Well the tender is pretty much there, I still need to paint the wood flooring at the front of the tender dirty wood colour but unless I spot anything else construction is finished. What isn't visible in these shots is the drop head buckeye coupling which is a Just Like the Real Thing casting(s). Although DJH provide couplings and a white metal casting for to represent the buckeye it's designed to be soldered to the buffer plank and is a bit 2D. I had seen the JLRT buckeyes because I have a couple of JLRT Gresley coach kits and they come as standard in those.
Hello Rob, 1 / nice work, I particularly like the Gresley A1&A3, very elegant, and the LNER Apple Green livery enhances their elegance in away that the later BR Green does not. 2 / what is the source of the connecting two pin plug with red plastic housing please? Regards, Echidna.
Thanks Echidna, I brought the plugs via ebay a few years ago and although I still have a few I haven't seen the same type since. I also have a stock of much smaller type commonly used in PCs etc. for connecting small components.
Moving on to the chassis next. Before reassembly of the valve gear and any issues which that might bring there are a couple of casualties of the strip to deal with. To be fair the second one in hindsight was an issue waiting to happen. The first will be challenge enough. In the photo below you will note one of the parts of the 2:1 lever is missing? It's not actually missing but it has come adrift from the valve rod so it needs soldering back on. The challenge here is that it's at it's full extent and the two fingers of the valve guide castings either side of it are whitemetal. The other end is forked so you cannot solder it together and them pass it back though the valve guide from the front. Still I soldered them in in the first place without melting anything so I should able to do it again.... Below is the errant 2:1 lever. DJH in their wisdom provide what should in fact be one short lever and one long lever that pivots in the middle as two equally sized rods which both attah to the valve rods in exactly the same way. The next issue is the pivot point for the Cartazzi truck has stripped it's threads. I mentioned that it's an issue waiting to happen and it is because you are expected to tap a single layer of etch 2mm to secure the Cartazzi truck with a shouldered screw. You can see the stripped hole between the brake rods below. Had I though about it at the time I could have added more thicknesses of scrap etch to give more threads but now it's assembled and painted my options are a bit more limited. What I decided to do after much thought is to turn up a shouldered fixture that is drilled and tapped 8BA (I already had 8BA screws to hand) with a small collar to allow adjustment and then the truck secured with an 8BA screw. Rather than make it a full hex head I just milled a couple of flats on it to aid being held. Next I need to open out the stripped hole so that the turned don section is a tight fit and then the Cartazzi should be able to be screwed in and still be free enough to manoeuvre as it needs to when following the track. Lastly this is a shot of the chassis from a pint point of view.
I finally got the A3 mostly back together this last week so that I could have it on my display stand at Newton Aycliffe show. I say mostly because I still need to refit the seats in the cab and wire up the motor for a test run but it looks the part. This was how it looked at the show on the display stand with other locos that I have built.
As an addendum it just goes to show that you shouldn't rely on what people tell you. While looking through my box of bits for the loco I found the shouldered screw that is designed to retain the Cartazzi truck. Just out of curiosity I tried it to see how badly the threads were stripped. It screwed straight in and tightened up as it should. So I had made the replacement fitting for nothing on the back of Warren telling me the threads were stripped. In hindsight I suspect that he didn't have the right sized screw as I had kept the shouldered one after stripping it down when I sent it for paint. Oh well, another one for the spares box. I also forgot to add in my last post that it was great to put a face to Mossy's name when he popped by to say hello at the show yesterday