petesworkshop

I pinned the tender footplate down to a small piece of MDF before soldering on the valances, drawplate and rear buffer beam. I cut the latter part too short so it was flush with the valances, as I misread the drawing, and had to laboriously remake this part, as photos show the buffer beams overlaping the valances on both tender and loco. I’ve done some work on the buffer castings too, cutting away the excess thickness on that part of the casting that attaches to the buffer beam to make a better representation of the HR style buffer housing.

I similarly pinned the loco footplate down flat to MDF and had just nicely tidied up the front buffer beam, after flattening out the rivets that I’d pressed into it by accident, when I discovered that in this case both the rear draw plate and the front buffer beam were too short by 1.5mm, so I’d no option but to remake these parts and discard the offending parts that I’d so lovingly burnished flat. The front buffer beam and drawplate as well as the loco footplate have half etched holes beneath them, inviting the unwary modeller to press the rivets out; this must be resisted at all costs as the Wee Ben was not rivetted in these places in either HR days or under LMS ownership.        

Progress on my Wee Ben has not been spectacular over the last few weeks, I’ve mostly been working in the flat assembling various components such as the etched brakes which I thought looked better than the cast ones that came with the LGM Small Ben parts pack. You can see in the above photo how I’ve bent the tender chassis to shape (using a bending jig from "Metalsmith") and soldered brass sprung hornblocks into cut outs in the chassis sides for all six wheels. Another job that took some time was shorting out the wheels of one side of not only the tender but the loco too, as I intend to use the so called "American" pick up system. I joined the brass central boss of each wheel to the outer steel rim by means of a fine brass rod running in a groove cut behind a spoke and locating in small holes drilled in both the rim and the central boss, thus effectively shorting out the plastic insulation. You can just see this arrangement on the back of the near axle offside wheel. I drilled access holes in the top of the chassis so I could adjust the screws that control the ride height of the tender. Washers were added to all the axles to restrict sideplay of the wheels.