Bing Live Steam Loco Gauge O - Repair & Restoration

[murrayec]

A rather sad Gauge O Live Steam Bing Loco came to the workshop for repair & restoration. It took a bang below the steam dome and some attempt was made to solder it up but to no avail, initially the client just wanted it repaired and asked could the paintwork be touched up! After consideration and the fact it has sentimental value, belonging to his farther and as a boy (client) he watched his Dad run it in the garden which gave both great joy- repair and repaint it! The loco will not be fired again when restored, it will be put in a case for display.....

Not a level surface, all distorted n burnt, with a bang in the smokebox door.

Chassis front mounting screw sheared.

Burner in.

Burner out.

The burner.

Inspection over the loco was stripped down.

All the bits ready for cleaning up.

After cleaning the dome was tackled first by removing that blob of solder to reveal a ding n crack- the ding in the boiler and the crack in the dome base.

After cleaning off the solder blob I put on new solder, I used a piece of copper wire to fill the gap as the solder will not do that. Ready for a clean up- the remainder of the filling will be done at painting stage.

Then a brass blank nut was turned on the lathe to be soldered into the boiler to replace the missing one.

Jigged up for soldering the nut in, fingers crossed it doesn't fall in!!

Done.

Then a bit of horsing with sticks, bars, small hammer and appropriate shaped things to straighten the body up, once back close to shape all was clamped and soldered up.

Worked out OK, a bit of cleaning up the solder after a blast....

.......blasted.

Cleaned up and set up to start painting.

Etch primed.

A very light coat of etch primer was used so that one can see the metal underneath.

Des in Studio Scale Models printed the decals from my artwork, he can now print gold!

That's all for now.....

Eoin

 

 

[Midland Man]

Lovely engine @murrayec yo are saving from probally ending up in the bin. Pity it will never run again as it has such charm. I wonder here you can get them as is looks so cute. Can not wait to sea more.

MM

[murrayec]

@Midland Man

Yes I do like these locos, they do look charming sitting on the table or on the shelf, though another thing when the fire is lit and its trundling n spitting around a track!

They come up on ebay and the UK model engineering websites if your interested....

Eoin

[Georgeconna]

Love it, Bit of life left in her yet. Lovely work there to! 

[Galteemore]

11 hours ago, murrayec said:

@Midland Man

Yes I do like these locos, they do look charming sitting on the table or on the shelf, though another thing when the fire is lit and its trundling n spitting around a track!

They come up on ebay and the UK model engineering websites if your interested....

Eoin

As Eoin says, they are quite spectacular things in motion - and require some care in operation!  My brother got a meths fired Bowman equivalent loco running. They are delightful things. Some brave souls manage it in mainstream O gauge - favourite sight of mine at the Kettering show..

.

[Midland Man]

I have just seen the prices and boy they are not cheap. Some are £70 pounds and others are up to a £1000 pounds.

MM

[murrayec]

Painting has been proceeding on the Bing;-

After undercoating all the parts I spent a bit of time filling around the steam dome repair and that ding in the smokebox door.

After that was etch primed in places then undercoated  I started on the first top coat on all the bits.

The wheels and chassis were given a first topcoat of matt black.

The brown is looking a bit red at the moment due to the grey undercoat, next coat of brown should do the trick!

Eoin

[Midland Man]

Wow just wow. She is a real beauty and is not even complete! Realy wants me to get one of those. Funnily one of the large manors near me had a garden railway using gauge 2 engines and stock. When the owner moved house he left a lot of the track behind as well as a carriage (he never carried passengers only model coaches) I am trying to find more about the railway. Could have realy intresting locomotives.

[murrayec]

There is a 3.5 inch gauge track up the road from me, It's just lying there idle, over-grown with ivy and slowly deteriorating! I recently got in touch with the owner of the property to view the track and discuss using it. The guy that built it is long gone but some of his live steam locos are held by the local history group, they have had meetings at the track and steamed up one of the locos on a section of cleared track- no running though.

Anyway my idea was to run a 3.5'' loco I have in the build mix and another possible repair, the meeting did not go two well- from the section I uncovered of ivy showed the track in reasonable condition but some sections needed total replacement and some of the concrete support structure suffered a tree fall and would have to be rebuilt! The option put to me was do do it all at my expense and to possibly supply an electrical loco and stock for their use, otherwise they wanted to leave the track as is ' as it looks very nice covered in ivy' Needless to say I backed away. Such a pity because in few more years the track will be beyond salvaging!

This is the Northumbria Loco kit;-

 

This 3.5'' Royal Scott was to be restored for a client and I was hoping the track could be used to test run it, but alas the restoration deal fell through!

Eoin

 

[Midland Man]

Sorry I have just seen the newish post. I am sorry to hear about the story of the local garden railway. Seems a pity to hear that it is idle. If you ever seen the tv show  Black Adder you will know if you want something kill Blaldrick first. I hope that something comes of it. 

[murrayec]

@Midland Man yes pretty sad- I heard that the chap who built it- his family from the UK came visiting and asked could they call to the house to view the layout as it was their father's pride & joy, they were very disappointed when they saw the track in it's over-grown state.

I will be building a 3.5" straight track in my garden to run the Northumbrian loco when complete, I may invite the now owners of the track to come and view it running and that may light a spark!!

Eoin

Edited June 12, 2020 by murrayec

[murrayec]

The first coats of brown did not go on to well, the paint just refused to flatten out when drying! so gave it a good week to dry and then out with the wet n dry and rubbed it down all over.

The next few coats went on beautifully- flattened out n all shiny.

Next was the masking up for the black paint on the running boards, cab floor, and the smokebox on the boiler.

Black on.

I got a good wet coat on after spraying a light tacky coat and leaving it for 45mins before applying the wet coat.

