Northroader

Great to see things happening over there, the thing that really stood out for me in those pictures is how the sky changed through the sequence. Any one of them would look great on a model backscene, and yet they’re all very different. A day for staying close to the pub.

The cone shaped objects above the footplate are screw jacks, with a transverse table under them with another screw to shift them sideways. Used with hardwood packing blocks and a wood “biscuit” on top, where a minor derailment has happened. The couplings look like “Norwegian” or “chopper” couplings, common for a lot of n.g.lines. There’s a spring at the back, which helps with buffering up. One coupling carries a chopper on a pin, and the opposing coupling carries a pin for it to hook on to. The pins are removable, and can be swapped around if necessary. https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Norwegian_coupling

If you’re doing silver,paint, mix some of the metallic silver paint 50/50 with a Matt light grey paint. It will look realistic and wear much better when handled.

Johnny, when you’ve got your engine and wagons and coaches, any thought as to where you’ll be putting them, and what sort of space you’ll be using?

All that —- and BLUE engines!!

Very kind of you to say so, sir. Actually, I’m slowing down appreciably, and I’ve reached an age where I’m having to think of the future, how am I going to downsize? I should try to progress jobs, finish stuff off, then another bright (?) idea hits me.

Beautiful job, looks good, well made, and runs smoothly.

Mark, perhaps I should add to my remarks on compensation, thinking it over. If you’re modelling in P4 or S7, it’s really compulsory to use compensation. This is because the wheel flange depth is minimal, and you must ensure the wheels are fully in contact with the rail, all the time. With the usual modelling standards most folks use, you have deeper wheel flanges which do give more latitude for any errors, particularly with track-laying. The Leinster and CCW kits I started with showed me that accurately drilled frames, with the “finescale” wheel flanges, could run over carefully laid track without springing or compensation, and this simplifies building a loco no end. You can still aspire to using the finer standards and methods, but it is more demanding for your craftsmanship and skills, and I’d advise a “knife and fork” approach to start with, giving a approach which realistically caters for the conditions you’re going to encounter. It’s one step up from a “tinplate” approach, with four coupled locos and very deep flanges are placed on sections of track clipped together in a tight curve and laid on the carpet. The one layout which did impress me at a show was the Merseyside MRC “Adavoyle”, Irish gauge to P4 standards, which performed flawlessly in running and performance, but done painstakingly by skilled craftsmen.

I’m not a fan of beam compensation, as being very fiddly. I picked up a loco on eBay recently and found the whole lot jammed up with paint anyway, and a very poor runner in consequence. I think if you compensate just the carrying wheels, you’d introduce a hard spot somewhere which would compete with the drivers for adhesive weight. Having one set floating, and bringing the c.o.g. close to the drivers does work well.

Thanks for those, they’re a really beautiful and informative set of pictures.

Thank you, David. One thing has since struck me, I haven’t mentioned you can’t get 5’ single driver wheels (I.e. no crankpin) from Slaters, you have to make them. It’s just going round the boss, hacksaw blade parallel with the spokes, needle files rubbing around the crankpin projection, all the time with a very light touch, as there’s a recess behind for the crankpin screwhead which makes the spoke sections quite thin.

Well, shaking off summertime torpor for an hour to write this, you could say that a microlayout with an 0-6-0T, 0-6-0, and 2-4-0 is well blessed for motive power, but folks never know when to stop. I really fancied one of those little 2-2-2STs that show up in old photos of Broadstone yard. I gather the old boy Martin Atock had a soft spot for them, and kept them them going for much longer than all the other members of the MGWR loco fleet, which had a very rigid time expired replacement policy. They were built by Fairbairn, who had a ship building yard down the Thames in London, and branched out into loco building. The 5’ singledriver tanks seem to be a firms standard pattern, you can find preserved ones in Portugal and Brazil. Construction followed on from my previous attempts, with brass strip frames and machined spacers, carrying Slaters wheels. Having learned from the 2-4-0 that you need the carrying wheels to deflect or they rob the drivers of much needed traction weight, I looked at how I could do this with a 2-2-2. If both sets of carrying wheels deflected, you would end up with a rocking horse, so I felt one set should be rigid with the drivers, and just have the other set floating. Then it was just a question of loading the engine with weights to bring the centre of gravity just to the side of the drivers with the rigid axle. (Determining the centre of gravity I place the engine on a bit of ply just longer than the engine, then place the whole lot on a round pencil square across the ply, then roll the lot backwards and forwards over the pencil until it just rocks.) I ended up doing a sort of trials with a long cassette propped up at one end to make an incline, pulling and pushing some wagons, chimney end leading and trailing, and it will take more pushing than pulling, and with the rigid carriers at the downhill end, but in the worst conditions it will still manage five wagons on a 1 in 50. To do this it is quite heavy, but just pottering on a microlayout, it performs quite well, and with the minimum amount of wheels, it is quite an economical engine to make, so the conclusion is, don’t be frightened of doing a single driver. I think of 2-2-2Ts as having quite strong Irish connotations, the DSER fleet and the long lived Waterford and Tramore ones, besides the MGWR ones are well known examples, and with digging around more show up.

Near Brighton the other day: “If you’re getting off, mind the gap, it’s very big and very scary”.

DaninhisDen, 00 works are also doing this loco in the LSWR / KESR 0330 version, near as dammit to the CBSC job. Otherwise you can get a 3D print from Shapeways /Rue d’Etropal design, and look round for a suitable RTR chassis (sorry I can’t help with that)

Sean, that van was put up there for Kate Winslet to have her hair done between shoots, then Di Caprio says if she’s having that, I want me own tin van on the foreward hatch. They’re a terrible lot when they get out of Hollywood.

