The Heybridge Railway, 1889 to 1913

[Richard Gawler]

The (fictional) Heybridge Railway had some kind of a passenger service, and for a while this was a public service. This was a pretty minimal provision - probably one brake third vehicle on a four-wheeled underframe. The service began at or soon after the inception of the line and the station was named 'Heybridge'. By 1907, most users had given up because it was easier to take the Witham train to Maldon East and walk the mile to Heybridge instead of walking from Langford (GER) to Langford Junction (HLLR). The GER breathed a sigh of relief and renamed Maldon East as 'Maldon and Heybridge’. The HLLR continued to provide an internal passenger service on a 'runs when required' basis; this was found useful for barge operators and employees of the canal company.


This is the kit for an 0 Gauge Station Shelter by Laser Cut Model Railways. I built this earlier this year, before I did my first metal wagon kit. The building went together really easily. It is a mixture of 2 mm MDF and 1 mm card.


I added a strip of obechi across the front to hold it straight and make sure I don't push my thumb through the front of the model.


I get better colour with my new camera. I brush painted the model with Tamiya acrylics (not the Vallejo in the second photo). I tried to give it a fairly dowdy look.


The primer was Rustins MDF Sealer followed by Halfords grey primer. I stopped painting the top coats on the rear wall before I got complete coverage to try to help the weatheirng when I come to it. The roof is sandpaper with pencil lines to represent the joins. I tried adding separate strips of sandpaper but they looked like a school project.

This was a particularly pleasant kit to build. I think it would work well in many settings, just change the colour palette to suit. I will add guttering and a down pipe if they are going to be visible on the layout, I can be quite lazy with this sort of thing.

 

[Richard Gawler]

A friend suggested Nellie would benefit from some better buffers, and then a member of WT wrote to me with the same idea. We all seem to feel, the cast ones provided in the kit are perfectly adequate and keep the kit affordable, but better ones can be had. I have therefore indulged myself in some sprung GER style buffers from Walsall Model Engineering, and fitted these to the loco.


Taking the cast buffers off was almost too easy. Opening up the holes for the new buffers was harder and I ended up with the rear buffer beam delaminating itself. Still it was good to be able to clean it up.


The new buffers arrived with a somewhat conical shape. I understand, this is because a rounded-off convex buffer shape is difficult to make if you don't have a suitable CNC machine. So I removed the heads, covered them in black ink as a witness mark (Sharpie pen) and worked a small flat file over them.


Health and Safety people should now look DOWN to the next photo below. I put each head in the mini drill (20,000 rpm), ran the buffing wheel at half speed (5,000 rpm) and dressed the heads of the buffers. Then I treated them with Perma Blue.


I have also treated myself to a micro flame torch. I tinned the backs of the buffer stems bases using the iron I used for the rest of the build, and then sweated them into place with the torch. This photo rather shows how my soldering has changed since I started . . .


This is the result. Nellie is a freelance model but somehow she now has a bit of a "scale" aura about her.

I am hoping to take her to the West Essex club at Chadwell Heath tomorrow

 

[Richard Gawler]

stems bases stocks

I hope to be not too far behind you in the soldering learning programme but from your progress it already looks like I'll be near the back of the class.

The best tip I was given from a club member (as opposed to reading on a forum) is to cut the solder wire into little pieces e.g. Stanley kinfe. Then you always pick up a measured quantity on the bit. I worked out quite soon how far solder will go and I cut bits 1, 2 and 3 mm long to pick these up with the iron.

Solder goes a lot further using the micro torch because you don't end up wiping the bit along the margins of the joint and tinning them unecessarily as you go along. I did some test pieces after the buffers.


About 2 mm of solder wire placed on the other side. Flame on the other side and solder pulled into the joint by the flux. The grid squares are 10 mm.


Nickel silver wire on brass. About 1 mm of solder wire here, again it is flashing across and taken on its way by the flux.


This is probably showing off but I nearly got away with it. I tinned the brass using the iron with the same 145 solder, then brought the flame in gently and slowly, heating the brass before placing the casting. Minor damage to the casting in the foreground. I think more practice would make this doable.

