Finally the bit that you have all been waiting for, this is what it looked like when it went for paint. I confess that being so big I really struggled to get it all in shot and in focus
Fred Phipps WarshipFred Phipps WarshipFred Phipps WarshipFred Phipps Warship
I always knew in my gut that I wasn’t going to be able to live with them so a couple of days after my last post I ripped the battered sides off and cut some more from 10 thou nickel sheet.
MOK sides removed
Ironically the side that went on okay came off in pretty good shape too.
This was the basic sides cut out ready for detailing before fitting.
I managed to salvage the handrails and handrail knobs from the damaged sides and it was a simple enough job to fit them to the new sides. Initially I was planning on adding the side then fitting the beading but in the end I also opted to fit them first while the sides were manoeuvrable.
I also remembered that to make the MOK rear sheet match the new scratch built sides, I would need to remove the half etched upper beading and replace it. Being half etched it was soon removed with a few strokes of a file. I fitted a length of 0.7mm half round beading along to the rear and left each side a bit long to blend in when the sides were fitted.
I didn’t take any photos of the sides before I fitted them but this is the creased side after being replaced.
Creased side replaced.
The other side had to be replaced to match.
Good side replaced to match.
The rear beading and other details such as the fire iron tunnel and tank vents were also fitted.
Rear beading reinstated
I have also made start on adding the other details to the front.
Front end details being added
While much muttering had ensued, in hindsight I am glad it happened in a way because I feel the new sides look much better than the half etched MOK ones did on this tender.
The right hand side buffer at each end as you are looking at it from the front has a step attached to it. I had made up the steps back in 2017 but hadn’t attempted to fit them to the buffer castings and I am glad I didn’t because I didn’t have a mill back then. On the basis that there are a couple of small gluing points, the attachment to the buffer casting would be the crucial bit. as they cam I couldn’t workout how I might get them all attached consistently while still maintaining the integrity of the steps. The solution was to mill a small flat on the bottom of each buffer casting to give a good base to solder to.
At this point I was left with these castings which I had no idea where they fitted. A quick email to Fred pointed me in the right direction. Although he told me where they fitted he said refer to photos. But on all the photos that I had at the time (I have kindly been provided with a number of really useful photos since I started posting the build by a kind Gent on RMWeb) the cab steps obscure them so they are not visible.
I also had a photo of a bogie which had been removed from the loco but although they fit on top of the springs they had been removed so that photo while clear on may other details didn’t help.
Finally this is them fitted to the springs.
Being Gauge 1 I also took a punt on the fact that it would be battery powered so I didn’t attempt to fit any pickups before it went for paint. It turned out to be a good guess.
I was feeling quite pleased with myself having managed to move the fold in the thin material without it creasing so I went ahead and soldered the first side on. Not having learned my lesson from a similar experience when I built the Class 5A a few years ago I tinned all the bit of the inner cage and the sides and lower section of the curves of the bulkheads.
Then using the RSU I spot tacked the side in place but struggled to get it to stay in place and ended up being a bit heavy handed which resulted in a number of creases.
Now they do actually look a bit prototypical in that I have seen lots of photos of tender with seams/panels and creases and dents visible at certain angles but it’s not what we tend to model. My other question mark besides can I live with it is that during my modelling period this tender would be relatively new and I am not sure that the premise of a wartime Friday afternoon at Swindon is enough of an excuse to leave it be.
Not the easiest things in the world to take photos of so in the end I squirted a bit of primer at it to get a better view of what it might look like after paint.
Moving steadily along next I did the cab detailing and this is where things started to go a little pear shaped.
The castings in the kit are excellent with the minor exception of a couple of whitemetal ones which would do at a pinch but I made new ones because they were very undersized.
The instructions on the other hand are very basic. I am sure that if you are a diesel modeller they are probably quite adequate but for someone who has no idea of the subject matter I really struggled. I did manage to find a number of photos but of course they don’t show you everything. In fairness to Fred the sketches included do show where to add much of the detail but where I went wrong was the cab interior. The sketch shows how the control desks are laid out in the cab and the seats in relation to the floor etc.
Warship Drivers consoleWarship Secondmans cabinet
They fit together like this, so as you might expect the first thing that I did was stick them together with epoxy. Once they were dry next day I test fitted them in the cab and realised that there was no way that they were going to fit. I dropped Fred an email to ask what I was missing and he kindly gave me his phone number and said give me a call and I will explain how they fit into the cabs.
Warship Cab front consoles
They fit like a 3D puzzle, you slip one of the desk in first and hook the angled section at the edge of the desk over the window ledge. Then you slip the second on in and do the same, but you need to have this a little way behind the first desk to allow them to fit side by side then you slide the two together and they hold each other in place.
