A few photos of the state of play before I strip her down and pack her up for painting.

Well, I got there at last. Her Royal Highness will now go around 6ft curves without derailing or shorting.

I did have to introduce some springing to restrict the movement of the bogie.

There are two spring wires at the rear which fit between the inner and outer bogie frames. They restrict the sideways movement of the rear of the bogie. The bogie pivot point has side control springs which allow more movement at the front of the bogie. This sort of worked but the front of the bogie was so light that it had a tendency to lift of the track so I added a second element of springing which holds down the front of the bogie and all runs nicely. This spring has a loop which is held in place by the pivot screw then bends over the front of the plate that you can see in the image below before curving onto the front of the bogie frame. Although it looks huge in the enlarged image it’s only 0.5mm spring wire.

All issues of whether the styrene might wear over time aside, even with added weight on the trailing truck, the chassis still wouldn’t go around a 6ft curve reliably so more drastic measures were needed.

Using a piercing saw I cut out part of the inner frames.

Then I soldered a plate across the ends of the frames at the front by good fortune there were two tabs at the rear with could be soldered to.

I then reduced the width of the inner plate and soldered the frame pieces back together with some end plates to take up the gap left by the saw kerf.

A quick dry fit of the rear truck leaves plenty of space either side of the inner swing so there should be no shorting but I may need to remove some of the spring casting to allow more swing to help it get around the curve – it’s a long chassis.

Having solved the issue of the wheels touching the upper frame I then discovered that the wheels were touching the inside of the frames when going around a 6ft curve.

So I added some styrene insulation either side of the inner frames.

This cured the short problem but running trials revealed that although it would now go around 6ft curve without shorting it didn’t do so reliably without the trailing truck derailing.

In an attempt to cure this I tried introducing some weight on to the trailing truck. I cut a couple of rectangles of lead and using a V block and a couple of different sized rods I created some weights that fit on top of the ruck over the axle.

I was getting low on lead but just this week we have had a couple of chimneys repointed and re-leaded as well as four wet verges I asked the roofer for the lead that they removed so I now have sufficient to see my days out I think.

It’s been getting on for six weeks since my last update on HRH. I haven’t been idle and the process of eliminating shorts has been a journey of education, frustration and determination to not let it beat me.

Starting with a belt and braces approach I remade the drawbar in Delrin.

Next, having already added insulated washers to the wheels which are insulated at the hub I turned my attention to the driver which are rim insulated. I had previously made inner balance weights from Nickel sheet and although I had stuck them to the wheels with epoxy I was concerned that they be be helping to bridge the insulation gap should they touch the frames. My answer was to remake the balance weights for the insulated side from styrene.

Then I noted that the cross piece pf the rear inner frames was touching the tyres of the rear truck wheels. You can see the plate with the half etched rectangles in the image below.

A look at the instructions mentions the possible need to remove the half etched sections in case of shorts so the plate was removed and the rectangles removed.

Sadly, this didn’t cure the problem so in the end I took of the outer sections leaving just the brace in the middle.

As it turned out that solved one problem but left another which will be the subject of another post

Since my last post I have been beavering away identifying and curing the shorts on the tender which I am happy to say that I have done.

As with many things in life getting there required at least one side project. During last Thursday’s GOG online modellers meeting the consensus was that I really needed to dig my multimeter out of the depths of the shed. On friday morning I bit the bullet and started to pull out plastic stacking boxes (having first removed the lawn mower, petrols cans, oak kitchen cabinet doors and finally my router table). An hour and a half later I had retrieved one of my two multimeters and put everything back.

Sadly the one that I found was the one with the missing probe, the wire was there but the common probe which had broken off in the dim and distant wasn’t with it. Before embarking on making a new probe I fitted a new battery to test that it still worked which thankfully it did. The metal section of the probe was made from a length of brass rod which sat atop my useful bits box on the workbench and I quickly drilled one end to accept the wire and turned a step onto the other to fit snugly into the yet to be made insulated delrin handle.

I didn’t take photos along the way but this is the finished article alongside the original ‘live’ probe.

Once I had it I reassembled the tender chassis test along the way without find any further shorts.

The last week and a bit of modelling time has been spent tracking down shorts on the tender and isolating them. This has required me making a number of additional bushes and delrin/acetal washers.

I also had to rethink the way that I had mounted the two U shaped brackets which fit across under the tender. Unthinkingly I had mounted them in the same way as on the MOK Stanier tender using small pieces of brass angle drilled and tapped for 14ba screws. Sadly when assembled these frames touch the brakes which although the shoes are insulated the hangers are not and between the two breached the insulation between tender chassis and body.

I made up some wire supports and then shortened the brackets to clear the outer frames. Below are a couple of shots of the sets that I used to get them soldered vertical to the brackets and then cut them off to the right size. I read recently on one of the forums someone say that you cannot have too many engineers clamps. I agree wholeheartedly although when used as soldering aids they do have a tendency to rust. I do have a cunning plan to get around that, I have a length of brass bar that I have had for about 10 years which will be just enough to make a pair of brass jawed clamps which shouldn’t rust.

I used the Expo pliers that I recommended recently to bend the corners pretty uniformly.

I also had a feeling that the washers which I had used to reduce the side play in the axles, might have been bigger than the insulation gaps in the wheel hubs thus creating a short, hence my making the delrin washers.

Those who are observant, will have noted the jaunty angle that the return crank is sat at, in the top photo of the post with the sand pipes fitted. Having had this pointed out by someone this came back to bite me.

Initially I just thought that in lifting the loco up I had dislodged it causing it to unscrew and come loose. However no matter how much I tried I couldn’t get it to tighten back up in the right place. I tried shortening the bush but realised too late that the crank pin itself must have shifted in the wheel. Then having shortened it I found that when tight it was nipping the conrod and coupling rods so that they wouldn’t move.

Making a replacement bush was the order of the day.

The sand pipes are now fitted without interfering with anything. I did get them fitted a couple of days ago but when I added the front bogie they stopped it from moving. I removed the two front ones and moved them slightly further back which did the trick.

Well I have the replacement sand pipes assembled ready for fitting let’s hope I have more luck in fitting these. One pipe is soft brass and the other slightly thinner one is copper.

Below are the first ones that I made earlier in the build. I made myself a rod for my own back (if you will pardon the pun) by using hard brass rod for the thicker of the two pipes which when it came to it, was almost impossible to bend where I needed it to go.

Well after fitting the brakes, I have spent far too much time in the last week trying to fit the sand pipes. What’s so difficult you might as yourself? Well they fit inside the frames and they also need to fit in such a way as to allow the wheels and brakes to be removable (the wheels won’t come out unless you remove the brakes). the key issue has been getting the pipes to bend in a tight enough bend to allow them to fit without touching the next wheel along.

In the end I have started again by stripping all the pipe work off the brackets and the plan is to reinstate them with finer soft brass and copper wire. I have cut all the parts and I will share picture when I have them reassembled ready to fit.