 

[Richard Gawler]

I took Nellie along to the open day at the Ilford and West Essex club earlier today.

The received opinion was, the motor starts particularly easily, and the model is quiet. I pointed out that another loco on the layout was pretty well silent in operation, and it was explained that it had a £120 motor/gearbox. While Nellie has a nicely-machined if simple worm/worm gear and a Chinese 1833 lookalike. I couldn't really hear Nellie in the club room with its background chatter.

I have now put some soft wadding over her motor and some molybdenum grease on her gears, but even if I think she is slightly quieter the sound level meter is reading about the same. I think, she is audibly "ok" to me.

This layout is 'Taw Magna' which is about 24 x 3 feet plus a 10 foot fiddle yard and it has some delightful pointwork. Nellie simply worked, no derailments and no stalls.


I have a feeling she never ran through the loading gauge but I think she would have fitted.


Inspiration or what?


I didn't notice the juxtaposition of the figure until I got home.


I'm not sure whether crane tanks actually did this so use your own caption or imagination for this one.

A wonderful day out and thank you so much to the members of the club who made us feel so welcome, made us hot drinks and ran my engine on their layout

 

[Richard Gawler]

Thanks Mike (and others). In this age of personal car number plates and facial tattoos we cannot be too careful.

I am having a go at a second tank wagon. This one is also from the Slater's kit (see my first wagon), but with the chassis shortened to make a 7 ft 6 in wheelbase. I am making this up as I go along, the idea is to make a wagon to carry tar and able to run within the 6-ton axle weight imposed under my Railway's light railway licence granted under the Regulation of the Railways Act (1868).


Standing on the mirror tile I use to check for wheel alignment.


The modifications to the solebar are a bit too visible here. I am trying out a solid link between the coupling hooks. This is 0.7 mm nickel silver wire. The coupling hooks are GER-pattern ones supplied by Jim Mcgeown, their fret is marked 'two doors down'.


I like this. I think I could end up with quite a characterful model, and character is important on a might-have-been project.

I need to make some kind of tank for this. I have thought about circular and semi-circular designs, but a rectangular box is probably easiest. If I make a plain box without any rivet detail then I can have an insulated tank.

 

[Richard Gawler]

I have finished off my GWR 4-plank wagon - paint and transfers and couplings.


This is how I left the model on 15th June - Halfords red primer (link).

I cut off the door springs, these seem to have been a later fitment.


I have now acquired 18 wagons and I still don't understand why coupling hooks should be sprung. Furthermore, if I take my wagons to the club track they could end up near the front of a forty-wagon train. So for this wagon, like my last, I have tied the coupling hooks together, and the wire link takes the weight of the train behind. I do hope someone will tell me the error of my ways if this is wrong.

I did all of the painting (after the primer) by brush. The underframe is Tamiya 'dark iron' with a little brown mixed in.


I bought some Vallejo acrylics for the bodywork. I tried the recipe suggested by Mikkel Kjartan, this is:

• 3 parts 70908 Carmine Red;
• 2 parts 70829 Amaranth Red;
• 1 part 70918 Ivory.

The result seemed a bit too orange to me, so I increased the quantity of Carmine Red from 3 parts to 4. So 4:2:1 overall. The measuring is done by squeezing blobs of paint out of the bottles so this is a bit approximate and maybe I really did something nearer to 3:2:1.

I gave the model two very thin coats, the paint brushed on neat as thinly as I could (no thinning). The result after the second coat was still a little blotchy but I thought this took me part of the way towards a weathered look so I stayed with it.


The transfers came with the Slaters kit. They include the right designs but the wrong numbers. I really wanted the tare weight to be 4 tons but the smallest value on the sheet is 7 tons and I didn't fancy my chances of cutting out a '4' and getting into place. I am hoping, a casual viewer will notice the style of the lettering and not the values . . . although I haven't found many casual viewers on WT

The Heybridge railway is supposed to be a light railway with initially an six-ton axle limit. So I dropped the capacity of the wagon from 10 tons (which was included on the sheet of transfers) to 8, which with a tare of 4 tons would just about squeeze in.

These transfers went on with lukewarm water and sometimes Micro Set, but not Micro Sol.

