Tullygrainey

Sorry Leslie, yes, I was thinking of DC powered locos when I mentioned the battery trick.

Leslie, if it’s the kit-built loco in your photo that’s causing the short, I would check if a brake shoe is touching a wheel somewhere. Easy to disturb these while cleaning wheels.

To turn the wheels a little at a time for cleaning or painting behind the rods, the terminals of a PP3 battery applied across the wheels on one axle works a treat. For 4mm that is. Not much use for you 7mm lads!

Some small stuff for No.6. Step this way… A nice little hand wheel etch from Wizard Models (51L CWSHB)... Smokebox door casting also from Wizard (MT329)... Slight flaw in this one. Never mind. Scrap etch for a reverser lever... Some cut down wagon springs from Dart Castings (MJT 2284) plus 0.45mm brass rod Over time I have gathered a small collection of chimney and dome castings, none of which were right for No.6 of course so it was back to cobbling together bits of brass tube, washers and dowel. The old Black and Decker earned its keep yet again. Trial fitting of some of the bits. Fussy little blighter isn't it. Back to the tender now, I think. Alan

Beautiful. The colours of the square setts are spot on

A compelling back story. Love it. Good luck with this one David.

Some pretty sharp curves there David! Nice bit of riveting.

A smokebox for No.6. I don't think I've managed to make a smokebox the same way twice. The smokebox and saddle for this one were built as a single piece made from two matching formers, a front plate which is wider at the bottom than the saddle, a baseplate and a wrapper. In order to make as much room as possible for the DCC gubbins, the centres of the formers were cut away to keep an open space through the boiler and into the smokebox. The downside is that the smokebox can’t then be easily bolted to the front of the boiler. The wrapper is 10 thou brass, all the rest is 15 thou nickel silver. A captive nut inside the baseplate of the saddle will allow it all to be bolted down to the running plate, with peg into a hole in the cab front locating the firebox end. As is becoming standard with this build, it took a couple of goes, the first pass generating the mistakes to inform the learning process. Getting the wrapper on neatly was the hardest bit. !**!*!!? If at first you don't succeed, have a cup of tea before trying again. It keeps the big hammer at bay. The finished item was seam soldered to the front of the boiler. A few other details added and some holes drilled, mostly in the right places. We're getting towards the small bits and pieces now. Cab steps Alan

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.