Warship Bulkhead
I made a couple of turning s for the hot plates as I struggled with the whitemetal castings. I also soldered up that loose joint before fixing them to the bulkhead just to the left hand side of the brake wheel.
This morning I was getting ready to fit the sides when I double checked the bends against the sides of the inner cage and realised that I had my bends a little too low on the side so the tender side would sit flush without having to force it into place. Past experience has taught me that while you can force items into place and then solder them the odds that the solder under tension will give at some point in the future so I elected to do something about it before soldering the sides on.
Bending kit etches has become a bit topical over on Western Thunder so I thought I would go into a bit more detail about how this came about and what I did to get around it.
As supplied the Just Like The Real Thing Stanier Tender kit that I am using had riveted sides which came with some little etched tabs to guide you where to make the top fold.
You can see the small tabs with the red lines against them in the image below.
By laying one JLRT side over the replacement MOK welded side I transferred the bend lines over. Unfortunately these lines create a guide rather than a specific place to bend and I had got it wrong. Now being half etched and nickel getting the bend to move was going to prove a little tricky. However I reasoned, that worst case scenario I could use the flat JLRT sides as a template to cut out some replacements from 10 thou nickel sheet if I made a mess of things.
The first thing that I did was to ease the fold line that was too low. I did this by carefully beating it with a rubber mallet, using a thick steel tube filled with lead as a makeshift anvil.
Rubber Mallet & Makeshift Anvil
Note that I was using a curved surface rather than a flat one. The idea being to ease the bend back into a shallow curve rather than trying to flatten it completely and risk leaving a crease.
Next I measured the tender side to see where the start of the bend should actually be rather than working to a guestimate between the two previously marked lines.
Measuring the bend location
On one side it was 4.5mm at each end and the second side it was 4.5mm at one end and 5mm at the other I transferred these marks to the outside of the MOK tender sides so that I could drop them in my folding bars and still see the line as I positioned it ready for rebending.
You can just make out the middle line in the image below.
Once I had the basic bogies assembled and the motors in place the next job was to assemble and detail side the resin frames.
The springs although nice castings had cast spigots which were fine on some but odd shapes on the others so I snipped them off and replaced them with some 1.6mm brass rod
Warship Springs
Then it was time to bend up the brake pipes which although all are identical they are handed so it was a case of make four up on one hand then another four of the opposite hand. I really surprised myself in bending all eight one after the other without making a mess of any of them or having to make any extras. All the whitemetal parts were then stuck to the resin with epoxy.
After a short interlude to finish of building a Gauge 1 Warship that was started way back in 2017 I am back on the 8F since attending Guildex last weekend.
I started by replacing the wrong handed upper lamp iron.
Right Handed Upper Lamp Iron
Then I folded the bends on the tops and fronts of the two MOK replacement welded sides and added the handrails. I also took the time while they were accessible to file the tails of the handrail knobs and the wire of the rear ones flat.
Handrail tails filed off
With that done I marked up where the solid bits were on the tender cage so that when I solder them on I apply the heat in the right place.
Something a little different from me. I have been quite for a few weeks because I was focusing on building this for delivery at Stafford. I started this way back in 2017 but the kit was supplied with came with ex San Cheng motor and gearboxes which were quite popular at the time. The minor issue with them was that the retaining collar on the final drive was very thin and in order to get the grub screw to clear the gear above you needed to file a slot in the axle. This is all very well if you are using solid axles like those provided with Slaters wheels but the kit came with Mark Wood wheels mounted on telescopic axle which are not good for filing slots in.
San Cheng final drive gear
Having discovered the issue I sent the motor and gearboxes back, explaining the issue and asking for some different motor and gearbox units which didn’t require a slot cut in the axle.
After chasing it up a couple of times without response it was ultimately placed in a cupboard and forgotten. When I moved house I recalled that I still had it but it wasn’t until after covid that I got in touch with the guy and reminded him that I had it. It then took another couple of years or so to actually get suitable gearboxes (we had tried some Slaters axle mounted bogie units but they were not suitable either – for the life of me I can’t recall what the issue with those were now).
I finally received suitable units last year but I was in the midst of building the Princess and having waited so long I didn’t want to just drop everything to do the Warship.
Fast forward to about 4 weeks ago and I decided to try to get it finished for delivery to Stafford.
I had made the chassis and bogie frames back in 2017 so the first job was to fit the motor and gearboxes to make sure that they would indeed fit.
Warship bogie Motor fitted underside
I used the mill to neatly enlarge the slots for the motors and then heaved a sigh of relief when they went in as planned.