The whole model has two light coats of Humbrol enamel spray matt varnish. These went on about ten minutes apart. The white witness marks in the photos are evidence of how the white printing on a box of Felix cat food sticks to tacky Humbrol varnish better than to its underlying cardboard box.

 

[Richard Gawler]

I am supposed to be painting my GWR Hydra. In fact I am, but the progress is so slow (and I ought to get the transfers before posting the finished result here) I have started another wagon kit.

I often read positive things about Three Aitch Mouldings and the built kits seem to sell well too. So I consider myself privileged to have picked up an unbuilt MR 8 ton box van. This came from Elaine Harvey, and still sealed in its original plastic bag. My railway is set before the pooling which began in 1916, so I will probably use this as a token covered van belonging my railway rather than as a foreigner from the Midland. The size and the external framing should look the part for the 1890s.


I have had a go at the doors, to put wire handrails in place of the moulded plastic ones. The wire is nickel silver, I am hoping the usual Halfords grey primer will stick to this better than it does to brass.


The instructions for the kit mention moulded plastic wheels though these weren't included in the bag. I think these had shorter axles than Slaters wheels.

So, to make room for Slaters axles I have drilled out the axle boxes all the way through, and put shims of 0.5 mm styrene to set the solebars far enough apart. I can add new fronts onto the axle boxes later.

The flat file was to hand and seems to be a convenient reference surface to get the first bit of assembly straight.

I like this kit. It seems to be made out of a slightly soft styrene which accepts solvents well. Also the moulded surfaces seem to have some texture from the moulding process; perhaps this will help the finished model to look more natural.

 

[Richard Gawler]

As one of the non-casual viewers I will have to point out that all the GWR 4-plank wagons of this type were rated to carry 10 tons. In practice they rarely did carry anything like the maximum load especially in merchandise traffic. The tare weights were typically in the 5-0-0 to 5-6-0 range. By the time the company got around to fitting them with oil 'boxes (c1900), the G . W . R lettering was on the right hand side – and rather more spaced out than in your example. The door banger plate is surplus to requirements on the non-brake side, and the brake shoes should be 'handed' (ie without the bottom lug). Other than that it's a lovely model!

Sorry!

Returning briefly to my GWR 4-plank wagon, I have had a go at the axle boxes and the brake shoes.


I have filed down the moulded axle boxes as far as the faces of the brass bearings and squared up the sides of the remaining mouldings to make them into a rectangular shape. The new fronts are 1 mm thick styrene with the lids made from 1 x 1 mm styrene rod glued on and then filed to shape.


The brake shoes are now 'handed' too.

The left-hand G W R (which I wanted in the first place to emphasise the period of my layout) is now on a more appropriate-looking wagon. The 8-ton capacity remains "correct for my project" (see my post no.291) and if this particular variant hasn't been recorded in the history books then I can only imagine I must have modelled an undiagrammed wagon!

I want to call this wagon finished now except for its loads and weathering.

 

[Richard Gawler]

First annual report!

When I finished my Slater’s rectangular tank wagon in September last year, I promised myself I would build a wagon every month for a year or give up on 7mm scale; and the ex-MR van is my twelfth. I fitted a crane tank and a platform shelter into this year too. Fundamentally, I am pleased with all of the models I have made. The weakest is probably the Jubilee wagon (3.5 mm too long and no pin points on the axles) but I have bought a fresh kit to try this idea again.

I am building a might-have-been railway and to my mind it should have might-have-been trains, or at least slightly vague representations of them. I mean, the railway would seem a bit odd if it had specific prototypes working on it, day in and day out, when we know these prototypes really worked somewhere else.

The mix of wagons I have assembled is actually pretty fair to represent my imaginary railway; the only real shortfall is some GER stock for through workings from the Witham to Maldon branch. There are kits out there for some of these but of quite an advanced nature, so these wagons can come along in their own time when I feel I am ready to tackle them.

Before then I have a couple of larger models in mind: a brake third coach and a GER Y14. Both from Jim Mcgeown. I am gathering up specifications and photos of candidate Y14s to start the loco after the clocks change, and can use the coach before then to get some experience with the micro flame torch.

