Enigma (Liverpool Lion)

Mike W

Western Thunderer
To hi-jack this thread for just a little longer, Jon seems to have moved his allegiance from the deep south to the North West with Enigma (Lion) and Geoff has moved west from deepest darkest Essex into the Midlands with L&BR. It took a while but they both saw the light in the end.

And I do have long term plans for two non-LNWR locos: I have a GER good break and a WCJS train ...

Mike
 

Mike W

Western Thunderer
West Coast Joint Stock. Carriages owned jointly by the LNWR and Caledonian railways. All built by the LNWR at Wolverton so apart from lettering and crest almost indistinguishable from LNWR.

Mike
 

Jon Nazareth

Western Thunderer
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A new supply of 0.8mm nuts and bolts arrived today and I was able to finish off the steam turret. The footplate has had a top coat and that is now hardening off. I've fitted the steps to the frame including the bracing bars and springs. Next on the list is to make up a simple method to hold the frame while it's being painted. Mmm, some thought ought to go toward the boiler in the same vane.

Jon
 

Jon Nazareth

Western Thunderer
Trevor
I'm not sure what you mean. My intention is to make a rod that will pass through both buffer beams utilising the holes where the draw hooks go. One end will have a nut and the other a screwed on extension that will serve as a handle. There are so many little nooks and crannies in the assembly that I will need to be able to rotate the frame this way and that so that I can get the spray paint into them. If I had left off the pieces that created these nooks and crannies and blackened them chemically and then fitted them after the painting, I think that I would have damaged the new paintwork too much. I think that this would have happened even if I had left the paint to harden for a couple of weeks. When I've made the painting handle, I'll post a picture but it is a simple thing.

MSWJR
Thanks for posting those pictures. I have seen most of them before but a scattered version. I've never seen them in one album and that makes for a good reference.

Ian.
Thanks for that, much appreciated.

Jon
 

Jon Nazareth

Western Thunderer
I've decided to scrap my original idea for a painting rod as I thought that the frames would be too heavy for it. The new idea is shown in the following pictures and allows the frames to be turned through 360 degrees. An adjustable screw with a shoulder is made to suit the different holes in the front and rear buffer beam. The diameter of the shoulders are made slightly smaller than the actual fittings so that after the frame has been painted, the witness marks left from the said screws will be hidden by the fittings. I hope that that makes sense.
Looking at the first picture again, I may just trim some of the metal away from each of the corners of the brackets around the adjustable screws just in case the corners interrupt/get in the way of, the paint spray.

Jon

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Jon Nazareth

Western Thunderer
Buffers on and a coat of etch primer. I started to think that it would be a shame to cover up all of that brass but the paint gives it a uniformity which is quite pleasing. The second picture shows where the paint didn't get to on the top of that spring. I thought that it was going to be worse than this but that little bit will be easy enough to put right with a small brush.

Jon

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Jon Nazareth

Western Thunderer
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I made up this tool box to sit on the footplate. There isn't much colour on this engine which is why I've painted it the same colour as the wheels.

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I've had to put these styrene rings around the boiler to act as spacers for when the slats/battens go on. The boiler is smaller than the collar around it, obviously, and the rings take up the difference in diameter so the battens can be fixed on level. The rings make it look like the wing markings on aircraft that flew on D Day.

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The frames now have a black top coat. It's difficult photographing as the finish looks grey instead of black. On the drag beam (that name suddenly came to me :)) there are a couple of taped 14BA holes for the countersunk screws that hold the footplate in place. To aid rotating the frames for the top coat, I screwed a cocktail stick into one of them to act as a lever. Needles to say and toward the end of spraying, it broke off. I'm not too worried it being wood and easily drilled out albeit, carefully.

Jon
 

Jon Nazareth

Western Thunderer
Having nearly knocked the boiler onto the floor, twice, I decided to start adding the lagging strips, so much for giving the paint a week to harden off. The strips were cut on a Proxon table saw from pieces of 1.5mm veneer that were sanded smooth before the actual cutting. The strips were cut to length using a Chopper and then trimmed with a scalpel to make up the various differing lengths required. These were then given a thin coat of water based walnut stain. I started to glue the strips on with super glue but found it much easier to use Bostik as it was more user friendly and dried just as quickly.
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Stained strips cut to length.

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Strips being glued onto the boiler.

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The finished lagging with the boiler bands fitted. I did think of putting on a thin coat of varnish over the strips but I opted for a coat of bees wax polish instead. It doesn't show in this picture but, the brass is incredibly shiny but, in time, it will dull down.
Fittings tomorrow.

Jon
 
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