Tullygrainey

I've always found cab roofs difficult. Should they be removable or not. If you solder them as the instructions for this kit suggest, it can make painting the inside of the cab or adding a crew difficult/impossible. If you paint first, then soldering becomes difficult with the possibility of damaging the paint. The way this particular kit has gone together, soldering from the inside isn't possible anyway so in this case, removable looks like the better option. I have used clips on some locos in the form of springy wires soldered at each corner on the underside of the roof. These slide into the corners of the cab and hold the roof in place. It's effective but tricky to do well and mine are not always entirely secure. I've lost count of the number of times at exhibitions I've noticed daylight showing between cab top and roof. I've also used the following slightly more secure solution on some builds. A strip soldered across the cab at roof level, either front to back or side to side contains a captive nut. A hole in the cab roof allows a bolt (14BA c/s in this case) to screw into this pulling the cab roof down tight. The bolt head is then concealed by a dummy ventilation hatch BluTacked or Tacky Waxed in place. I know these Hunsletts didn't have cab roof hatches - there are ventilation flaps front and back of the cab - but mine had one fitted after the loco was bought from the MSC by the well known (to me anyway) Belfast engineering concern of Sprocket, Layshaft and Moonshine Ltd for use in their private sidings complex. Well, it's my railway Alan

More Hunslett. The boiler came pre-rolled and also had a cutaway to clear the gearbox/motor. It just needed tightened and seamed. Adding the smokebox was the usual struggle to get sufficient heat into the job. The front sandboxes are complicated little items but BluTack and brass rods held everything together for soldering. The rods were then trimmed back. High Level Minispinner gearbox checked for any glitches. Worm gear was fouling the final drive cog causing clicketty running so it got moved up the motor shaft a fraction which cured the problem. Smooth as silk now. Not sure how much welly these little can motors have but we'll soon see. Crankpins fitted to wheels and for once I think I got them all in straight. It's worth spending time on these, countersinking the hole at the back of the wheel and thread-locking the pins. I've had crankpins wind themselves out before now, meaning the wheels had to come off again to fix it. The axle holes in the wheels also get countersunk and the axle ends chamfered before the GW wheel press does the job of fitting and quartering the wheels. What a brilliant device! Rods on and a little reaming of the holes to get rid of tight spots. Rolls freely under finger power. Another bridge crossed! Lots of detail still to add but it's beginning to look like a loco. The tanks are full of lead. The boiler is just trial fitted for now. I'll have to confront pickups soon Alan

I didn't know about the sugar trick but I tried it on the current build. Seems to work well. Certainly gets into corners the old toothbrush can't reach! Sweet talking my way to a clean machine..

Ah that’s a puzzle solved! I was struggling to make sense of the 2 pics together

A busy spot indeed. Looking very fine Patrick. We don’t often get a view of the road side of the station building.

What's the location for the ones above? The road vehicles in that last one also caught my eye - there seems to be a line-up of MGBs and/or Midgets.

I do believe it is. Thanks for sourcing the photos.

Some progress with the Hunslett. I've shunted the chassis into a siding for a bit and done some work on the superstructure to get a better idea of how the gearbox will fit. Or not. Running plate first... This little beastie has a lot of rivets which took a while to press out. The larger ones on the cab were done by hand-feeding the etches into my trusty GW Models rivet press. For the small, tightly spaced ones on the tanks, I used a centre punch, probably my most versatile tool. It also gets used to scribe lines, scribe stonework into DAS clay and, now and again, to centre punch metal for drilling The usual tricky edge to edge soldering to get the cab erected. However, the bits are tabbed into slots in the running plate which is a real help in keeping things square. Beginning to look the part. The kit provides quite a lot of detail for the cab interior. Deciding in what order to add things and getting it all into place was a challenge, with all the usual elements of bad language, burnt fingertips and solder in all the wrong places.... ... but got there in the end. On my tidy, well laid out workbench. A place for everything and everything out of place. Boiler next. Alan

Getting the hornblocks in the right place using the coupling rods as jigs. Half way through the job. Trial fitting the compensation beam And it all sits level. Yay! Ready for a clean-up and some paint

No Patrick. Without the beam, the bearings would just ride up to the top of their travel in the hornguides under the weight of the loco and the loco wouldn't sit level. In the case of this chassis which has the fixed axle at the back, it would sit nose down. When stationary, the beam holds the two floating axles at the same height as the fixed axle but because it can rock around its central pivot, it also allows the wheels to move up and down and maintain good contact with the track on the move, hence compensating for any undulations. As one wheel moves up over a bump its partner at the other end of the beam moves down to stay in contact with the track. On a rigid chassis, one wheel going over a bump will lift other wheels off the track as it does so with detrimental effects on electrical continuity. Hope that makes some sort of sense. It's hard to describe. It's actually based on the principle of the three legged stool which never rocks because all the legs are always in contact with the ground no matter how irregular. In this compensated chassis, the three 'legs' are the 2 bearings of the fixed axle and the fixed pivot of the beam. Here endeth the tutorial! Cheers