And unmasked.

I set up a decal sheet for doing the boiler bands and some of the lining, I sprayed a base coat of the brown colour onto Testors transparent decal sheet but the paint did not take to it very well, finger prints and greasy areas caused the paint to run away! When that coat dried I washed it down with white spirit and sprayed it again, I ended up with a very poor surface for running a bow pen on which is what I'm going to use to do the lining. I decided that this was going to be a practice sheet and would order new and better paper, so in the mean time I had a go...

I strapped the decal sheet to a bit of white board, using a T-Square and a heavy ruler with masking tape stuck to the underside so the ruler stood off the sheet.

I did a few yellow test lines using a guide sheet there on the left with the line positions marked out in pencil, as suspected there was to much undulation in the base paint the lines came out different thickness over the length. Not happy with this so will wait for the new paper.

I did the black paint between a few of the top yellow lines for the boiler bands but it was disastrous and not going to show you!

Chassis and wheel painting is complete and the chassis is now back together.

So nearly there......

Eoin

 

 

[Midland Man]

Realy good stuff too good. I just thought that the original paint job and lining was done by hand and mainly by women. A lot of early modelers were the same and fry did all of his pre CIE stuff by hand. When I went to the Malihide with me brother who is an annoying military modeler he complained that FRYS models were bad because you can see paint marks!

Any way I think the model looks lovely.

MM

[Georgeconna]

I feel your pain main, I find that it is 2 steps forward one step back, Paint these days is a disaster for me!

[murrayec]

After my second attempt to create the lining myself, which again ended up a mess, I gave up time wasting- drew up the lining artwork and got SSM to print out a sheet of decals in black & gold.

So over Christmas the lining was done.....

Decal sheets just after receiving a coat of lacquer.

 

The buffer beam getting a coat of gloss red.

The boiler bands and loco number on the smoke box door were done first.

Loco body on the way.

And completed.

A few small gloss black touch ups are required on the cab edges and on the gold lining to trim the corners, then a final coat of lacquer and we're sticking it together....

The final job is the boiler handrails, I have to turn a handrail knob but unfortunately my lathe is still not operational, though the new replacement motor arrived from China into the UK last week so I expect it by courier very soon!

Eoin.

[Galteemore]

That looks a treat Eoin!  

[murrayec]

4 minutes ago, Galteemore said:

That looks a treat Eoin!  

Yes, it's looking good, the photos are showing it up as more red than brown- it's the lighting in the workshop and the camera! I must play with the settings on the camera..... but I only remember after I post up photos!!

 

Eoin

[murrayec]

Final bits and assembly of the Bing!

With the lathe back in operation the replacement steam whistle handle could be done.

Turning the handle from 10mm square Tufnol.

Part made.

And stuck on with epoxy glue, the valve assembly was given a light wire-brushing and polished with Peek metal polish.

The new boiler handrail knob being setup, using a bar of 6mm NS for the knob, a 10mm brass rod for making a holding mandrill when doing the round bit and drilling the rail hole, and 1.5mm NS wire for the new handrails.

6mm rod turned down to head diameter and just about to cut the 6BA thread on the end.

After threading the knob blank its then threaded into the brass mandrill and the ball end turning is done with that red ball turning tool mounted on the lathe cross-slide.

With the ball end complete the knob is screwed onto the boiler and the location of the hole is checked, marked, screwed back onto the mandrill, then the mandrill is put in the vice for drilling a 1.6mm hole.

New knob fitted and new handrails trimmed to size and installed.

After a good clean down of the paintwork the parts where given a few coats of lacquer, when well dry final assembly was done.

Complete.

Eoin

 

Edited March 16, 2021 by murrayec

[Billycan]

Looking back to the first photo on the thread, this latest say it all.  Superb Eoin.

[Sean Hogan]

Work is fabulous eoin well done 

[KMCE]

Stunning.  Detail is superb.  Well done.

[DiveController]

On 15/3/2021 at 2:04 PM, Billycan said:

Looking back to the first photo on the thread, this latest say it all.  Superb Eoin.

Yes, indeed! Stunning difference

[Georgeconna]

On 12/6/2020 at 2:37 PM, murrayec said:

@Midland Man yes pretty sad- I heard that the chap who built it- his family from the UK came visiting and asked could they call to the house to view the layout as it was their father's pride & joy, they were very disappointed when they saw the track in it's over-grown state.

I will be building a 3.5" straight track in my garden to run the Northumbrian loco when complete, I may invite the now owners of the track to come and view it running and that may light a spark!!

Eoin

That's a right ol shame, Happened to Crosshaven's track too, in the end it was ripped up. I imagine there is just not the interest here to support this type of engineering modelling in Ireland. the missus came across a Video of it in the 80's recently, Was jammed packed too.

When I lived in Hounslow in the 80s I used to pop up to Harlington on Sunday am to watch their live steam stuff

 

[murrayec]

Yes @Georgeconna it's a shame the track up the road is not used and left to rot!

Interestingly though! that 3.5 inch gauge Royal Scott I mentioned above in this thread, is back on the list for repair & restoration to live steam running!! The chap also says if we can get it running he will build a track in his 'large' garden- this could be interesting? We have discussed about making it look like a Class 800!!

Eoin

 

[Georgeconna]

1 hour ago, murrayec said:

Yes @Georgeconna it's a shame the track up the road is not used and left to rot!

Interestingly though! that 3.5 inch gauge Royal Scott I mentioned above in this thread, is back on the list for repair & restoration to live steam running!! The chap also says if we can get it running he will build a track in his 'large' garden- this could be interesting? We have discussed about making it look like a Class 800!!

Eoin

 

Corr!! that would be great to see this beauty on the go again!