Very nice job, begging to be modelled. Two things strike me, it’s an old NCC wagon, yet it’s got the axleguards behind the solebars and the springs instead of in front; then for a sixwheeler there doesn’t appear to be any provision for sideways movement on the centre wheelset? -and the brakeshoe is acting on the centre, too. (Nelson was producing great models, but he was at the growing up stage where you discover women and booze, good luck with that, matey. He’ll be back, I’m sure.)

It would go with a Sentinel, nice red colour, on a micro layout just out in the sticks from Belfast?

Then there was the day a Peak got stolen at Derby Works, but it didn’t get so far.. https://www.macearchive.org/films/midlands-news-22111962-diesel-train-stolen-derby

There’s no ‘arm in that.

Thing about p.b. is that it solders well, so no problem anchoring the fingers to the brass strip. The steel wire wouldn’t “take” so well.

As you asked, David, a bit more on springing the leading axle on a 2-4-0. First a close up picture of Sylph: I'm pushing the wheel up in the oval guiding slot, and acting against the pressure of a rectangle of brass foil screwed under a frame spacer. The foil is quite thin, I’d guess under .010” thick. It came from a pack of different strips coiled up in a tin can, labelled “brass shimstock”. I’m afraid I bought it a long time back from an ironmongers before DIY stores were invented. The brass does retain sufficient springiness to give some downward pressure, and acts against the wheelset tilting, but... how do I do it now? A similar wheelset on another more recent build. Here there’s a strip of brass screwed across a frame stretcher, and at each end there’s a finger pressing down on the axle. The fingers are 28swg phosphor bronze wire. Phosphor bronze does keep the springy quality better than brass, and having them placed at each end of the axle counteracts the tilting better. (The loops underneath are sprung pickups on the driving wheel in 22swg p.b.) Slaters used to supply both sizes in a small pack, but looking at their website tonight, it’s no longer available from there, I’m afraid. whilst I'm on, here’s a close up between the drivers showing another key item on a 2-4-0. You’ll see the gear and motor are tipped up as far forward as I can get them inside the firebox. The space behind the motor to the backhead is then as full as lead sheet as I can manage, and just in front of the trailing driver axle you’ll see a nice big brass block tailored to fit between the frames. This all moves the mass of the loco back over the drivers, as it’s easy to get a loco noseheavy.

Thanks for your comments, having made the model I’m aware there are shortcomings in things like accuracy, squareness and so on. It was early on in my model building, but I wouldn’t like to say I’ve got much better since, Keep on trying. I'm away from base at present, and will try and show how the leading axle is sprung when I get back home.

Having done two locos which were formed from kits for the running chassis, I felt I had learned enough to try and make my own. The key investment was buying my only machine tool, a pillar drill from Ferm. It has a nice flat table, and you can put your work down on this, hold it steady with one hand, and bring the drill down with the other, knowing it’s dead square to the work. The drill was well made, reasonable value, and has been used many times since for loads of work. The one job that I bought in was a set of coupling rods of the right wheelbase, which were steel etchings which folded up like a concertina to make a lamination. They were soldered up solid using Bakers soldering fluid, an acid flux. The hole centres were transferred over to a pair of frames, filed up to profile from brass strip sweated together. Axle holes were drilled and opened out to take bushes, holes for the bought in frame spacers were drilled and countersunk, then I put in a wheel on an axle which showed me where to place holes for pickups to go behind the flanges. The frames could then be unsweated, cleaned up, and assembled. I’d also bought a 3/16” reamer, so I could pass this through the axle holes and make sure the wheels turned freely. The coupling rods needed the holes opening slightly before everything moved freely, but at the end of it I’d got a working chassis. The loco I’d chosen was another MGWR type, the K class 2-4-0, which became the GSR/CIE G2, mine having had a 65 year life all told. The superstructure was formed from brass sheet, and the whole job was done just like the L 0-6-0. So then I came to put it down on the rails and juice up. Problem! The wheels turned, but were spinning, with the loco just inching forwards very slowly. I’d made it with all the axlebushes mounted rigidly in the frames, and the wheels all touching down. Actually they never do all touch down, there’s always going to be a few thousandths of an inch difference, and in my case the leading carrying wheels were taking too much of the weight and lifting the centre drivers just clear of the track. Once I’d worked that out, I removed the leading axle bushes and put some thin side frame extensions in brass sheet, with a vertical slot to guide the axle, and a piece of springy brass acting down on the lead axle to keep the wheels on the rails. Then make sure the main weight of the loco was placed between the drivers, and try again. Success! I’ve now got a decent runner that will pull a couple of coaches. Its No. 23 “Sylph” (named after the missus, of course)

Notice you say regional trains, a bit ago I bought a ticket, asking from A to B. The ticket office bloke gave me a ticket, and a very lengthy spiel, which went in one ear and out the other, as I dont speak German. Looking at it, no mention of the stations, anyhow did the journey, and come back from a different place, an unstaffed station. Tried to get a new ticket from the guard, and it turned out I’d been given a regional runround for the area as the cheapest option. Changed trains to get back to A, and caught an intercity, and got a frightful roasting off the ticket collector, using a regional ticket on an intercity. Luckily the next stop was the one I wanted. So just maybe this new ticket has the same drawbacks?