The Y14 will be a fairly involved build for me, so I expect I will drop out of it from time to time and this will be a good opportunity to work up the cattle wagons. I need to have a think about trackwork too. After I have built my first B6 I expect I will get a reality check on how much model railway layout I can actually have. I have made a start by reworking a Marcway 6ft point into something near to 0-MF, this might find a place mostly buried in ash on the layout.

My model making got a bit intense during the summer time and I want to slow down the tempo a bit. So posts here may get a bit less frequent. But please, everyone, thank you for all of your support and advice and ideas during my first few months on WT.

 

[Richard Gawler]

A pen friend has sent me some unwanted track including a brand-new turnout kit. Now, I envisage my layout will have code 100 FB rail laid directly onto 9 ft sleepers but I can use their track in a fiddle yard or for a diorama or other test piece.


Things haven’t got off to a terribly good start. The ready-made common crossing was clearly asymmetrical, the feeler gauges say 1.75 to 1.80 mm on one side and 1.65 to 1.70 mm the other. So I have taken this to bits to rebuild it with 1.5 mm flangeways. At the moment I am trying to fathom out how to put the vee back onto the wing rail assembly.

The vee had a sharp nose and I have filed this down to about 0.4 mm wide.

The stock rails supplied are too short to build the kit on a curved formation so I stripped down a piece of the gifted track to get some longer ones. The check rails are too short as well but I can make new ones. I haven't dared look at the switch rails yet.

On the bright side, pre-grouping turnout timbers are consistently longer than modern ones, so shorter ones supplied in the kit all fitted onto the template. I needed only one extra timber (from Peco) to provide the very longest one.


For the avoidance of any doubt, I do not know how to use track plotting software beyond AnyRail. I know how to install a Windows program and run it, change the track settings to “0-MF” and “pre-grouping timbers”, and make a printout. The curved left-hand arrangement supplied as a default template looked pleasing so I am building my kit on this.

I have borrowed an entire shelf from my spur shelving installation to provide the board for assembly. The offcut of aluminium angle in the photo measures just about a perfect 1.5 mm thick, should be useful.

At the end of day one (three short modelling sessions) I have all of the timbers and the first stock rail in place. If this was copperclad I would have finished it by now! However, I must learn new techniques and the sight of the rail sitting in its individual little chairs is certainly quite pleasing.

I am taking Nellie to West Bergholt this afternoon if anyone reading this would like to see her.

 

[Richard Gawler]

I have had a go at finishing off my GWR Hydra. It still needs transfers but it does have paint and couplings. This has taken me four months since I did the primer.

My last post on the model is here: The Heybridge Railway, 1889 to 1913


I brush painted the timber decking with a Mig acrylic and this covered in two coats.


I brush painted the frames in Railmatch enamel ("GWR Stock Brown") and three coats weren't enough.

I thought brush painting would be easy and indeed quicker than masking up for spraying but to be honest it took over a week. Three coats on each of the four sides with each coat left overnight to dry. I am not good enough at painting to say what has gone wrong, but I am sure the enamels I bought twenty years ago brushed on more easily and covered better. Especially dark browns.


I did the tread plates with acrylics to try to represent worn steel. They look better on the model that they do here.


I was never happy with the short lengths of tube on the couplings and I re-did them with a wire link. I couldn't get my fingers into the spaces to fit the springs and split pins, and soldering on the hooks from the outside would have needed a re-paint.


The coupling hooks are loose in the headstocks and the wire is as taut as I can make it. I guess it will eventually stretch and I wll have to re-work things but I have been able to do a test run and the wagon runs fine through my Setrack point, both legs in both directions.


The bottom line here is, I am pleased with my model but not my painting . . . and I suspect everything would look a whole lot better with a suitable load.

 

[Richard Gawler]

GER Y14 Project for Winter 2022-2023

Back in the summer I bought myself a Connoisseur Models kit for a LNER J15; and building this up as a GER Y14 is going to be my project for the winter.

My imaginary Heybridge Railway is a short branch off the former Witham to Maldon branch and some members of the class worked the line in BR days. Going back to the 1890s, I don’t have any photographic evidence but I would like to think the Great Eastern Railway operated the locomotives on the line back then. The Y14 had a very good route availability (RA 1) so it could work across the timber viaducts near Wickham Bishops.

