Tullygrainey

Sound advice here from @BosKonay and @Georgeconna. It's likely that the pickups make their contact with the backs of the wheel rims so make sure to clean these as well as the wheel treads.

Thanks Patrick. Something to look forward to.

Looking forward to watching the transformation of Fintonagh into Swillybegs. Perfect new name!

A boiler for No.6 The Belpaire firebox needed two goes. By the time I'd finished hacking away at Version 1, it was too battle scarred to be useable. With lessons learned, the second one went together a bit better. The top and sides were bent up from 10 thou brass. Straps are from a Mainly Trains etch (Wizard Models MT570, etched brass strips). The front is a separate piece, soldered on and filed back flush round the edges. It needed cutting away to clear the motor. 1.5mm square brass rod soldered inside the joins makes it possible to radius the edges using a file without breaking through into open space. The boiler was rolled in 10 thou brass with boiler bands added from the same Mainly Trains etch. Firebox and boiler soldered together. The firebox has a peg at the back which locates into a hole in the cab front. The modelling of the washout plugs is pretty rudimentary but... 2 foot rule and all that. Splashers needed inside the cab. I might chicken out and make em from plasticard. Alan

Cab Control The cab for No.6 is quite complicated - certainly trickier to do than the BCDR tank locos. Time for the piercing saw and the needle files. The cab flatpack, this time in 15 thou nickel silver rather than brass. I find it easier to solder. Roof is 10 thou brass. Grab handles are 0.45mm brass rod. Cab beading is n/s strip cut wider than needed then filed back after soldering into place. Lots of burnt fingers doing this. Splashers for the rear driving wheels are part of the cab front. These needed a few goes and half the evening to get them right. Like the cab beading, made over-wide and filed back. More charred fingertips. What an ugly duckling! It'll look better once it gets a boiler. I hope that motor fits inside. Alan

Great pic. That loco had real presence. *has

Thanks for this John. Useful too to see the photos. What did you use to spring the moving axles?

Tricky is right David. It's a balancing act. Literally. When trying to get the aborted Sharman-type free bogie chassis to work, I tightened up the draw bar connections, in theory to get the most out of the weight transfer, but found that sometimes the tender was lifting the loco instead and causing wheelspin - probably down to a height mismatch between loco and tender connections. The de-railing is a separate problem which is more to do with the design and mounting of the bogie. A problem for another time! A wet weekend maybe

A bit more accuracy and attention to detail might've helped too The idea is sound but maybe the solution was a bit too complicated. Locating the front two axles in slots, allowing them to move up and down, might work just as well.

Tried a little tenderness. I had a go at making a tender chassis for No6 with a fixed axle at the rear and the other two mounted in a free-floating compensated bogie, the intention being to make the tender weight bear on the drawbar to help the loco’s traction and balance. Far too Fancy Dan. Couldn’t make it work. With too many moving parts all moving in different directions, it just kept derailing. Gave it up but I’ll come back to the idea. Not immediately. In any case, the loco chassis seems to track ok without help and probably doesn’t need the tender touch so I’ve built a much simpler one with all the axles running in fixed bearings. It will happily trundle along behind the loco minding its own business and keeping out of the way. My Movie.MOV I love me tender. Alan

Splashers! Half way through making these, the word became a term of abuse but after few false starts, I got them done and attached to the running plate. Much solder to fill the gaps in the joins. There's probably an easier way to do this. It will undoubtedly occur to me tomorrow. Sides are 15 thou nickel silver with 10 thou n/s strips for the tops. Since my last post, Tony Ragg kindly provided me with some very useful drawings and measurements for No6. These will help enormously. However, the first thing that became apparent was that my running plate was about 3mm too long. That's what you get for estimating dimensions from photographs. Nothing for it but to saw 3mm off the front, then reattach the buffer beam. The chassis frames needed shortening too. Took a while and of course the bits making up the running plate started coming apart in the process. Ah, the joys of scratch building. Still, I got there in the end. Forwards, backwards and forwards again. Alan

Some delicate surgery there. Great work.

On what grounds did they make that assumption?

