“BALLYCOMBE”

[Northroader]

Recently I posted a few pictures of some of my models on the layout design thread to illustrate a point, and it struck me I really ought to get a thread started for them. I’m more of a branch line person than a main liner by inclination, and I’m very drawn to the era around 1900. The trains were nice and compact, with smart colourful paint jobs. For around the last thirty years I’ve settled on modelling in 0 scale, having previously dabbled in most of the other scales, and I find this scale is really suited to what I want. It also gives a satisfying feeling to the bulk of individual models when you pick them up, which I like.

You should be able to recognise this as an Alphagraphix kit, with a chassis tacked on from brass strip and plastikard bits, and Slaters wheels, so quite cheap. No links with the firm, but they are a good starting point for this sort of thing. https://www.alphagraphixkits.co.uk

The printed card is just glued on to backing card, cut out with a sharp craft knife, and the cut edges tinted. It’s also gained a “corrugated iron” roof using a Salters plastikard sheet, the GS&WR being very fond of this stuff as a building material.

Where my layout falls down is in the track gauge, as it’s done using 32mm width, rather than the Irish 36 and a bit mm. gauge. These days the latter is quite easy to do, with copper clad sleepering and f/b rail, and it does give a far more realistic appearance, referring to “Arigna Town /Belmullet” and “Rosses Point” on this website. It’s just that I also use my line to run British outline models as well, changing the backscene, buildings, and rolling stock as required.

[Galteemore]

Excellent stuff. Very nice work on the Alphagraphix kit.  The GSWR being major customers of Slaters Plastikard is certainly something I hadn’t realised  

Edited April 1, 2022 by Galteemore

[2996 Victor]

Am I right in thinking that Alphagraphix kits are only in 7mm scale?

Cheers,

Mark

[Galteemore]

3 minutes ago, 2996 Victor said:

Am I right in thinking that Alphagraphix kits are only in 7mm scale?

Cheers,

Mark

They are mostly 7mm but Roger will often scale the card kits down if asked nicely 

[2996 Victor]

20 minutes ago, Galteemore said:

They are mostly 7mm but Roger will often scale the card kits down if asked nicely 

That's brilliant, thanks - I'll send him an email and see what he says.

Many thanks and best regards,

Mark

[Northroader]

If you visit his site you’ll find there are sections for what he does in 4mm as well.

[2996 Victor]

3 hours ago, Northroader said:

If you visit his site you’ll find there are sections for what he does in 4mm as well.

Thanks! I've sent Roger an email, and he can do all of the CC range of card kits in 4mm scale  

Cheers,
Mark

[David Holman]

5 hours ago, Galteemore said:

Excellent stuff. Very nice work on the Alphagraphix kit.  The GSWR being major customers of Slaters Plastikard is certainly something I hadn’t realised  

A fair few sheets of the stuff in my models!

Never actually built any of the card kits, as I just use them as a drawing/template for building them out of plastic sheet and microstrip. They certainly turn out well though. 

[2996 Victor]

5 minutes ago, David Holman said:

A fair few sheets of the stuff in my models!

Never actually built any of the card kits, as I just use them as a drawing/template for building them out of plastic sheet and microstrip. They certainly turn out well though. 

Your models are excellent, David, so it looks like a good method, one that I might try emulating!

Cheers,
Mark

[Northroader]

Well, your man said “show us yer locos”, so first a short introduction.  In September, 1995, I went to the Gauge 0 guild show in Telford, and on one of the stands I met these two really charming gentlemen, as lovely people as you’d ever wish to meet. They were Ciaran and Gerry McGowan, and they were trading as Leinster Models. Their long established model shop at Phibsboro in Dublin had closed, I gather, in 1992, but they kept the model kits production going a bit longer, and I think that was the last time they came to Telford. From the bit I’ve heard the shop was the place to go in Dublin, both as a treasure house and somewhere to meet like minded people.

Their kits were mainly British outline, I fancy as they sold more of these, but anyway having had a chat and a look at what they were doing, I really fancied one of their kits, and once the following Christmas outgoings were through, I sent off to their address for the one Irish one they did. (Mind, one good selling point for what they were doing was it was a decent price and good value.)

[Northroader]

So, early on in ‘96, once the Christmas expenses were out of the way, I sent off to Dublin for an 0 gauge kit of the one Irish loco the McGowans did. They called it a “Bat”, I couldn’t say why, as that wasn’t the first named in the class, otherwise known as a MGWR “E”, or a GSR/CIE “J26” 0-6-0T.

it was the first loco I tried building, and the way it was done has coloured my approach ever since. The chassis was simplicity itself, two 1/16” brass strips for the main frames, four machined brass spacers to set it up, a set of brass axle bushes, and two plain steel strips with the pilot holes drilled in for the coupling rods.