I doubt I will ever have room for a home layout large enough to let an 0 gauge locomotive run at any speed or over much distance but I do have access to the club test track, two and possibly three garden railways, and the layouts at another club. These are all sociable places and, well, I want to have a mid-size loco of my own to take along to haul my wagons and my friend’s trains. These friends and others have variously opted for two-rail, three-rail, stud contact, analogue and digital command control (!) . . . .and so a dead-track loco using battery power and radio control seems like a good idea for me. I can take along my loco and its own controller and it should be able to run on any 0-F or 0-MF trackwork. "Only clockwork could be easier".

(As an aside, this also means for my Heybridge Railway there is a separate controller for through workings by the GER).


I have cleared my bench and this photo is my version of an unboxing video for WT.

This lot ought to keep me out of mischief for a while?

 

[Richard Gawler]

The tender has been designed to build up into two subassemblies, a body and a chassis. I have decided to build mine as three – body, floor with sideframes and buffing gear, and chassis. This will let me dismantle the model afterwards to reach the r/c equipment inside.


The r/c equipment will pretty much fill the inside of the tender.


I have decided to keep the coal space so the loco can run with a small load of coal in the tender. To do this I raised the location of coal floor to make space for the two circuit boards and their wiring. The floor is at the scale position at the front (but see my next post!), then slopes upwards to leave just enough space to cover it with some coal. So the top of the tender can stay clear for toolboxes and the fireman's tools.


The charging socket and the toggle switch will tuck down between the two circuit boards. The controller is wider than the receiver, so the two holes are off-centre.


I cut some holes to let the radio waves reach the receiver, and then fixed on the wrapper for the sides.

I made a sort of a collar to raise the charging socket, the idea is to let the coal sit around the socket but not inside it.

At this point I made a mistake - the top of the tender ought to be a millimetre or so below the tops of the sides and not flush with them. This has come about because I am building the body upside-down without its floor and without two internal bulkheads. All of these would have set the top at its proper height.


I made a new “floor” to make a compartment for the battery pack. The floor adds some of the rigidity lost by omitting the two bulkheads.

The floor is sloping to make it possible to slide the battery pack in and out. The clearance is a bit tight, so I suspect setting the top too high has been fortuitous.

The nut is to hold a screw passing up through the chassis and the floor to hold the tender together. I suspect the nut should be on the inside here (stronger when the screw tightens) but I wanted to leave the battery compartment clear of inivisible obstructions which might chafe into the battery pack.


The r/c system has a claimed range of 800 metres but this will be degraded by having the receiver inside the brass tender. I put the receiver inside the battery space to give it some electrical screening and took the system outdoors to do a range test. The motor has a strip of wood attached so I could see operation from a distance.

Using binoculars I could take the transmitter about 60 metres from the system and still confirm operation. There was no evidence of hesitation and the practical range may well be a great deal more, but 60 metres is far more than I will want for operation even on a garden railway so this looks promising.

 

[Richard Gawler]

I have been working my way through the detailed essays on these locos written by Lyn D Brooks and published in the GER Society Journal in 1983, and I have come up with two lists of the subjects I need to tackle

References

Brooks, Lyn D, T. W. Wordsell's Class Y14 0-6-0 (LNER Class J-15), GERS Journal February 1983
Brooks, Lyn D, J. Holden's Class S23 2640 Gallon Locomotive Tender: Part One, GERS Journal October 1983
Brooks, Lyn D, J. Holden's Class S23 2640 Gallon Locomotive Tender: Part Two, GERS Journal October 1983
Gardner, J, GERS drawing no. L46 and supporting notes, S23 Standard Small Tender, GERS

Model of class Y14 locomotive

• An example from one of batches R23, T23, Y23, U25 and Y25 (built 1889 to 1890)
• An example from one of batches L28, N28, P28; or S28, X28 (built 1891 to 1892)
• The locomotive is in its original condition (this seems fair for a 1890s setting), and so it is mostly unchanged from the original Wordsell batch of 1883, and has not, for example, been reboilered
• This is a freight locomotive

