Well I managed to get my head into gear and work out a way to get past my issue of not being able to retain the cylinders in the chassis without the body in place.
From a piece of 3mm diameter nickel rod I turned a short length down to 2.2mm and threaded it 8BA. I cut it off using a piercing saw then reversed it and face it off until I had just the merest hint of a head as the thread ends.
Headless screw
I drilled a couple of holes in the top plate between the cylinders and tapped them 8ba there was already a slot in the frame spacer to accommodate one of the screws but I had to drill a corresponding hole to allow the second screw to pass through the spacer.
Headless screws Inserted
There isn’t a huge amount of screw thread in the holes so I soldered the screws in to reinforce them.
And of course its only when you take the photos that you notice the buffer heads – they have been blackened but nothing further and they still seem a bit too shiny.
Although the metal construction has slowed over the last couple of weeks I have managed to crack on with painting plus making and adding transfers.
A second parkside NBR 8 ton van is in primer and the CCT just needs a few bit’s touching up and it’s ready for transfers too.
Then I finally got around to printing the “return to Kirkcaldy” transfers for the floor cloth wagon. They were printed onto white transfer paper and to achieve this I scanned the wagon side to get the grey for the background and then added the lettering. It’s not come out a perfect match but once the wagon side and the transfer is toned down a little by some weathering I think that they will look the part.
Modelling time has been in short supply for two or three weeks due to me going on course for work next week and having quite a bit of pre-course studying to do. On Thursday night after I had go to the I am reading it but it’s no longer going in stage I decided that I needed a bit of modelling to keep me sane.
In an hour and a half at the bench I managed to all but finish the CCT. All I need to do now is work out where the three pipes go on each end, add them, blacken the couplings and it’s ready for painting.
I haven’t managed much time at the workbench recently but this week I managed a little.
Sometime back I posted some home made vacuum pipes and someone asked for a step by step next time I made some.
This is what was included in the kit – the whitemetal ones that is along with the fine beading wire that I use for creating the ‘ribbing’
I started by measuring and cutting some 50mm lengths of 0.7mm brass rod.
I held each one in a pin vice with 25mm protruding and tucked one end of the beading wire down the small gap in the jaws of the pin vice.
Next I wound the beading wire around the protruding wire keeping the strands tight against each other until I had around 5mm left without binding.
Holding the end still attached to the reel tight I soldered the beading wire in place then snipped the end attached to the reel.
Removing it from the pin vice I snipped and tidied the other end up and slipped a 10mm length of annealed microbore tube over the long end. I also drilled a hole in the end of a strip of scrap and soldered it over the other end. Cutting it back and rounding each end once it was soldered in place.
Being the tight Yorkshireman that I am when I use pinheads for rivets I don’t throw the shanks away. To create the ring around the top end of the tube I annealed a pin shank and wound it around the other end of the bound section on the long section (the end with the microbore tube on it). Finally snipping it off and soldering it in place.
Next I bent the section of annealed tube to right angles and finally I cut a length of shrink tube and shrank it over the top. I have to confess I am not sure about the shrink tube and I may end up cutting it off…..
The last pair of pipes will be a tad harder because they have taps on them and I need to work out the best way to represent them – Last night I had a brilliant idea on how to do it but I blowed if I can recall it today………
With the Timber wagons off the bench I returned to the CCT.
First I added the brake levers and guards
Then the instructions said mount the Westinghouse cylinder centrally the drawing being 2D only showed it as being central across the V hangers not which side it sat so I found a square of brass that would mount across the floor void and then I though that perhaps the cylinder would be supported by straps so I made some up followed by a bit of pipework leading to the Westinghouse pump. Having done all that I may have it the wrong way around but it’s not likely to be seen so it can stay as it is (mainly because I have had to resolder the vacuum cylinder back on once already due to the heat from solder the mounting plate in place melting the 70 degree solder that I mounted it with).
