A bit of space became available today while the paint on another project dries. I got started on the tender.
This engine dates from 1865, but was still running in 1910, and was quite basic. Just a horseshoe tank on a wood and iron sandwich frame with quite basic axleboxes and springs hidden inside. The loco has no brakes and those on the tender have wood shoes.
I started by soldering the 15thou plates for the side frames together and then glued a copy of the drawing onto the stock. A pleasant! session with the piercing saw and a classic Hancock episode on CD got them cut out and the holes for the bolts drilled before separating, soldering wire into all the holes and dressing them off. I had made the buffer beam at the same time as the loco one so if was a simple job to assemble the frames.
The axleboxes will be castings made earlier on my home casting machine, see the thread on casting advice. The wheels are mounted on a sub frame incorporating inside bearings with one axle pivoted to give 3 point suspension.
The brakes are mounted onto the 14ba tapped tube soldered under the subframe and are quite basic constructions of strip and tube with the shoes cut from a piece of brown plastic salvaged from a broken school tee square. The shoe was araldited onto the hanger.
That's all for this space, back to painting tomorrow.
Ian.