The details I especially need to watch for are these. The letters in brackets ( ) are references used by Brooks

1. Three-ring boiler with dome in the middle and feed clack immediately below (A) : modify kit boiler
2. Flat grate (C) : cut new parts from brass
3. Shallow cut-away frames (C) : modify kit frames

1. Two- or three-ring boiler (A) or (B) : modify kit boiler as needed
2. Sloping grate (D)
3. Deep frames with oval cut-out (D)
4. Low-sided cab with deep cut-outs (E) (high side design from 1899) : kit option
5. No locomotive brake or train brake, hand brake on tender only : modify kit frames
6. No steam heating (of course) : omit kit parts
7. Lamp irons of the spike type pattern introduced by James Holden (M) (fitted 1886 onwards)
8. Spherical brass blower valve, mounted on end of hand rail on side of smokebox (N) : check period photos
9. Hollow handrail and control wheel at end of handrail, inside cab (N) : check period photos for thicker handrail
10. Dished smokebox door (T) (heavier pattern on all locos after 1930) : seek help
11. Built-up style smokebox with plain front (X) (flanged type from 1899) : seek help
12. Parallel-cased buffers (c) : use Markits buffers (shallow bases)
13. One Roscoe lubricator, usually but not always on right-hand side of smokebox (g) : check period photos
14. Plain side rods (fluted from 1913) : use kit parts inside-out
15. Chimney of GER pattern : kit option
16. Shallow cab roof profile: kit option
17. Ramsbottom safety valve : kit option
18. Whistle on base of safety valve (part of the Ramsbottom design) : obtain or make brass whistle
19. Black livery with lining, small G E R lettering on tender : check period photos
20. The boiler band located at the front of the firebox goes around the boiler and not down the sides of the firebox : fill etched guide mark in kit boiler

Bonus feature 1: a Macallan blast-pipe, actuated by a crank on the left-hand side of the smoke box and a lever linking this back to the cab, was retro-fitted to these locomotives during the 1890s, so is a possible option (R) : omit for simplicity

Bonus feature 2: a short chimney, fitted to some locos for working on lines with a restricted loading gauge : check period photos

Model of S23 tender

1. Asymmetric wheelbase, 5ft 6in + 6ft 6in : provided by design of kit
2. Side frames with D-shaped slots : cut new parts from brass or nickel silver
3. Narrow buffer beam (7ft 8in wide) : provided by design of kit
4. Hand brake : provided by design of kit, but consider a brass replacement component
5. Front footsteps mounted on the frames not a separate backing plate : provided by design of kit
6. One or two toolboxes(*), placed directly on top of tank without wooden packing : provided by design of kit
7. Holes in rear buffer beam left from removal of safety chains : drill buffer beam to suit
8. No coal guards (1926 onwards): omit kit parts
9. No water scoop (1897 onwards) : omit kit parts
10. No rack for headcode discs (fitted from c.1904 onwards)
11. No water gauge (fitted from c.1904 onwards)
12. No partition for fire irons (fitted from 1906 onwards) : omit kit partition

(*) The John Gardner drawing of the tender (GERS drawing number L46) states, "toolbox both sides until c.1923 usually one only LNER" but Brooks suggests there could be one or two in GER times, and with no standardisation of which side or the orientation.

It's nice to see, many of these details are things the model won't have. My model will be simpler than one representing a loco in the 1960s.

Revisions

9 Oct 2022 : added cross-references to the lettered items in the source documents
9 Oct 2022 : added synopses of methods to incorporate these details into my model
7 Nov 2020 : decision made to model a locomotive with a sloping grate boiler, to provide option for 2- or 3-ring boiler
7 Nov 2020 : added item 20, the need to locate the boiler band in front of the firebox correctly

I will edit these lists as and when fresh details or corrections come to light.

I have settled on the design of the frames to build. This is thanks largely to the work of Lyn D Brooks in their article T. W. Wordsell's Class Y14 0-6-0 (LNER Class J-15), published in the Great Eastern Journal, October 1983.

Fundamentally, the GER introduced a sloping grate boiler for new Y14 locomotives in 1891 and built 30 locomotives. Later the same year they changed the design of the boiler and built another 20 locomotives. The Connoisseur kit gives me the frames for all of these locomotives, and the boiler for the last 20.

