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.
