David Holman

Lovely stuff Alan - old school modelling at its best! Nothing wrong with 3D printing, or indeed the skills of lathe workers, both of which I have every admiration for. Nevertheless, the dome and chimney show how you can turn basic shapes and materials into something far more complex with a little thought and application. Also, there is no guarantee that castings will turn out to be accurate either, as per the dome on my E class... Our hobby is blessed with all manner of high quality products these days, but there is so much satisfaction to be gained from making things for yourself.

A bit more fettling and then a good clean [using Cif and an old toothbrush] was followed by a coat of car primer. I'm always surprised by the outcomes of this 'witness coat' - things you expect to show up don't, while other stuff appears that you weren't expecting. The picture below shows the model in its new guise as 109, Fly - and what a complete pain it was changing the numbers! However, at first sight, the loco looks ok - until you look closer... The next picture shows those numbers on the sandbox. Annoyingly the middle 0 is a fraction too low, but more importantly, look at the shape of the dome! Hadn't noticed that until I took the photo, so a bit of filing to reshape it is required. Now we have the rear bunker & spectacle plate. The numbers are now in the right place, but the 1 is leaning over slightly, while a gap is showing where the bunker meets the rear buffer beam. Now for the other side: not too bad here, but that dome clearly needs attention, while the lower step needs tweaking slightly. The smokebox is reasonably ok, but again, note the dome... ... while on the bunker side, we have a gap where it joins the footplate. Looking from above, we can see that the chimney, dome and safety valves are not sitting snugly on the boiler, so some filing and filling is needed here. while finally [for now], a rear 3/4 view of the bunker shows the need for a bit of filling. All of this work is a bit tedious, but very necessary if a decent finish is to be achieved - so back to filling and filing before another coat of primer and [probably] further fettling and the top coats can be applied.

Definitely three in 36.75mm gauge, Leslie. Given I have to move the rear numbers, may well change mine to 109 & Fly. No point in having two Robins when there are plenty of other names to choose from, plus Fly was at Westport in GSR days, so not a million miles from Northport - wherever that might be!

Nicely put and thank you. A variation of the "measure twice, cut once" moral... and looking at the photos, there are a couple of other tweaks required too!

After the gentle delights of a weekend at the Orpington show, the next job was to fit the pick ups. I found some thin copper clad strip, which was fixed to the frames with 5 minute epoxy. 0.5mm phosphor bronze wire was then soldered to this & then bent to press on the wheels. Solder a wire to each of the motor terminals and a brief holding of breath to see if I'd got the polarity right and, hey presto - the wheels turned the same way as my other locos. Nice... The photo below shows the chassis in action on my basic rolling road. While there was still a bit more soldering to do, much of the remaining work used more 5 minute epoxy to fit the white metal castings - chimney, dome, buffers and so on. The good thing about epoxy is that the setting time allows you to check alignments without waiting too long, but very important when trying to get key items to sit right. At this stage, I like to go through the instructions to make my own list of things to do in order to complete the model, in particular adding things I've noticed from photos - and indeed a couple of recent posts on that odd looking pipe around the smokebox, now thought to be part of the vacuum brake system. I've used 1.0mm brass wire and some spare bits from a set of Slater's vacuum pipes to try and replicate this. Various bits and pieces later & it is time to start getting ready for the paint shop. Just in case anyone might think otherwise, a few pictures show the loco before the cleaning up process. Another shows the main tools for this - various dental probes and scrapers, plus a range of "whifflers" - files of different shapes that enable you to get into tight corners. Various grades of wet and dry sand paper are also used of course, plus the dreaded [but hugely effective] glass fibre pencil. The result is the last few photos of the [mostly] cleaned up model. A tip here is not to try to be too fastidious, because however thorough you are, that first 'witness' coat of primer will quickly show what you have missed. Hence, you simply have to live with the fact that a bit more filling and filing will be necessary before you can think about the top coats. Total time is now about 26 hours.

