Tullygrainey

Thanks for this David. Badly needed cheer at this time of closures, apparent declining interest in the hobby and general gloom. Very encouraging. More power to the Chatham Club and best wishes for the July show.

As usual, a chassis that ran smoothly when the rods were held on with temporary bits of wire insulation proceeded to develop tight spots as soon as the crankpin nuts went on. All it takes is a wheel not quite square on the axle or a crankpin not quite straight in the wheel - or both. An afternoon of fettling (and swearing) bred them out, more or less, mainly by gently reaming out the holes in the rods. A squeak also developed which I couldn't track down for ages. It turned out to be coming from the rolling road. One of the rollers had seized! It looked at one point as if the rods would clash with the brake rigging but they clear each other by a smidgen of a fraction of a millimetre. Still need to contrive pickups - probably phosphor bronze wire bearing onto the wheel treads. Tomorrow. All the body detailing is just about done. Almost ready for paint. In the end I didn't order the Brassmasters detailing pack. Elements like coupling rods, brake rigging and chassis detail are already provided in the High Level chassis kit, I don't need coal rails or vacuum pipes for this one and I was able to slim down the plastic steps to an acceptable level with a file. That really only left the chimney and the plastic Hornby one looks ok to my eye.

Beautiful, painstaking work Kevin. The slate work is exceptional. I have to keep reminding myself this is 2mm stuff.

Hobby Holidays has a good selection of brass and nickel silver sheet including the thin stuff recommended by Galteemore. https://www.hobbyholidays.co.uk/products.php?cat=19 A 30W iron will handle most small jobs such as those you'd encounter in a 4mm/ft wagon kit. As you practise on scrap bits, you'll start to get a feel for what the iron is capable of.

That’s a real charmer! Beautifully finished too, brakes notwithstanding

More Jintrification. The extension to the running plate did the trick and the chassis now fits inside the body shell. Gearbox next. I always approach building High Level gearboxes with trepidation but with care, they go together very nicely and work beautifully. This one follows the usual High Level practice of a fold up frame with gear wheels rotating on 2mm steel shafts. Final drive is to a 1/8th inch axle running in brass bearings. Ratio is 80:1 in this case. A little jewel. This particular example is designed specifically for the Jinty chassis and has projecting tabs on the frame sides which fit into slots in one of the chassis spacers. This anchors the gearbox and stops the motor riding up under power. Simple and effective. Beats the rubber bands and bits of duct tape I usually use. The instructions recommend these Gibson wheels and the kit provides etches to model the balance weights. These have been epoxied on. After wheeling up but before trial-fitting the rods I ran the chassis through some pointwork under finger power and it kept de-railing for no obvious reason. Picturesque language was used until it emerged I'd fitted it with EM axles instead of OO ones. It worked better after that was sorted. First test of the chassis under power. Looks promising. IMG_9164.MOV

Agree with all the above but would add a set of broaches/reamers to Galteemore's list of tools if you plan to tackle an etched kit. These usually require holes opened out to accept bearings or wire or whatever. Broaches are the best (only?) way to do this accurately. They're a worthwhile investment. The 0.6-2.0 mm set (yellow packet) is possibly the most useful. Possible suppliers are: Hobby Holidays: https://www.hobbyholidays.co.uk/products.php?cat=75 (though it seems they are out of stock here at the moment - temporarily I would think) Cookson Gold: https://www.cooksongold.com/category_select.jsp?channel=uk&query=broach Best of luck with whatever you decide to start with. Alan

Yes! Oh yes!

It’s all coming to life as the details go in. Great work Patrick

Lovely stuff. The layout is looking terrific too. I love the shot of A55 entering the cutting. Very convincing with a perfect blending into the backscene.

A temporary rest from soldering to offer up chassis to body. Because the High Level chassis is designed for the Bachmann rather than the Hornby model, I expected to have to arrange new chassis mounts. What I hadn't bargained for was the Hornby shell being about 3mm shorter, front to back, than the Bachmann and thus 3mm shorter than the chassis that's meant to go inside it. I didn't really want to carve bits off the chassis so plastic surgery was the better option. Most of the shortfall seemed to be at the front, the running plate being shorter beyond the smokebox door so Hornby Jinty got a nose job. I'm hoping to model No 19 towards the end of its working life around 1962, by which time it was in UTA livery and had shed vacuum gear and coal rails. I've now removed these and added a few extra details. Responding to treatment - the Jinty, not me. Alan

A great project and a great result. Really captures the look of the original. I have a fondness for quirky vehicles and this is definitely one!

That is truly elegant. Lovely finish on those rods. They look really solid.

Wonderful!

