bit limited due to other things taking priority but over the last few weeks at our arts and crafts group I have been working on a scratch build of an LNER Conflat V.
This came about when a friend converted a Connoisseur Lowfit into a Conflat S. While we were exchanging emails on the subject i looked it up in my Tatlow wagon books and noted that the earlier Conflat V’s were made from the underframes from redundant cattle wagons. This reminded me that I had a spare pair of Parkside Cattle Wagon sole bars in my plastic kit spares box.
A rummage through said spares box got me W irons, axleboxes and brake hangers and shoes. I also have styrene sheet, angle and square/rectangular rod.
After getting the basics together I started to add the details starting with the clasp brakes
Then I moved onto adding the various bits of timber and iron work on the top.
It was at this point that I realised just how difficult getting decent photos of white styrene is and after adding more details I have it a blow over with some Vallejo red primer.
Still some way to go but it’s looking the part so far.
Having made them I figured it made sense to fit them before fitting other more vulnerable bits.
Not sure why since I have been concentrating on the left side of the loco so far but I started on the right hand side.
All went according to plan
Not so, on the left hand side. I can only assume that the wall thickness of the firebox castings is thinner on this side.
I couldn’t live with them as is so I had a choice attempt to file them down or remake them a bit shorter and put the longer ones in the spares box. Since I was still pretty much set up to make more, I elected for the latter.
Even with doing a test example to check that I had made the correct adjustments to my measurements it still took less than half an hour to make enough for the right hand side.
While I was in the midst of making the washout plugs for the 8F I had a look through the kits stash to see if I needed any for other models while I was on with them. most are covered but I do need some for my B16. These are slightly different in that they are inset with a raised rim. Having made a number of spares it was a relatively simple job to turn half a dozen or so collars that the washout plugs would fit into.
Washout plugs with collars
The idea being that I will solder the inner plug into the collar then cut the base off allowing them to be fit into the loco fire box. In the meantime they are now in the B16 box, in a little bag awaiting their day to shine
While still set up for making washout plugs and having looked through a few of my other kits to see if I need any more at some point (which I do). I decided to see how many I could make in 45 minutes.
I was pleased and a little surprised that I managed to make a dozen. Now compared to commercial CNC machined offerings that would be quite pitiful.
However when you consider that you have to turn the spigot on each end of the bar, then transfer it to the spin indexer to mill the square section. Then back to the lathe for parting off and turning the next spigot.
When using a collet block the work has to be backed out quite a long way to clear the cutter and the machine switched off to remove risk of injury while indexing the collet block. My collet blocks (ER25) are quite nose heavy due to the big collet nut on the end. This makes it essential to make sure that you have it pressed flat in the vice before tightening it. If you relax that pressure for the slightest instant before the vice grips it will tilt forward and throw the job out of kilter.
With the spin indexer you can literally move the cutter a couple of mm away from the work piece and unscrew the lock, then remove the indexing pin before rotating to the next index position, with your hands well clear of the cutter. Which means that not only do you not have to make many turns of the hand wheel to clear the workpiece, but you can also leave the machine running during reindexing and that saves so much time.
I was asked very tongue in cheek whether all the washout plugs that I made would fit on my 5p piece. I’m sad enough to try them and the answer is “yes they do”!
Ian Allen, fellow Guild member and font of knowledge for all things LMS kindly pointed out that the cladding band on the firebox only had the bottom four or five fixings, so the rest need filing off the firebox casting. He posted a photo showing his example and wile looking at it it reminded me that I still needed to do something with the washout plugs. I knew that I needed to do them but seemed to keep overlooking them as I progressed with detailing. So yesterday I got stuck in and made some.
My initial attempts were with a collet block but they came out asymmetrical and I couldn’t understand why so I fitted the spin indexer to the mill and tried again. it was at the point that I realised that my bit of brass rod was bent – this particular piece of rod has caught me out before…
I checked stock and found a piece of similar sized (3mm) nickel rod and tried again. All was well so I got stuck in and set up a mini production run and a couple of hours later I had enough for this loco plus a few spares.
They are designed to be soldered in from the inside. So the next job is to drill out all the holes and fit them before starting to fit all the oilboxes.
Studying photos shows that there are quite a number of 2 port oil boxes dotted about the footplate and visible inside the upper frames. There were some castings provided but there were only four of them and they lack mounting plates. While I could and did make mounting plates I also elected to remake the oil boxes with a bit more detail.
Besides to large 6/8 port lubricators mounton the the right hand side there seem to be three different types of 2 port lubricators so i have replicated each type as best I can.
The types that I have identified (so far) are:
Rear mounted with pipes coming out of the bottom.
2 Port Lubricator Boxes
Bottom Mounted presumably with the pipes also coming out of the bottom, but I haven’t modelled them.
The last type are those mounted at the front of the frames just under the end of the smokebox. These are very shallow and have a couple of prominent mounting nuts on top of the angle iron mounting plate.
What can’t really be seen in the photos is that back edge of the angle plate also has two holes and after struggling to workout how I might hold all the other parts together while I added the last two mounting bolts (the brass angle doesn’t take pressed rivets very well due to the proximity of the other leg) I elected to use the holes to drill the frames and then pass brass pins through to mount them.
After doing the initial rear mounted boxes with 180 degree solder it occurred to me, that I would make life much easier, if I soldered the others together using 296 degree solder. Thus making it less likely that they would fall apart if soldered to the frames with 145 degree solder. time will tell.
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