7mm Mickoo's Commercial Workbench
- Thread starter mickoo
- Start date
Lancastrian
Western Thunderer
Mick,
Brilliant !
Ian
Brilliant !
Ian
mickoo
Western Thunderer
Small update on the King Arthur rebuild, sometimes things do not go to plan.
The Faulhaber motor sent me on a merry goose chase with DCC, it really didn't like my old H&M DC controller at around 45% speed, the motor bucked and stuttered like mad, above or below that speed it was fine, not had a coreless motor do that before.
Slapped a basic DC set up in and it was smooth right through, almost. Low speed was a bit erratic so used the DCC motor tuning set up in ESU chips, much better but still not really smooth below 10% speed. Couple of days running round in circles and decided to see if the ESU Lokprogrammer software was any better than sprog.
Well done ESU, they had a preset motor set up for Faulhabers, whilst the auto tune was close the ESU preset set up was spot on, now all nice and smooth. Lokprogrammer front and center, Sprog stored safe as a back up system.
Then it was a case of just running it and running it and running it to bed all the motion and bearings in.
Re assembly began a few days ago, still a lot of bright work to add and polish up but it's getting there; my silver pen had dried out (new one arrives tomorrow, well done amazon for their 24hr service) so then I can silver up the smoke box dart, lugs and some cab handles.
There are caps to go over the Slaters wheel fixing screws which I'll tend to in due course, on top of that there's glazing and internal polished bezels to fit, plus the final polished boiler pipework. I have some miniature slinky hose for the vacuum pipework and the steam pipe and fitting to fit to the tender as well as the remaining tool box; there were a few blemishes on the previous one so reprinted and now letting the paint harden before fitting.
There is however one great big elephant in the room, front steps, they are cranked and have half etched lines to aid bending, well as was to be expected one of them fractured; despite the half etch slot being filled with reinforcing solder it still failed.
You can only really fix it one way, clean it all back and add a backing strap, a butt joint is never going to work, of course doing one then makes the other look odd, so you have to do both sides. The real engines do have some sort of brace or stay down there so it's not totally un-prototypical. It's all repaired now and they'll never get bent or snapped off again (should have done this in the beginning truth be told....hindsight and all that....)
It'll go back to Warren once everything else is done and he'll work his magic with some extra sharp crayons and it'll all look tickity boo.
Coal needs to be added and then couplings, I've used the CPL hooks but the actual couplings I'm going to see if there are any other alternatives available at Doncaster.
The Faulhaber motor sent me on a merry goose chase with DCC, it really didn't like my old H&M DC controller at around 45% speed, the motor bucked and stuttered like mad, above or below that speed it was fine, not had a coreless motor do that before.
Slapped a basic DC set up in and it was smooth right through, almost. Low speed was a bit erratic so used the DCC motor tuning set up in ESU chips, much better but still not really smooth below 10% speed. Couple of days running round in circles and decided to see if the ESU Lokprogrammer software was any better than sprog.
Well done ESU, they had a preset motor set up for Faulhabers, whilst the auto tune was close the ESU preset set up was spot on, now all nice and smooth. Lokprogrammer front and center, Sprog stored safe as a back up system.
Then it was a case of just running it and running it and running it to bed all the motion and bearings in.
Re assembly began a few days ago, still a lot of bright work to add and polish up but it's getting there; my silver pen had dried out (new one arrives tomorrow, well done amazon for their 24hr service) so then I can silver up the smoke box dart, lugs and some cab handles.
There are caps to go over the Slaters wheel fixing screws which I'll tend to in due course, on top of that there's glazing and internal polished bezels to fit, plus the final polished boiler pipework. I have some miniature slinky hose for the vacuum pipework and the steam pipe and fitting to fit to the tender as well as the remaining tool box; there were a few blemishes on the previous one so reprinted and now letting the paint harden before fitting.
There is however one great big elephant in the room, front steps, they are cranked and have half etched lines to aid bending, well as was to be expected one of them fractured; despite the half etch slot being filled with reinforcing solder it still failed.
You can only really fix it one way, clean it all back and add a backing strap, a butt joint is never going to work, of course doing one then makes the other look odd, so you have to do both sides. The real engines do have some sort of brace or stay down there so it's not totally un-prototypical. It's all repaired now and they'll never get bent or snapped off again (should have done this in the beginning truth be told....hindsight and all that....)
It'll go back to Warren once everything else is done and he'll work his magic with some extra sharp crayons and it'll all look tickity boo.
Coal needs to be added and then couplings, I've used the CPL hooks but the actual couplings I'm going to see if there are any other alternatives available at Doncaster.
Last edited:
Yorkshire Dave
Western Thunderer
CPL have the standard SR 3 shackle coupler in their range - ref CPL 29.
mickoo
Western Thunderer
Is that the adjustable one or just three straight links, I need the adjustable one for the time period of the model.
My only issue with the CPL adjustable ones is that, well they don't. The only way to get them to work (pull anything) at all is to solder the threaded sections solid and even then I've had them pull through, I've no idea what the material is they use but it doesn't solder well. On top of that, some of the castings are for want of a better word....wanting.