You'll see there is no compensation, and I’m of a mind that if you get all the tips of the wheel flanges touching down on a glass plate with no rocking, compensation is an extra complication. The bit of extra depth in finescale wheel flanges should be adequate enough to cover track irregularities, if the loco keeps derailing, look at your track. I added some L shaped brass strips fore and aft to give a place for the screws to attach the superstructure, but you can find spacers with a central vertical hole drilled through. The Mashima motor and gears ride on the back axle, and I made a strap to go round the motor and screw on to a spacer to support the motor. Since I built this loco my fitting skills have improved, the crankpin holes had to be drilled out oversize before it would give me free running with the coupling rods on, and larger washers were needed. The rods, of course, needed a lot of filing to go from a plain steel bar to a decent profile, and something I discovered was they do need sideways clearance allowance on the bushes for when the wheels track round a curve.

With the wheels in place, I marked out and drilled for a set of Slaters plunger pickups. They’re dear, but they do give reliability when handled right. I’ve since worked out the best way to fit these is to tin the little tag first off, then assemble them as a unit away from the frame, so that you can screw the plunger nuts really tight. The motor leads, also tinned, with some spare length, are fed out through the frame holes and soldered to the tags with a quick in and out dab of the soldering iron. The pickups can then be fed through the frame holes into position. This way you’ve got the tag nuts really tight, and the soldering iron heat has had less of a chance to run down the plunger and start melting the spring into the plastic top hat bush. 

The superstructure was quite simple, the main platework was done with tinplate punchings, with a prerolled boiler, and with a few castings to add. It’s the only tinplate job I’ve come across, and I found it lovely to solder. Of course, I did the sequence wrong, opened the kit, got it all out, then ordered the wheels from Slaters. While I was waiting for those, all fired up, I thought I’d push on with the body. Wrong! Always get a working chassis made before you start on the top. I had to re do the front splashers to get the proper clearance when I had finally made the chassis and fitted it to the top. There were castings for smokebox door, chimney, dome, safety valve bonnet and springs. The rest of the detail I did myself, adding buffers, drawgear, vac pipes, handrails, tank fillers, sandboxes, and whistle. Did you spot there’s no brakework? nobody looks under the footplate anyway. Numbers and nameplate are homemade lashups. Well, there’s a kit from thirty years ago, these days it’s all 500 pieces out of .018” brass etched sheet. I used a can of Humbrol emerald green to handbrush it, then lining out with black and white paint, using a spring bow pen, apart form the boiler bands, which are from the HMRS LNER sheet.

Edited April 18, 2022 by Northroader

[Angus]

That's lovely little engine that I'll never tire of seeing Northroader.

For your first loco kit it looks superb, it must have a special place in your heart.

[Mike 84C]

I have a 4mm scale Bat to build, if it looks as good as your 7mm Bat I'll be happy.  A first loco? it looks fantastic.

[2996 Victor]

2 minutes ago, Mike 84C said:

I have a 4mm scale Bat to build, if it looks as good as your 7mm Bat I'll be happy.  A first loco? it looks fantastic.

.....hope you'll be doing a build thread?

Cheers,

Mark

[Galteemore]

Very nice indeed. Lovely work and a most interesting prototype 

[David Holman]

Splendid. Well done!

[Northroader]

The second loco I fancied was the MGWR “L” 0-6-0 standard goods, which does have a varied history, with alphabetical suffixes for variations, and becoming two classes in GSR days. I hadn’t built up enough competency to build it entirely by myself, I needed a machined chassis, and as luck would have it, the wheel sizes and wheelbase are very close to a GWR 2251 class, just the Swindon loco has more overhang at the back end. At the time, there was a long established firm, CCW, doing kits for chassis and bodies of quite a wide range of popular prototypes. The chassis were very similar to the Leinster Models kits, with 1/16” frame plates and spacers, axle bushes, and the coupling rods were very nice milled to profile in nickel silver. They were reasonably priced, so I sent for it, and some Slaters wheels, buffers, pickups, and a motor/gearbox from Premier. 

Then it was just trim a foot or so of the back end and reposition the rear spacer holes, and mark and drill for the pickups. Everything fitted very nicely, and I became a CCW fan. They had a great catalogue, with an extensive range of products, a good stand at the Gauge 0 Guild meetings, and I started to pick out what I fancied next. Then they stopped trading! Just like that, there one minute, gone the next.

On to the body, I did this myself from .018” brass sheet, tinsnips, hacksaw and filing. Anybody remember Micromodels? They were neat little printed card sheets in a pack, very small scale, and I used to cut them out and stick them together when I was a kid, and they did have the virtue of showing how you could form the shape of a loco from a flat sheet, so useful training. You can still pick them up on eBay, and there are folks still producing the same idea as downloads. Here’s a sample if you haven’t come across them.

http://worldofmicromodels.nl/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Set-NS-V-Justin-Olson.pdf

Using this principle, plus some commercial castings for a dome, the superstructure was formed.

The tender is made with the outside frames as dummies hanging down from the body, and the wheelsets run in a detachable inside frame. You’ll see it has a PCB fixed on carrying phosphor bronze whiskers (wire from Slaters) acting on the wheel flanges for pickups

Then the body gets done from brass sheet in a similar manner to the loco.

And there you have it, I really did fancy the unique look for the MGWR “flyaway”cab.

