petesworkshop

Construction of the engine and tender is complete now; there’s still a few small details that could do with attention though it’s probably best to leave the project alone now and distance myself from it before I decide whether to fiddle a little more with it. I’d like to take some better photos too; outside is probably best as lighting both the engine and tender inside is difficult. I need a bright day and the forecast is far from bright so I’ll have to wait.

The fall-plate hides the two pick-up wires that lead from the tender to the loco. The tender’s buffers can still be seen though and add an extra realistic detail in this area of the model.

The Skye Bogie’s backhead was made from a Lochgorm Kits etching, most of the cast detail came with the kit though I added a few extras myself. Open cabs like this need a busy, detailed interior and an appropriate crew, and they’re under way at this moment. 

Construction of the engine is complete; there’s a few jobs to be done on the tender before I can photograph them coupled together as they should be. I haven’t quite decided yet whether the tender should have coal rails or not. And that length of rail the engine is sitting on needs extending to accomodate the loco and tender.

 Last night, with construction of the engine nearing completion, I decided to glue the white metal roof on. It was a good casting and nicely detailed, but the kit still had a surprise in store for me, the casting was too narrow; it sat flush with the sides of the cab instead of overlapping it; in fact it was a good 2mm too narrow and did not look right at all. I set about righting the situation and sawed the roof in half lengthways. I taped the casting down to a wooden block with an appropriate gap between the halves and soldered it back together with ultra low melt solder which acts as a filler as well as a joining agent. When I was sure it fitted right I cleaned the job up, which was the laborious part of the business, and glued it in place over the cab. You can see how it overlaps the sides of the cab in this picture of the engine which is now complete, apart from a few minor tweaks required to the dome and the boiler handrail, which aren’t fixed in place yet.  

In this view you can just see the vaccum cylinder between the wheels, partly masked by the brake rigging but visible nevertheless, and I think probably worth that little bit of extra effort.

At a late stage in building the tender I acquired a drawing which showed a large vaccum cylinder under the tender with associated linkages, too large to ignore I thought, and probably visible at some angles too; so I made a cylinder from tube and added the linkages from wire and nickle silver sheet, which finished the underside of the tender off nicely. The brake rigging is not as close to the wheels as it should be, because the hornguides prevent this, a necessary compromise on a model where the tender picks up current from bushes running in insulated plastic hornguides.