Next I had a look at the spring hangers and initially I was a little confused because they come cat in pairs on a mounting block (see the bottom of the photo below). The problem being once you have things like truss rods and brake lever guards etc. soldered to the solebars there is no way on earth that the chunky mounting block will fit any where near – not to mention the rocking mechanism.
My (rather tedious) solution has been to cut them with my piercing saw to make them fit on top/behind the solebars. Two down two more to go this evening……
A good session last night saw the brakes sorted after a proper DOH! moment – the etched slots that you can see in the underframe are for the individual brakes – You even get FS/S7 spacing (although having re-read the instructions this is a throwback to the kit being scaled up from 4mm and designed as 00/P4).
I now have it up on it’s wheels but looking at the photos has confirmed last nights suspicion that one end is higher than the other…..It was 11pm and I wondered if it was my eyes playing tricks.
More progress on the underframe details – the holes etched for the bearings are way too big so they took a bit of getting central.
The step hangers had a half etch line that I couldn’t work out the purpose of which made the steps a little flimsy, so I added a strip of scrap etch behind to strengthen them. Next I need to work out which brakes fit where – I made the mistake of cutting them from the etch and I cannot find where they went to work out which numbers are which. Some are in pairs and the others are individual hangers/shoes.
Following a tip from an observant fellow modeller on the GOG forum I got to the bottom of why I was struggling to make the roof fit. It looks like the original 4mm kit was designed for a scale thickness roof which when blown up to 7mm meant that my 0.3mm sheet that I used to roll my roof was a bit on the slim side.
More by good luck than planning it turns out my roof was around 1mm too wide which worked in my favour in so much as I could cut some more strips (1mm shorter) and solder them inside the roof to make up the required thickness and bring the roof out to the edge where it should sit.
In between weathering the gas tank wagon further progress has been made on the CCT. I have now got the removable roof formers complete and with a little tweaking of the roof shape it should be ready to solder to the formers.
Getting back to the CCT. On Thursday night I had a go at the roof and the fittings to make it removable.
I am still not 100% happy with the roof so I will probably revisit it once I have the formers sorted.
I initially ran it through my rollers to get the basic shape and then annealed each edge before making the tighter bed with my Metal Smith Drilling table – this is a substantial metal plate that is drilled and tapped at intervals and comes with clamps and a selection of different sized rods for assisting with making tight bends in sheet metal.
I then did a bit more work on getting the formers that I made earlier fit at either end and in the middle.
A little more was done to the CCT last night. I managed to get one side finished and the other well on it’s way – I would have finished it but I mislaid the bottom door runner…. after turning the workbench upside down without success I found it just as I was turning the light off.
Some time Last night saw the doors detailed and a start made on the representation of the runner mechanism.
And lastly a shot of the sides with the ends to give an idea for those that haven’t seen one before an indication of what it will look like once assembled.
The strips along the bottom edge will be angled support brackets once I get the sole bars in place.
There is still more work to do on the doors and runner mechanism before I finally attach them to the sides – hopefully tonight’s effort.
The gas tank wagon has joined the queue for transfers and frustratingly so still not having confirmation of my house completion date, I looked through the wagon kit stash for something else that wouldn’t require too much in the way of thinking.
I plumped for a D&S GCR CCT. This is one of only 3 D&S kits that I have managed to get my hands on to date (if you don’t count sunday night’s eBay bargain of a D&S ECJS 45′ BG for £81.55! – promptly stash away as a Christmas/Birthday pressie by Chris).
For a kit that has been around some time it is nicely detailed although the instructions leave a little to be desired.
The first thing that I noticed was the absence of a roof (the kit refers to a sheet of plastic that is absent from my 2nd hand kit). So having picked up a tip from Chaz Harrison on how to make clip in roofs’ I decided to have a go at his method. – How it works will be detailed as I go along, but first off while everything was in the flat I made up some roof formers/supports from pieces of scrap etch.
Then I detailed the ends lot’s of etched strapping to add – there are still some cast whitemetal blocks to go in the half etch rectangles but I will leave these until later so they don’t drop off as I solder the body together.