[2996 Victor]

2 hours ago, Northroader said:

The second loco I fancied was the MGWR “L” 0-6-0 standard goods, which does have a varied history, with alphabetical suffixes for variations, and becoming two classes in GSR days. I hadn’t built up enough competency to build it entirely by myself, I needed a machined chassis, and as luck would have it, the wheel sizes and wheelbase are very close to a GWR 2251 class, just the Swindon loco has more overhang at the back end. At the time, there was a long established firm, CCW, doing kits for chassis and bodies of quite a wide range of popular prototypes. The chassis were very similar to the Leinster Models kits, with 1/16” frame plates and spacers, axle bushes, and the coupling rods were very nice milled to profile in nickel silver. They were reasonably priced, so I sent for it, and some Slaters wheels, buffers, pickups, and a motor/gearbox from Premier. 

Then it was just trim a foot or so of the back end and reposition the rear spacer holes, and mark and drill for the pickups. Everything fitted very nicely, and I became a CCW fan. They had a great catalogue, with an extensive range of products, a good stand at the Gauge 0 Guild meetings, and I started to pick out what I fancied next. Then they stopped trading! Just like that, there one minute, gone the next.

On to the body, I did this myself from .018” brass sheet, tinsnips, hacksaw and filing. Anybody remember Micromodels? They were neat little printed card sheets in a pack, very small scale, and I used to cut them out and stick them together when I was a kid, and they did have the virtue of showing how you could form the shape of a loco from a flat sheet, so useful training. You can still pick them up on eBay, and there are folks still producing the same idea as downloads. Here’s a sample if you haven’t come across them.

http://worldofmicromodels.nl/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Set-NS-V-Justin-Olson.pdf

Using this principle, plus some commercial castings for a dome, the superstructure was formed.

The tender is made with the outside frames as dummies hanging down from the body, and the wheelsets run in a detachable inside frame. You’ll see it has a PCB fixed on carrying phosphor bronze whiskers (wire from Slaters) acting on the wheel flanges for pickups

Then the body gets done from brass sheet in a similar manner to the loco.

And there you have it, I really did fancy the unique look for the MGWR “flyaway”cab.

What a beauty! Absolutely gorgeous and looking resplendent in her green livery.

Cheers,

Mark

[David Holman]

Fab - and pretty decent build time too.

[Northroader]

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)

 

Edited June 4, 2022 by Northroader

[KMCE]

Very nice & well done Sir.

[Galteemore]

Lovely work. Totally agree re pillar drill. Essential tool - certainly for 7mm. 

[Broithe]

54 minutes ago, Galteemore said:

Lovely work. Totally agree re pillar drill. Essential tool - certainly for 7mm. 

Depending upon the sizes of things, these 'Mole-style' clamps can be very handy - as can the technique of placing longer parts against the column, to restrain them, rather than relying just on hand pressure.

Edited June 4, 2022 by Broithe
Spelling...

[Galteemore]

Learned about clamping the hard way when a set of loco frames broke loose at a thousand plus rpm. I was lucky to escape with grazes. Any chance of a close up on your suspension system, please @Northroader? Sounds an ideal fix.

[David Holman]

A lovely piece of traditional scratchbuilding, though not sure the description does the model justice!

 Takes a lot of care, effort and not a little skill to produce a model like that. And then there is the paint job...

 Wonderful.

[Northroader]

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.

[Northroader]

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.

Edited June 6, 2022 by Northroader

[David Holman]

Good stuff. Would think Eileens Emporium will have PB wire. Another alternative would be steel piano wire, while also likely an Amazon search would suffice. When I bought my mini lathe, got brass rod offcuts very cheaply that way.

[Northroader]

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.

[Mayner]

Same class of loco only slightly smaller.

I use the  "weighted tender" approach where some of the tender weight is transferred through the drawbar to the loco for balancing 2-4-0s and 4-4-0s.

The center and leading tender axles running in slots are lightly sprung with phosphor bronze wire.

 

I assembled this example (OO) with a rigid loco chassis and the loco proved capable of hauling 18 IRM wagons on test

The loco is weighted with weights in the first ring of the boiler immediately behind the smoklebox and a smaller weight under the motor in the ashpan and a large weight in the tender.

I replaced the lead weights with cast "Woods Metal" weights

I avoided wiper or plunger power pick ups (too fiddly in 4mm) by using the American pick up system with the loco and tender picking up power on opposite sides using 'live axle' pick ups. 

[Northroader]

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.

[Galteemore]

Now that’s nice. I built the Alphagraphix kit but had real problems in balancing, and took me a while to fine tune. It uses a brass spring on the rear axle to essentially drive the big wheel down. I think others have tried driving both small wheels and letting the big wheel run free. Beautiful model you’ve made. 

Edited August 11, 2022 by Galteemore

[Northroader]

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.

[David Holman]

Only goes to show how some things that may look simple, are quite the opposite!

Lovely model.

[2996 Victor]

Beautiful loco and interesting solution to the balance problem.

Being a novice engine-builder with a grand total of zero completed locos, I was wondering if there would be any scope to run the drivers rigidly in the frames, and beam compensate the carrying wheels. I imagine space would be the limiting factor.

Cheers,

Mark