Thank you David. I got a lot of satisfaction out of building it and it's quite enjoyable to operate too. At the risk of putting a jinx on it, it's turned out to be fairly robust as well, having survived 4 outings this year without the need for any serious surgery. 'The Stone Yard' was just a fall-back title. It should probably be called Costa Sheds, given the quantities of re-purposed timber it contains

There's a claus in my contract that says no puns

The Stone Yard had an outing to 1st Bangor MRC's exhibition on 30 November. Lovely show with a great atmosphere. Grand day out. Thank you to 1st Bangor Club for the chance to be part of it. Thanks also to Kieran Lagan for helping keep it all on the rails. The Stone Yard.MOV Alan

Thanks David. You won’t regret buying the Vallorbes. I’ve been gradually collecting them for a while now and wouldn’t be without them.

A running plate for No.6. More often than not, I would make a running plate from a plain rectangle of brass or nickel silver with a hole cut in the middle to clear the motor and gearbox. No. 6 is a bit trickier than that. Its running plate has profiled sections to clear the crankpins and a change of level just ahead of the front driving axle. Photo: Coakham, D., The Belfast & County Down Railway, Colourpoint, 2010 Making this required a different approach and It took me a while to come up with a solution. Effectively, rather than starting with a rectangle and cutting a hole in it, I started with the hole and assembled separate bits round it. The profiled sections were made from 6mm wide brass strip shaped by hand round tubing of an appropriate diameter. These were the first things I made, a while ago now, to make sure I could do it, otherwise I wouldn't have gone any further with this one. The valances are 1mm square brass rod, annealed and shaped to fit the running plate. Other bits are cut from 15 thou brass sheet. Everything got soldered together using clamps and guidelines on the heatproof block. Against all the odds, it finished up pretty straight. Superstructure next. No.6's appearance changed often throughout its long career and it ended up looking quite different from the photo above. Among other things the cab roof was lengthened, a tender weatherboard came and went and it was finally given a Belpaire firebox, new boiler and reshaped cab in 1943. There were changes to the tender too. I haven't decided yet which version to model - probably the easiest one Alan

Respect, David. Track building is the last great hurdle for me (leaving aside the black arts of CAD and 3D printing). I've looked at what's involved many times and tiptoed quietly away on every occasion. Someday...

Some very fine scratch building there David. There's a lot of time-consuming detail work in all that panelling. Nice subtle weathering too.

Quite possible David. I find it takes me a while to get a good balance with just enough pressure on the wheels to make sure of good contact but not so much as to cause drag. It's very difficult to establish if lumpy running is due to intermittent contact or too much pressure causing tight spots. Hope you can pin it down on your JT.

First attempt at pickups failed. Phosphor bronze wires bearing on the wheel flanges at right angles were too short and stiff. They caused a bout of stuttering and hiccups and also interfered with the action of the hornblocks. Take two, with the wires a bit longer and bearing on the wheel treads worked much better. There'll be just enough room to fit a (plastic) brake lever in there too. First run under its own steam. OK... electricity. My Movie 1.mov

Thank you David. It's a tricky little beast, this one which is of course why I've avoided it up till now. The running plate is on two levels and has curves in between to clear the crankpins. This also meant the frames had to have a step in the top edge, all of which made it harder to get the thing straight. Still, so far so good. Nothing ventured...

Time to fit the hornblocks. These ones are from High Level - a pair of 1/8" Standards for the driving axle and 2mm SpaceSavers for the carrying axle. The coupling rods earned their keep as jigs again, this time with the Poppy Woodtech chassis jig, to get the hornblocks for the front drivers into the right position. The holes in the rods were reamed out to be a tight fit on the ends of the jig axles (around 1mm diameter). The hornblocks for the front carrying axle have no rods to position them so they went in by eye using an axle as a guide. Compensation beam in. Also some guard irons and brake hangers. As always, a High Level gearbox and motor are the driving force. A RoadRunner Plus this time, 45:1 ratio. Unbeatable at this scale. Wheels are from Alan Gibson. These can often be a very tight fit on the axle. Chamfering the hole at the back helps ease them on. Crankpins screw in from the back and cut their own thread as they go. Threadlock helps keep them in place. Before the wheels went on, the chassis got a dusting of Halfords etch primer and a topcoat of Matt Black. My trusty GW Models wheel press took care of getting the wheels on straight and quartering them. Chassis sits level so the compensation beam is doing its job. Phew! Rods next. The holes need further reaming to fit the Gibson crankpin bushes. ... and we have the bones of a working chassis. Phew again! IMG_1326.MOV Looking at the complexities of the running plate and superstructure, I think this might've been the easy bit. Much metal-bashing and blistered fingers in prospect. Alan

Troubled waters at IRM?