David Andrews Princess Royal - 6206 Princess Marie Louise

Not any more Brian, I had a couple of 5p coins on my desk that I used in photos but needed some change for parking last week so I will need another thing to scale from in future photos.

 

Good morning Brian,

That was a proper 'Gotcha!' moment and it really made me laugh.

 

Despite having a few things going on in the real world this week, I have made some steady progress on the body details.

While I had the boiler in place I fitted the front pipe clips for the vacuum ejector pipe.



Then I fitted the pipes for the top feed which took quite a bit of filing to get them to sit snugly on top of the splasher without the boiler rocking.



Then having removed the boiler I drilled a hole in the bottom of the elbow fitting for a small pipe which is visible on most photos no matter what period.



That done, I moved onto fitting the twin oil boxes and their frames. This area still needs much cleaning done.



Then it was the front vacuum pipe and associated pipework which was included as nice castings in the kit. I did make the bracket to hang it from the rear of the buffer plank after adding a pipe union from brass tube.



Finally for this update I chose what I viewed as the easier set of pipework to add first. Not before I replaced the etched mounting brackets with some from flat bar after peering at photos and noticing that they were plates with two holes in them rather than straps wrapped around the pipework.



Now to work out how to fit the injector pipe on the other side.

 

Hi Tony,

Now there is a question,

My soldering iron for higher melt solder is an 80 watt (ERSA 80 solder station which goes up to 450 degrees) but I also use an Iroda Solderpro 120 microflame and a RSU (resistance Soldering Unit). I usually have it set at 340 degrees and this works for most of my kit building. I only increase the temperature if I am working with particularly thick material.

For low melt solder (70 and 100 degrees) I have a Maplins own brand basic solder station which I have preset to a temperature (via a potentiometer) which melts the solder but doesn't melt whitemetal castings. Once trial and error had determined the correct setting, I just left the potentiometer set at the temperature. I turn it on and off at the mans so that I don't have to remember the physical setting. Being a basic (£9.99 when I bought it) unit it doesn't display the actual temperature. Thinking that it might fail over time I bought a second unit before Maplins shut down but I haven't needed to get the replacement out of the box yet. I confess that I have had to replace the tip as I wore that out But I must have had it for at least 10 years.

 

Hi Tony,
I have a good number of brass kits under my belt so yes reasonably competent.

If you want something cheap and cheerful to practice on there is a LMS jubilee footplate and cab etch on the Guild sales and wants pages for £18 inc postage. You can solder it together then use a blow lamp to take it apart, clean it up and do it again.

- https://www.gaugeoguild.com/sales_wants/sw_display.aspx?id=18042

On a similar note I have a single etched side from a panelled LNWR brake coach, which I use for practicing lining on periodically. A dunk in acetone afterwards has it clean and ready to be used again.

 

The Princess continues to challenge.

The replacement for the live steam injector pipe took much tweaking and test fitting before it fit snugly with the chassis in place.



Once I got my head around how the pipes ran, the two front oilers didn't present too much of an issue although I had to look at a good number of photos before I worked out where said pipes ran.




Next I removed the pin rom the bottom of the steam pipe castings and drilled and tapped them 10 BA so that I could screw them to the footplate through the mounting holes



As can be seen from the snips below there is quite a gap between the boiler and the steampipe flange. At the moment I am not sure where the problem lies, whether it's in the placement of the mounting holes, in the dimensions of the castings or something else. Initially I tried turning down some washers to fill the gap but I don't think that's the answer.

 

I have done a bit of measuring and the gap versus the dimensions on the GA is 0.3mm so tape would be too thin. I may be able to move the pipe further back towards the smokebox on the footplate but I need to allow for the sand box filler plate which mounts behind/between the pipe and the smokebox.