Checkout my thread - David's Workbench - Marc. Am doing a bit by bit account of building an E class and also did one in J26 guise. Photo of that one is used on the box the kit comes in and the Alphagraphix website. If you can solder, it is a lovely kit that can be built in 30 hours or so, not including painting.

VERY impressive - especially all that fine detail you have included..

Fair enough - and as you say 00 coaches can be arms and legs these days.

Refer to previous posts about Hatton's 0 gauge stuff. It is cheap, but for a reason. Many of the coaches have had bits falling off. By no means a deal breaker, but buyers may need to do some work to make them presentable. Same caveat for the A3 and A4 locos

Some folk use "gun blue" to chemically blackened the surface of the rails - though it will still wear off eventually. Has its uses in other areas too, especially any raised edges on brass kits, prior to putting on primer. Rusty rails are a topic of their own, because the effect of weather and environment means significant changes to colour, depending on location and use. Sidings tend to be much darker, while anywhere that locos stand for longer periods get oily. Brake dust adds another hue, while newly laid rail is different to older stuff, so all part of the fun!

That, or its an enormous tape measure Lovely flow to the track plan and certainly looking forward to the eventual return of the 5p workbench, with the delights of those tiny models.

Always an interesting thread and this latest is no exception. Why is it that mixed rakes of non passenger rolling stock are always so attractive?

Really useful stuff everyone and certainly enough to make me try to use mine more often. However, for me, they remain the Spawn of Satan and I remain happy to use car paint rattle cans whenever I can. Acrylics seem the way to go though.

Almost as bad as brake gear! Look great though.

Very nice too!

Thanks folks, feel rather flattered by the engineering term and indeed the neat soldering. It's better than it used to be, but appearance is mainly down to careful cleaning up - something I have needed to be good at out of necessity! I'm with you Ken, over comparing the two locos. Have always thought the J26, pretty though it is, to be a bit chunky compared to an original E class. The only part that is different is that slender, tapered chimney, but the visual effect is marked. Even been to measure both the wheels and boiler heights to check, but they are indeed the same. A real optical illusion it seems... Noel, the kit makes the work pretty easy, the parts all fit accurately and I reckon most modellers who can solder could put one of these together. It really would make a good starter for anyone tempted to have a go at 7mm scale, plus you could always build it in 32mm gauge.

Interesting... The second link given by Mayner in my fitted goods vehicles question has five pictures of E class locos. Two appear to be 'works grey', with ridiculously complex looking lining. Of the other three, each looks slightly different (and with slightly simpler lining), so could they be one each of early green, blue and late green, or even black?? The Lord O'Neill album of paintings has a blue loco with what looks like black and white lining, while would an E class be classed as passenger or goods?!?!?! Remembering what a pain it was to line Wolf Dog, blue with yellow lining sounds a reasonable compromise - assuming it was possible that is. Currently, my butterfly mind is musing over the fact that I could not only have a MGW loco in blue, but also a GSW in green and a WLW in maroon... That said, the E in lined green would look rather nice with one of my brown brake thirds, especially if I also repainted the 4w hearse/fish van and glasshouse brake the same colour. Decisions, decisions!

As intimated on my workshop thread, am thinking of painting the E class in the short lived early 1900s blue livery, lined in black and white. However, first need to know whether the E class were thus treated and if so an idea of the right shade - preferably to use an automotive rattle can. Have got the O'Neill album, which gives an idea, but not sure how right this is. If not, will do the same green as Wolf Dog.