Hornblocks now in place, aided by a Poppy Woodtech jig. Normally I put two hornblocks onto an axle with a small coil spring trapped between them and then slide the whole thing into place from below, the coil spring helping to trap the hornblocks against the chassis frames. However the etched-on spring detail below each cutout got in the way again and made that impossible so the whole job was a fiddle, compounded by one horn block ( the last one - it's always the last one!) which refused to sit straight and needed to be given a severe talking to. Anyway, job done, I hope. Next, the brakes, prominent members of the Little Things Sent To Try Us Club. Three bits in each one plus a short bit of brass rod to hold them together. However, High Level chassis kits often have a clever arrangement for building the brake rigging which produces a completely detachable rig and if you follow the very detailed instructions (a full A4 page of text) to the letter, it works a treat. The process uses the chassis as a jig with cross rods pushed (but not soldered) through the frames at the top and through the brakes at the bottom. The brakes are then hung on these and soldered to them. The pull rods are then slid onto the bottom cross rods and used to position the brake pads clear of the wheels. Pull rods are then soldered to the bottom cross rods. Finally the top cross rods are cut just inside the chassis frames on each side and the whole brake rig can be unsprung from the chassis and reattached the same way, making painting/future maintenance easier. Fiddly to do but brilliant! (The bottom cross rods still need trimmed back in this pic). Gearbox next Alan

Terrific work, as always. And a prodigious output this year! Merry Christmas Darius.

Hi Tim, Thank you very much for all your praise and positive comments. Much appreciated. Loughan Quay has been a very satisfying layout to construct and I’m pleased that you see things about it that I tried to achieve. You were closer to the truth than you realised when you said the buildings look as if they’ve developed over time. In modelling terms, some of them did. The Townley works has been renovated and extended four times and the original McCaughan Brothers warehouse was demolished and replaced a while ago. Even Hugh Vernor got a replacement coal office after his original corrugated tin affair rusted away. The Mourne mountains have even been moved, though maybe they're just shrouded in mist. (Not sure how that BR pannier tank got here) Loughan Quay now has a new sliding fiddle yard which improves the operating potential a bit - still something of a lash-up but it works well enough. Mr Weaver hasn’t been down this way for a while. I gather he’s casting a critical eye over developments at Clogherhead these days. I’d say you’ll find him in the front pew in St. Mary's Star of the Sea, Clogherhead come Christmas morning. Thanks again. Merry Christmas and best wishes for the New Year. Alan

Coming together nicely. That's a great solution to the springs problem. Must salt that one away for future reference

Today was all about coupling rods. To ream or not to ream? There's no question. All those holes have to be made bigger to fit crankpin bushes or rivets. Each coupling rod is split near the centre crankpin bush and the joint is articulated. Each length of rod is made up from 3 laminations, such that one ends up with a tongue on one end and the other one is forked. To help keep the laminations in line whilst they're sweated together, I use a lightly vaselined crankpin bush through the holes at one end and a cocktail stick through the other end where I apply the soldering iron and work towards the middle. Then I change them over and repeat. To finish, I clamp the rod lengthwise in the vice and run more solder along the top edge. This gets filed back to give a nice solid looking edge. Sometimes. The tongue slots into the fork and the joint is made with a small, nay tiny, rivet which needs to be soldered in place at the back without seizing it all up. Very fiddly and all a bit fraught. Was glad when it was done because it meant I could start breathing again. High Level Hornblocks. Nice design which folds up and doesn't need any soldering but in my experience they need a fair bit of fettling to make them slide smoothly. The sides of the bearings need polished back a bit in order to fit between the cheeks of the hornblocks. Fine emery does the job and I have used Brasso in the past to give them a final shine, always remembering to wash it off afterwards. Next job is to solder the hornblocks into the chassis, using the rods to help position them. Expect tears. Alan

Have a great Christmas everyone. Hope the bearded bloke delivers the goods. Cheers, Alan

Beehave!

Cheers Mike. It's more about replacing things like clunky plastic coal rails and cab steps with finer etched parts but you're right. Over time, they did shed their vacuum gear among other things.

The accessory output on your Gaugemaster Combi is perfect for driving solenoid points motors.

The traditional bog standard point motor was/is the Peco PL10 which slots into the bottom of the point with a rod fitting into the hole in the tie bar. it has 2 coils which when given a quick burst of power, move the rod and throw the point. It needs an AC power supply of around 16 volts. Many analogue controllers have an 'accessories' outlet which will do that job. Each points motor needs 3 wires, one feed to each coil (the red and black wires in the pic above) and one common return (the green). The common return can usually be a single wire which daisy chains round the layout from one motor to the next. In the diagram above, each 2-way centre off switch can also be replaced with 2 momentary push buttons - the idea is that the coils just need a brief squirt of power to activate them. Continuous power would burn them out. I find a quick jab on a simple push switch works the best and is fairly intuitive. Thought the blurb above says you need a capacitor discharge unit, you could probably manage without one unless you're trying to throw more than one point at the same time. Advantages: Relatively cheap and cheerful. Peco can supply wire harnesses which slip onto the terminals thus avoiding the need to solder the wires on. Disadvantages: Each motor needs wired back to the control panel where you've sited your operating switches. However, your layout is small so that shouldn't be a big problem. The action is sudden, rapid and noisy, not slow and progressive like when using servos or similar. If using electrofrog points, a switch needs to be added to change the frog polarity as the point change over. (You're using insulfrog points so not a problem) Good luck with your build! Alan

Yay!! Perfect pebbledash