More Hunslett 0-6-0T. Compensation beam reamed for a bit of 0.7mm ID brass tube which will fit between the frames and pivot on a length of 0.7mm brass rod. One of the chassis spacers needed a bit cut out of it to clear the compensation beam Tabs and slots on the frames and spacers made the job of erecting the chassis easier. Soldered up on a sheet of glass to help keep it square and reduce the chances of ending up with a warped chassis. Bearings soldered in for the fixed axle. Frames, hornblocks (from High Level), compensation beam and coupling rods. All the ingredients for a compensated chassis. Bad light stopped play. More soon. Alan

And I hope you won! Go for it JB. No pain, no gain

Another Hunslett shunter on the bench, an 0-6-0 side tank from CSP Models this time. Like the Hawthorn Leslie that began this thread, it's a 4mm version of a former Agenoria 7mm kit. Superstructure in brass with some very fine lost wax brass castings, chassis in nickel silver. Everything needed to build the kit is here which saves shopping around - various gauges of wire and rod, handrail knobs, even copper clad strip for pickups. Couldn't ask for more. Wheels from Gibson, gearbox from High Level. The supplied motor looks like ones I've seen on the Tramfabriek website. Gearbox is a Minispinner+, a recent addition to the range and a new one on me. It's a cut down version of High Level's RoadRunner Compact+ which takes up even less space. There are two sets of frames and two sets of coupling rods to choose from, allowing different versions to be built. Just as well because I destroyed one of the rods (broke an end off - does this sound familiar?) while soldering up the laminations so had to use the other set. Managed to get those done without further mishap. The instructions describe a rigid chassis with drive to the middle axle but I'm building it compensated with drive to a fixed rear axle and hornblocks on the other two. The frames have half-etched lines to help get the cutouts in the right place. A compensation beam will be needed so that's been made from two thicknesses of scrap nickel silver etch. With its edge touching the two axles, a pivot point is drilled through it and into the frames. Frames ready for assembly and the compensation beam tidied up. Enough for one day. More soon. Alan

I couldn't possibly comment

Looking good! Magic too. Goes by itself. No crew, no coal

Kilmore had an outing to the Ulster Model Railway Club exhibition at Dundonald High School this weekend. Very enjoyable two days. Many thanks to the UMRC for a well organised show. The new venue seemed to work well. I've posted some photographs in the 'What's On' section. Thanks as always to Kieran Lagan for sharing running duties. Between us we managed to keep trains moving throughout the 2 days without any major dramas. The odd derailment and a few decoupling moments were about the extent of it. We're still getting the hang of the Gaugemaster Infinity controller which didn't help us by refusing to power up first thing on the second day and then wiping the loco roster from its memory when it did. Operator error maybe. However the BlueTooth did mean we could operate the layout from some nearby soft chairs when the oul legs began to give out. IMG_5619.MOV

Many thanks to the UMRC for a really enjoyable show. Great venue, great layouts. Some photos from the two days...

Hunslett just about done, bar a crew and coal load IMG_5559.MOV

Hunslett is just about ready for paint. Tank not quite seated properly in these pics. IMG_5507.MOV Another one from the roster. A Drewry diesel with a High Level chassis kit under a Dapol plastic kit body with extra detailing. Mashima motor, Gibson wheels.

Cheering for you here Darius. Hang in there.

Two more shunters from the roster, these with Irish connections. H&W Harlandic 0-6-0 DM in its final UTA days and a Ruston and Hornsby 0-4-0 DM, a nod to the ex-CSE loco currently with the RPSI at Whitehead. Both built from Judith Edge kits. If you're wondering why the the 3-link couplings on the front of the locos are defying gravity, there's an uncoupling magnet under the track just there

Beautiful runner

A brilliant job, from beginning to end. And speedy too! A credit to you.

The Hunslett gets brakes. What a fiddly job. Half way through. Rigging is 0.45mm brass rod. Easier to cut things over length and trim back after the soldering is done. No short circuits. Yay!! Some lead weight tucked between the frames front and back. There's more lead secreted in the saddle tank too. Since the boiler is largely covered by the tank and won't be seen, there was nothing stopping me from cutting lumps out of the top. So I did. More elbow room for the motor/gearbox which is mounted on a floating axle and needs to move about a little bit. Pickups fitted (31swg phosphor bronze wire) with flying leads... ... and a chip hardwired into place - a Layout Concepts (DCC Concepts as was) ZN8H.2 with the 8 pin plug cut off. It's a fairly tight squeeze but it works ok. The blue, black and white wires are intended for a stay-alive but I doubt there'll be room for one. The smallest I have just fails to fit inside the smokebox or anywhere else for that matter so I may just trim those wires back. More work still to do on the bodywork, including adding all the resin cast bits but it's always encouraging to get the little beast running. It'll also need a good scrub before any paint goes on! Alan