Building a Spaceship

After a short sojourn down in Leek sorting some Family stuff out I have now returned to the temporary workbench at home and took the 9F cab to task adding in all the other fiddly and finer items such as window bezels and inner frames. The BR standard cab is a complex shape to get right since there are so many conflicting angles to attend to, I think I've got it correct as best I can, particulaly as the components are all half etch thickness. Glazing is all cut out ready to fit when the glorious day after painting comes but for now another assembly is complete and everything fits correctly in place.

On another note the electrician informs me he will be installing new circuits in the workshop from next Tuesday so that means the studio workshop will soon be up and running again.

 

I'll report back next week to say if Mr Milson has got fuses on his van.

 

Sorry I forgot to put this image on the previos thread... its a bit fuzzy but shows the internal shape forming the half etch pieces into quite a robust structure. I'll clean the solder overspill back a little but not unduly concerned as it adds strength and won't really be seen under paint.

 

Thank you for your advice and that is always welcomed and taken on board... I do try to use only as little solder as needed and in the case of the cab with restricted access I was able you make use of some of the interior "solder spill" to fix the internal cab window bezels and frame sliders.

My thoughts were to remove the solder staining as I hate dirty work... the solder stains are thin and not lumpy deposits... hopefully the joins (which are not always as clean as yours are) will hold up.

Again Rob thanks for the good advice as I didn't know about the need to work thinly... plumbers take note.

 

Next job on the list after building up the cab was to make up the remainly sub-assembly items which included Motion brackets, slide bar support brackets and the injector pipe bracket which I have yet to do. There is a sequence order of jobs to do here and the first one is to mark and drill where the pick up fittings will go... but more about that aspect in the next post, now once the slide bar support bracket is fitted that then restricts the fitting or removal of the cylinder block which has been completed a while back now. The cylinder block slides up onto te frame from below and with the brackets fitted the valve casting on the block is trapped in place by the slide bar supports and slide bars once fitted... so the choice here is either solder everything fixed or chop the complete front end away as a separate assembly as I did with the ACME Ivatt Class 3 tank loco. There seems no real advantage doing that and its a LOT of work so its looking like being a permenant fit as the bracket holding the lifting link, radius rod and expansion links are further back along the main frame and thus cannot be made to lift out secretly.

Anyway here is the start point with three brackets made up and the fourth one on the etch which shows just how tiny some of the components are.





This is the right side motion bracket which measures 19.5mm along the length.





Its quite an angular little assembly and took a bit of figuring out.

 

Now here is the trapping issue I discussed in the previous post...these are just dry unfitted assemblies currently, the valve support cradle is trapped by the slide bar bracket, it wouldn't matter any if the bracket was attached to the main frame with a 12BA nut and screw as both assemblies are connected by the combination lever and radius rod, this was done over on another forum where there was a recent 9F Crosti build undertaken.





This is the left side motion bracket assembly... a little bigger this one.





And here are the four bracket assemblies all made up ready to be fitted once the frames are drilled to accept pick ups... I've been thinking about my own design as I never feel happy with the commercial ones, mine will be the wiper type.

 

No worries Rob... I'm going to stick to the Scorpio rule book and solder them all fixed as per Jeff Ennis's instructions.

 

Ah interesting Chigley... I suspect this is different and the cylinder block slides downwards on the Scorpio model, also when I asked Ragstone for brake tanks his diagram shows twe tanks fitted with a differend pull rod arrangement. The front tank acts on the front and second wheelsets which have a single central pull rod and the rear tank acts on the other three wheels with dual push rods on theremaining brake beams. I realise this is a digression but the Scorpio model is what it is and I am wondering if the cylinder saddle and brackets were soldered in place why exactly would they need posible removing? I have made the cylinders removable on the Patriot build and the Riddles Class 3 Tank, Ivatt tank and the Fowler Tank but they were all able to become one independant assembly where as the 0F is different or at least my brain stops at the first hurdle so to speak.

 

Thanks Chigley I must have got thinks the wrong way about... incidentally I'm putting brain cells together to see the best way of making the bracket and cylinder assemblies removable. I'll post up more once I've worked things out.

 

Its taken a bit of a brain work out deciding the best way to install the various different elements without confliction on the Scorpio 9F frames, I would add at this stage I'm making my own electrical pick up wipers which will contact on wheelsets 1, 2 and 5. The helical gearbox motor combo will drive on axle four as per the instruction design as a special motor unit on mounted on axle 5 will interfere with the rear cross bracing which would need considerable alteration at this point in the build.

So using a Poppies Woodtech jig made for 9F builds the frames were mounted on jury axles and the freshly fabricated coupling rods fitted to test the dimensions, thankfully everything fits as it should and the real test will come when the wheelsets are fitted. I have already located the crankpins on the wheels, they are 10BA size on all wheels as the strain of rotation on five axles may be too much force for 12BA pins. The problem here is that once the wheels are fitted and the motion brackets and cylinder saddle installed all the wheels are potentially locked into position making removability difficult... we shall see thought.

The copper clad pieces next to the plastic tubing through the frames is where my own design of pick ups will fit.

 

So the next stage of this build was to put all the brake rigging together, this necessitated some scratch making as I'd opted to go for installing the steam brake cylinders along with their respective brake shaft beams and mounting brackets, the steam brake castings were from Andy at Ragstone as were the brake shafts. 9F locos had two steam brake cylinders and both have differing brake shafts, the first cylinder is mounted between the 2nd and 3rd wheelsets and the rear cylinder goes behind the rear wheelset under the cab area.

I made each cylinder assembly as seperate items, this is the rear cylinder and the pull rods were scratch made from 0.08mm wire with micro tubing and 14BA nuts to represent the adjuster barrel.




This picture shows the rear brake cylinder located in the frames, the cross brace plate located between the rear spring mounts on the fifth axleindicates just how difficult it would be to fit a helical gearbox and motor combo on the rear axle without major remaking the back end of the loco frames. a special motor unit would without doubt fit directly up into the firebox port but at the cost of the brake cylinder install which i particulaly wanted to keep.

 

Here is the forward steam brake cylinder, the brake push rod linkage of this one involved some scratch making as sadly I lost the original link supplied by Ragstone somewhere on the tile floor making a similar replacement took less time than me on hands and knees searching for the missing one. Note also the difference in shaft width between the two, the front one is narrower in width.





Each of the brake cross beams which bare on the pull rods had to be modified to accept the correct location on each set of pull rods. This is the first beam which fits in front of the rear brake cylinder where the two adjusting rods from the shaft transfer motion onto a single central pull rod for axles 3 and 4. This is a modification and diversion away from the contents of the original Seven Models Scorpio kit but it suits my pedantic needs for accuracy.