I also can't get excited about a lace pin as the Tommy bar, what's all that about
I'll take a look at their latest at Doncaster, maybe I've just got some dud sets here.
Yorkshire Dave
Western Thunderer
It's the standard SR 3 shackle screw coupler. I believe they are cast nickel silver.
This is from their website.
This is from their website.
mickoo
Western Thunderer
Ah, that's the earlier LSWR type, I need the later early SR one, not sure when they changed over and being as the loco is LSWR livery but Southern lettering it's during the cross over period so I suppose either hook and coupling would suffice.
Nickel silver should solder fine, maybe there's some sort of coating on them, I've never got solder to flow well on them at all.
mickoo
Western Thunderer
It's supposed to be LSWR green but early SR lining and lettering, I wouldn't know, I just passed the spec on to the man with the sharp crayons
The paint specification (1926 paint chips were supplied as reference) as well as the build specification was very...how shall we say....precise.
Disclaimer, any faults/issues with the back head are all mine, not Warrens, I do those as a separate build and paint mini kit.
mickoo
Western Thunderer
Interesting, a quick surf through my pictures and MN seems to have the 3 link all it's life, where as the King Arthurs in early days had 3 links then moved over to the two link right up until BR days.
It's a casual observation of a couple of hundred photos, but not exhaustive so there may be discrepancies in both classes.
oldravendale
Western Thunderer
I have photos of Schools, WCs/BBs and Q1s (that's all I've checked so far so there may be others) all with the three link coupling during the mid 60s. However, so far I've no photos in my collection of an S15 with a three link. My N15 photos are rather limited and don't show sufficient detail.
Brian
Brian
Tim Watson
Western Thunderer
mickoo
Western Thunderer
A quick unplanned fill in job, the recent DA A1 tender had been built by a (the kit may have changed hands several times) previous owner, do the best you can to buff it up was the remit. It quickly became obvious that the best thing to do was hurl it as far away as possible.
A huddle at Doncaster with the client in a search for a replacement focused on the Finney7 LNER Streamlined tender, close but no cigar, close enough to convert though.
There are a couple of differences between the Gresley smooth sided streamlined tenders and the Peppercorn ones. The kit gives the option for high or low front coal space bulkheads, we need low front so that's one hurdle out of the way. Peppercorn tenders use steam brakes so a quick change to the brake rigging from vacuum pull to steam push at the cranks solves that. Electric lighting was also added to the rear, some scratch building will resolve that.
Other than that there appears to be no other differences between the batches. The Finney7 kit does not supply the water scoop baffle plates, they're not fitted to all tenders so it's a bit of a game of Cluedo to see if your engine has them; they can just be seen through the 3rd and 4th axles with good low lighting, but more easily seen from the rear. Tenders were swapped around on the A3 and A4 so that's another factor to consider, but on the A1 and A2 they remained constant as far as I know.
Luckily Railonline has a good well lit shot of the rear of 60142 showing the scoop baffles; they have been duly added plus a few strips of angle to replicate the real (visible) strengthening and securing strips.
Other than that the rest of the chassis is monkey see monkey do and I just flipped the brake lever cranks 180° to represent the steam brake arrangement.
Hopefully bat this one out of the park in a couple of days as the BLP etched casing is due from the etchers tomorrow.
A huddle at Doncaster with the client in a search for a replacement focused on the Finney7 LNER Streamlined tender, close but no cigar, close enough to convert though.
There are a couple of differences between the Gresley smooth sided streamlined tenders and the Peppercorn ones. The kit gives the option for high or low front coal space bulkheads, we need low front so that's one hurdle out of the way. Peppercorn tenders use steam brakes so a quick change to the brake rigging from vacuum pull to steam push at the cranks solves that. Electric lighting was also added to the rear, some scratch building will resolve that.
Other than that there appears to be no other differences between the batches. The Finney7 kit does not supply the water scoop baffle plates, they're not fitted to all tenders so it's a bit of a game of Cluedo to see if your engine has them; they can just be seen through the 3rd and 4th axles with good low lighting, but more easily seen from the rear. Tenders were swapped around on the A3 and A4 so that's another factor to consider, but on the A1 and A2 they remained constant as far as I know.
Luckily Railonline has a good well lit shot of the rear of 60142 showing the scoop baffles; they have been duly added plus a few strips of angle to replicate the real (visible) strengthening and securing strips.
Other than that the rest of the chassis is monkey see monkey do and I just flipped the brake lever cranks 180° to represent the steam brake arrangement.
Hopefully bat this one out of the park in a couple of days as the BLP etched casing is due from the etchers tomorrow.
mickoo
Western Thunderer
Finally got around to re-assembling the Finney7 2500G tender for the Duke. I still need to add a few larger lumps of coal here and there and I can see a few places where the glue hasn't quite set yet....drats... I'll check with the client to see if he wants any coal over spill around the filler hatch and tank top.
The last items will be some touching up with matt and satin lacquers to give some tonal grading and touch up a few edges that have been chipped during the rebuild.
Engine next and then some studio shots, running in, setting up DCC and delivery.
The last items will be some touching up with matt and satin lacquers to give some tonal grading and touch up a few edges that have been chipped during the rebuild.
Engine next and then some studio shots, running in, setting up DCC and delivery.