I can represent the earlier boiler by relocating the steam dome and clack valves to suit, but I am of course finding far more photographs of locos with the later boiler. The table attached is from the article by Brooks. I have used green lines to highlight features I want in my model and red lines to highlight features I want to avoid. I expect batches S28 and X28 are the ones I will try to represent.

I started to build the chassis yesterday and will post progress when I have something to show

 

[Richard Gawler]

Trial runs on my test track



The Y14 chassis has a temporary body, the dowels go inside weights from the kitchen scales.

So far the chassis has pulled its tender (which weighs 400g, about as much as 4 wagons) plus 16 small wagons The wagons included my Lomac-L carrying 250 grams of weights, so about 18 "effective wagons". This was with the chassis carrying 8 + 4 oz kitchen weights.

I guess I am discovering a downside of radio control: the payload of the power tender reduces the possible maximum weight of a train. Batteries in the loco instead of the tender would provide ballast for traction, and this would be sensible for a larger tender loco.

 

[Richard Gawler]

Well I am pleased with my styrene shims even if no-one else approves, and they will do me fine until the metal washers arrive.

I had intended to leave starting the body until the New Year but somehow succumbed to temptation a few days ago. This has not been without incident . . .


I am using the micro flame torch for most of the soldering, so I am using a lot less solder and not spreading it around to width of the bit so much. Although I did use the iron for the corners of the buffer beam.


The kit expects you to solder a pair of 6BA nuts onto the top of the footplate and these will accept a pair of machine screws to hold the body onto the chassis. Thanks to a member of WT I have been warned of the problems this can bring about if a nut should ever come adrift after the superstructure is built, so I soldered the screws onto the footplate instead. The nuts will go on from underneath.

I chose 188 degree solder to make a stronger joint, fair enough I suppose but I let the flame linger rather too long, annealed this patch of brass in the process and it promptly sprang upwards into a gentle curve. I have used my fingers to manipulate it back to be "fairly flat" but it is only going to be really flat when the nut is clamping the screw onto the chassis spacer. Something to watch when I try to add the cab sides and the cab floor.


There is hardly any free space for the motor and I filed away a couple of corners of the footplate to clear the motor can. So really, a floating gearbox does need to be designed into the build before starting assembly. I truly thought I had removed all of the cusps and there is one staring me in the face in this photo.


So this is what I have so far.

The shadow between the footplate and the frame spacer behind the motor exists because this spacer sits lower than the spacer behind it. The distortion of the footplate is not as bad as it looks.

 

[simond]

The trick, once the sound enabled card has justified the six quid, is to extract the useful bits and work out how to reprogram it to do something useful, such as an AWS bell or horn, or clicketty-click drifting into the distance as the train goes into the fiddle yard…

or an annoyed bellowing bull when the cattle truck is roughly shunted.

etc

 

[Richard Gawler]

I think, “this is it”. There is nothing for me to add to the loco until I fix the loose parts after painting and have a go at the cab interior.



The glossy paper background shows the vertical offset of the centre axle rather well - about 1/4 mm. I cannot see this when the model is on the track.

The parts to be fixed after painting are the buffer heads, clack valves and pipes, long handrails, whistle and (kindly cut for me by @simond ) the cab glazing. For the cab interior, I might wait and see what the model looks like painted before I decide how much to re-work the castings from the kit.

 

[Richard Gawler]

Axleboxes and springs.


I visited Ragstone Models at Kettering and bought a set of of their springs and axleboxes for the tender. One of the springs was missing its middle spigot so I made one on the lathe.


The springs need to go on after the lining. I can't fix the axleboxes yet either because these need to be attached to the springs before going on. So this photo simply shows how the new parts will fit. I will probably end up omitting the two upper front steps, there just isn't enough room for them.

 

[Richard Gawler]

This is my Y14 with its S23 tender ready for painting

The clack valves and buffer heads are resting loose in position and I have removed the motor and all of the electrics. The tender springs and axleboxes will go on after lining. This loco has been my project for the winter of 2022/23, and I am so glad I have had a go at this kit.