I was going to add that not long after the last post I discovered that the whitemetal castings were missing from the tender so in spare moments I have been looking through the spares boxes and examining working drawings that I have created to see what I ultimately need to buy. I have already turned some spare rear tank vents and drawn up the water scoop dome, tank filler and brake vacuum cylinder and a number of the various rods etc. are present cast in brass. This left (so far) axleboxes and springs, water scoop and brakes hangers/blocks. Now I have spare brake blocks from the Princess and while looking for the spare etched hangers from the Princess which I didn’t use because I had been supplied with nice cast ones I found the plastic pot with the missing castings. Now admittedly some of these are a bit ropey so I will be replacing some of them anyway but I now have the ones that I would struggle to remake.
Monthly Archives: December 2024
MOK 8F 8425 – Replacement Tender
The rebuilding of the Princess has reached the stage of needing to test the chassis before fitting the body. I don’t have a layout but I do have a test board with various diameter curves on it. Unfortunately said board lives in the shed and when needed is temporarily erected in the cloakroom. Over the last couple of days the weather here has been really windy making bring the board in undamaged quite a precarious proposition so in the bits of time that I had in between looking after Chris and doing the various household chores I decided do pick up the Just Like The Real Thing Stanier tender. This came with my JLRT Royal Scot but needing a welded tender for the 8F now that it’s changed to 8425 and having found the spare teched sides and rear panel for the MOK version I am now building the JLRT tender bt fitting it with the MOK welded spares and then I will swap the tenders and use the MOK tender for the Royal Scot and the JLRT tender for the 8F.
I bought the kit second hand and the gent that I bought it from hadn’t taken into account the sheer weight of the JLRT cast boiler when packing it. As a result it had shifted somewhat in transport and it had pretty much crushed the inner cage for the tender by the time it arrived with me. Much careful straightening has got the cage back into shape and soldered together and a good start has been made on the inner frames.
Collet Rack finished – To take ER25 and ER32 Collets
In between work on rebuilding the Princess post paint I also managed to finish making my collet rack.
David Andrews Princess Royal – Princess Marie Louise – A taster of what she will look like when complete.
Here we have a few photos of the tender now that it’s reassembled. Onto the loco next.
It’s a cracking livery, my Duchess will be in the same livery at some point.
David Andrews Princess Royal – Back from paint
Late last week I got the Princess back from painting for reassembly.
I started rebuilding with the simpler stuff like the bogie and trailing truck, then the tender chassis, followed by fitting the tender body. All the while being very careful not to damage the paint.
I was just about to fit the tender chassis when I thought it would make sense to fit the buffers first, thus giving me more room to fit the retaining nuts without damaging anything. This was when I found that the buffer heads no longer fitted due to paint build up in the bore of the buffer stocks. I searched all my drill bits and broaches but couldn’t find one of the right size to just remove the paint without enlarging the hole.
A few days ago I scrapped a friend’s old printer and it turned out that one of the recovered bits of rod, was the perfect size to make a little reaming tool from. I turned the outside to the size of the buffer shank and then using a collet block to index as I rotated it, I plunged an end mill into the end to create some small teeth. Then I popped it back in the lathe and took a small amount off the diameter as a relief. Working away from the chuck, towards the end and just leaving approx. 1mm of ‘teeth’. After a slight deburr I tried it and it worked perfectly.
It’s not hardened, in fact the steel is quite soft but it only needed to cut through a layer or two of paint.
I gripped it in a drill chuck as the only pin vice that I had which would take the rod is a bit worn and the rod slipped rather than scrape the paint off.