Connoisseur Models LNER J79 Tank Loco

Now that the B16/1 is finished I thought I would share with a you a little distraction that I had a couple of weeks ago.

Some of you may recall my birthday 'shiney's' containing a kit for Connoisseur J79 tank loco.

I had a few days off after my birthday and wanted to spend it working on something for me. I really should have spent the time working on my MOK 8F kit but I didn't instead I made a good start on the J79.

Jim's kits are great in that you can build them as supplied and have a lovely model or you can go to town and have an even better model. I chose to not only raid the spares box but to do some scratch building as well.

This is where I got to during the 4 days that I spent on it.

First of all I built the chassis. I decided I wanted something a little more 3D for the loco springs and after raiding a few of my kit stock to see if I could borrow anything that might be suitable I ended up making some from scrap etch, nickel rod and some 12ba nuts.






The centre axle holes have been elongated downwards and sprung with a piece of 0.8mm piano wire which sits into a dimple drilled in the bearing.
The lovely brake castings are from Ragstone Models and were bought originally for my A3 but there wasn't enough clearance to use them so they were sat in the spares box and matched the etches perfectly so it made sense to use them.




The J79 (NER H2) has quite distinctive couplings which again are made up from bits in the spares box




While at Guildex was enquiring as to the availability of coupling rods for the N2 etches that I picked up from the E&T and noted that they had a table at the side of the stand which had boxes of castings of various descriptions at quite silly prices. Apparently they had cleared out their workshop and they were all part used sprues of lost wax castings most were at £1 or £2 per bag and I got quite a few for about £12 in total. Some of these were lamp Irons.
I made use of them on the bunker rear



To make them even more secure I drilled through and attached them via the spigots too.



The coupling rods in this kit are brass etches and Jim helpfully suggests tinning them to make them look like dirty steel rods. I have used this tactic in the past and it does work.


Finally I blackened the wheels, tapped the crank pin bushes 10ba and fitted 10ba steel Counter Sunk screws to the wheels.

 

Toto wrote:

Hi Tom,
Some are gained from experience but most have been picked up from looking at builds on various forums and seeing what might work for me.
What is worth doing is building up your spares box with things like castings and couplings. I buy castings from shows where ever I see them on the basis that they will either come in for a build at some point or allow them to be modified into something else entirely.

Jim does a really nice pack of lost wax vacuum ejector and clack valve castings that are always useful to have in stock.
The more kit's you build the more spares you will accrue.

 

Work has progressed a little this week with me adding the cab beading and fitting the cab/bunker/tank sides to the footplate. I took a bit of care to make sure that I got the sides to the outer edge of the etched slots in the footplate - this is an older kit and some of the slots are slightly over etched.

I then looked to fit the bunker rear and found that there is a slight gap at one side so I am probably going to have to adjust the left hand side as you view it from the rear. that may mean that I need to fill a small gap in the footplate top time will tell.







It was getting late by the time I discovered that so I moved onto something a little easier for my last 15 minutes or so.

Namely the cab roof. I am quite impressed by Jim's design for this because it's usually a bit of a fiddle to get it to sit square and be retained in the cab. Jim's answer is a nifty fold up etch.



A note to anyone building one of these, there are half etched curves in the roof for locating the rain strips (the idea is that you solder in a length of thin wire and it becomes a half round rain strip). when rolling, the roof has a tendency to fold rather than roll smoothly. Backing it with a bit of card as it goes through the rollers would probably help with this.

Having none to hand I didn't bother, I just stopped passing it through the rollers right to the ends of the roof and effectively just rolled the middle section. I also replaced the wire with some small square section rod that I had in stock.




Lastly in true Blue Peter fashion, here's a bit that I did earlier. I had previously added the spacers and the boiler bands to the boiler but had popped it back in the kit box so missed taking any photos of it when I took the photos that I shared the other day.

 

A weekend at home has seen much progress on the J79.
The chimney and safety valve cover are just posed for the photo I want add more detail before fixing them in place.





The cab is still loose at this point too.


This is the reason that it's still loose, although at an oblique angle one of the photos that I have seems to show bars on over the rear windows which I have added - suitably distressed too.




Since taking this shot on Sunday morning I have made up the vacuum ejector pipe and soldered the rear of the cab in place.



There is a lot going on for such a diminutive little loco

 

jakesdad13 wrote:

Thanks for the kind words Gents.
Pete the secret to the neat soldering is that I do as much as possible with a microflame. It allows you to use the tiniest piece of solder which you melt with the flame and chase along the joint using heat to keep it flowing and capillary action. It also means that there is a lot less cleaning up to do afterwards. I do still use a soldering iron too but that make a bit more mess.
Trial an error has taught me that you actually don't need much solder at all to make a successful joint.
I also learned this week that if you overheat solder it leaves a powdery residue that's the very devil to get rid of. So where I used to have my solder station set to 400 degrees I have now turned it down to 340 without any discernable difference

 

Hi Tom,
I have two, an Iroda Solder Pro 120 which I use the most (mainly because I have had it the longest and I am comfortable with it) and I also have one with a base stand which is by one of the big soldering iron manufacturers (it might even be Antex but I will need to check).
In terms of temperature the bumph says 250-550 degrees - plenty for what we need and I am sure that you could silver solder with it too but I haven't tried that yet.

 

The last couple of evenings have seen more details added to the body of the J79
It now sports Clack valves, the safety valve bonnet, a front lamp iron on the smokebox and finally a connection and pipe to the tops of the firebox. I am not certain what this is exactly but noticed it on a recent photo posted by Mick Roffe of the preserved J72 too.







In the box were a nice pair of brass brake standards, one for the loco one for the spares box - the spares box has been heavily raided for this build.

 

Thanks Tom,
once you start using it you will find more and more uses for it.
The main thing to remember is that everything gets hot so holding in pliers etc is essential.
I would also think about getting some things to act as heat sinks to stop parts that you have previously soldered on from dropping off when you solder the next part on.
I use these -
From Eileens Emporium but no doubt you could buy similar elsewhere. I also have several pairs of self locking tweezers and some surgical clamps.
All get used depending on requirements.
I would also suggest that if your workbench isn't close to a tap that you get a tub of cold water that you can dunk the item in to cool it down once you have soldered each part on.