After a coat of matt black, the chassis has been reassembled & now the paint needs to harden for a couple of days before I fit the pick ups. That just left the boiler and smokebox as the last main section. The latter is designed for the later, J26, version which has plenty of rivets, but photos suggest in original form the E class had smooth smokeboxes so decided to file the rivets off. Unfortunately, I forgot to take photos of the assembly of both this and the boiler, though as all the etches are in .009mm thick brass curving and rolling the etches to shape is fairly straightforward, if a bit fiddly. The smokebox wrapper is rolled round a piece of plastic water pipe, then carefully soldered to the front and rear faces. An extra hand and asbestos fingers would help, but with remarkably few rude works and some lolly sticks as insulation, it all went together fairly quickly. It would have been nice to have used my rolling bars to form the boiler/firebox unit, but as this is a single etch, with only the front section actually making a tube, I had to resort to various diameters of brass bar and tube instead. The same thin brass is used, so most of the forming took place quickly, though where holes had been etched for the chimney and dome, this caused problems as the metal tried to kink at these points. An hour of trial and error eventually sorted it though. A circle of brass is supplied to solder inside the rolled tube at the smokebox end, with a another piece the right shape for the firebox to go at the other. It is then possible to use a 6BA nut and bolt to hold the boiler and smokebox units together and ensure they are correctly aligned before soldering them together. The combined unit is then slid into place and [helped by a couple of tabs to align things], also soldered in place. A few more odds and ends then need forming and soldering, including the handrails and cylinder cover, but suddenly the superstructure is complete and the rest of the detailing is mainly white metal castings. One of the latter [a nice firebox backhead from the spares box] adds a bit more substance than the flat etch supplied with the kit. However, a couple of other details have since been soldered on - the nameplates and etched numbers. Decided on 107, Robin, as the Slater's etched numerals seemed the best fit on the sandboxes - though they were certainly a fiddly job to fit. The builder's plates on the bunker sides are actually etches of some Simplex ones I had in the scrap box. I've soldered them on upside down in the hope of further disguising the tiny lettering! About five hours over the last three days, brings the build time to 18 so far. I've perched the chimney, dome and safety valves on the boiler for some photos and it is interesting to see how much more dainty the new loco looks against its J26 sister with the original chimney. Am currently pondering on whether to paint Robin in early MGWR green, or try the short lived blue livery, but for now work will have to take a back seat for a few days as Fintonagh is the the Orpington show over the weekend, so I will be busy with that.

And all the shunting on scene! You might find that there is no room for a building on the island platform, as the minimum space for passengers was 12 feet (half that for single sided). However, no reason why the station building can't be where you have labelled the car park, nor why a simple boarded crossing for passengers, rather than a footbridge. Another thought - with that Y point under the bridge, you could have the station building on the bridge, with two tracks coming on scene from the fiddle yard/storage roads, instead of the Y. That would allow a longer platform, with steps down from the bridge. The fiddle yard could then be either a swinging sector plate, or if you haven't the room, use the cassette method instead.

Lovely stuff John. Oozes atmosphere.

Delightful! And still looks like a 7mm scale model to me...

Rather nice by the look of them, especially if those horrible couplings can be replaced with something else!

E class working chassis Having got a nice rolling chassis, the next job is to take everything off again to fit the motor gearbox. Time was it would have been one of the Mashimas, but now it is a Canon motor, prefitted to a Premier gearbox. Still a nice combination, especially compared to making up an etched box, because all the work is done for you. A worthwhile tip when fitting the wheels is to file a flat on the driven axle to make the main gear more secure.. After that, it is a case of soldering a couple of fly leads to the motor and then putting all the wheels and rods back again for another test. This revealed a slight tight spot entailing the coupling rods being removed for a third time, just to open out the holes a fraction, after which all seems well and with power applied to the motor a nice, slow crawl is possible. The next job was to fit the brake gear. This is one of those tasks that is a bit of a pet hate. Etched kits almost always mean you have to make up the brake shoes in two or more layers & [apart from cost], I can never understand why moulded plastic ones aren't supplied - not least because it would take far less time to fit them AND you could get them closer to the wheels without risking a short. Yes, there are ways and I will put a smear of superglue on the brake surfaces to help, but brake gear really isn't my favourite pastime. The other things fitted today were the guard irons, after which the chassis was taken apart yet again, to be cleaned up and given a coat of primer. Fingers crossed, once a coat of matt black has also been applied that should be the last time it needs to come apart - though you never know! This latest work took about three hours over the weekend, bringing the total up to 13 so far.

Track is more curving and flowing than you might think, Andy and from a visual point of view looks better on a layout than everything parallel to the baseboard edge. Hence your diagonal designs are the ones for me too. Nice curves are also attractive to the male eye for other reasons!