Gladiator GNR/LNER J6 with inside motion

With the end in sight for the J79 my thoughts have started straying to the next build which is to be an LNER/BR J6 (ex Great Northern Railway) This is to be built from a Gladiator Kit which originated in the George Norton Connoisseurs Choice range (according to the etches). Extras include full inside motion from Laurie Griffin along with a few of his detailing parts.
Once it's painted (by Warren Haywood) I will then be weathering it and adding the finishing touches.
We start with what's in the box.


First the brass castings and turnings



Then the very cleanly cast white metal details.


Then the etches,

The chassis etches are quite substantial nickel silver etches, but the body etches feel much thinner so I suspect that they will require a bit of careful handling until they are soldered into a rigid structure.


Wheels and pick ups


Finally the extras, These are all from Laurie Griffin and were my suggestions to the gent that I am building it for, to not only enhance it but to replace the vulnerable etched lamp irons.

 

The J6 is is officially underway,

I decided to build the tender first to get a feel for things and the plan is to use the tender for the pickups so hornblocks were fitted. The good news for this plan is that there were etched cut outs for fitting them with certainly simplified things.

All the wheels are blackened but I need to stock up on steel 10ba csk screws because I haven't enough to do the drivers.The horn guides are Finney but I seem to have misplaced the strips for retaining the hornblocks so I used a trick borrowed from Warren Haywood and used surplus 12ba nuts and bolts from Slaters crank pins to create retainers. In fairness I could have probably just soldered strips of scrap etch across the bottom because the Slaters wheels are easy to remove.

At the minute there is a lot of side play. I plan to leave this for the moment because the finished model has to negotiate 5' radius curves.









You will note in the last photo that I shimmed the spacers with some scrap etch I am not sure whether I really needed to but it helped to level the space with the top of the frames and to get a tighter fit with the rear spacer that goes through the frames mid way. I suspect that if I had tested it without removing the etching cusp I may not have needed it.

 

paul_l wrote:

Hi Paul,
At the minute I am going to just set the ride height and leave them unsprung but because they are easily removed I can always add springs later if needed after running trials.

 

Keith M wrote:

Hi Keith,
Because the loco is to have working inside motion I only plan to fit pickups to the tender (it seems a popular way to do it in 7mm these days). to allow the tender to be disconnected I am going to use some mini plugs/sockets that I got from eBay 40 pairs for £3

From here

They take a while to arrive and there is always the risk that they won't turn up but so far the only minor hitch I have had when buying from China is I only got 18 in a pack of 20 seats once but everything else has arrived as described and usually as cheap as chips.

 

Hi Keith,
I must admit that I too prefer the Zimo chips to ESU, especially for sound.

 

Although it looks to have been a little quiet on the J6 front things have been progress albeit that it's taken a slight detour.
After careful study of the tender in the photo v's what came with the kit, my client decided that he would prefer a different tender to make the loco match the photo. The alternate tender is now on order from David Hill at Gladiator but won't be available until March. I plan to continue to build the original tender, if for no other reason than to make sure I don't lose any of the bit's off it. - I have made a little more progress which I will share at some point.


Which means that thoughts have turned to the loco itself. I am very gratefully receiving help and guidance from Paul Pen-Sayers (@Locomodels) on building and fitting the inside motion in the chassis and I have been given Carte Blanche by my client to replace items in the same manner as I would if building it for myself.

So far I have elected to obtain some Premier coupling rods and some driving wheel springs from Ragstone. The latter I will need to modify but they will look a bit more like springs than the rather 1D etchings attached to the frames. In fairness to the kit, the etches are labelled 1992 and things have moved on a bit in the detail stakes since then.


This is what I mean by 1D they are a single layer etch with just the outline of the strap that retains the leaves.



The reason I elected to go for the Premier rods is similar, in that the rods provided are only dual layer with the back layer half etched and they are designed to pivot on the crank pin rather than the knuckle joint. I could perhaps have modified them to pivot on the knuckle but without adding another layer from scratch, I felt that they would still be a bit on the delicate side for coupling rods.

Moving swiftly on, I have started to clean up the inside motion parts and slipped some of them onto an axle to see how they fit.





Much more work to do on them of course - including attempting to straighten those straps...

 

Toto wrote:

I have to confess that this is a first for me and it seems like I have probably started on one of the more difficult examples because it's not quite straightforward Stephensons in having the weighshaft fittings under the crank shafts/eccentrics rods as opposed to the more usual examples which were fitted above.