David Andrews Princess Royal - 6206 Princess Marie Louise

Having fallen by the wayside in previous competition entries I hope to keep this one on the straight and narrow.
My entry as mentioned elsewhere is the build of the locomotive Princess Marie Louise from a David Andrews Kit. This will be the loco only as I have already built the tender as posted elsewhere on the forum.

 

So onto what's in the box.


Lot's of lovely nickel silver etches.



White Metal Castings



Lost wax Brass and Nickel castings



The pre rolled Boiler and Resin Firebox casting. The latter may need some modification when I get that far. Nick Dunhill Had to do quite major surgery to the firebox castings on some Princesses that he built from the same kit. Time will tell as to whether I need to do the same.



Sundries in the form of nuts and bolts etc.



Then onto all the extra goodies that will lift the model from the basic kit.

Premier Motion parts and Martin Finney LMS Horn Blocks



An assortment of replacement castings from the former Hobbyhorse Reynalds range (sadly no longer available) and Laurie Griffin Miniatures. - the packs with Blue backgrounds are the LG Miniatures



An ABC Motor/Gearbox, a replacement chimney drawn by Mike Hopkins from Princess General Arrangement Drawing and then 3D printed and cast in brass



The first job is to look over the instructions

Edited to add an Oops as I forgot to include the wheels

The wheels are from the former Alan Harris range, reputedly the best in the business but a first for me as they are/were quite a bit more expensive than Slaters.

 

Oh yes, a far cry from our friend Mr H's offerings even without the extras

 

Yes, no expense has been spared on this one, I hope that I can do it justice.

 

Thanks Torry,

I must admit to being really pleased to get first place in the Rolling Stock section. There were some cracking models submitted.

 

Usually when I start a loco build I start by making up the coupling rods in preparation for aiding with the assembly of the chassis. On a whim, I decided to build the trailing truck and the bogie first.

First the trailing truck.



The truck is in two parts an outer and an inner which holds the axles/wheels. As it comes in the kit it's a fold up frame with the front yoke as separate etches that you assemble to create the I frame.


I am working from the Wild Swan Loco Profile book N0 4 The Princess Royal Pacifics and aside from photos and historical information about the development and changes to the locos over time it also contains a number of General Arrangement Drawings. One of sets of drawings is for the trailing truck and shows the differences between the first two and the main production batch. 6206 is from the latter. What is clear from the drawings but not from photos (because you only see the sides not the ends) is that the front and back of the truck is also I beam type construction. I decided to add this from 10 thou nickel sheet cut with the guillotine. You can see the first piece in place on the photo above.









The inner truck is a basic fold up box that you add a couple of nuts to and then fit bearings. Although it cannot be seen from any angle unless you turn it upside down the drawing shows that there is some kind of side control mechanism so I decided to turn a basic representation of it from a couple of pieces of brass rod.



Lastly the truck assembled and ready to fit to the chassis at some future point.




The additions have also added a little more weight to the truck so with luck I may not need to try and find room for some lead later on.

 

Thanks Mark.

 

They do take some getting your head into and some that you come across are really poor scans/prints. Not that the latter comment applies to those in the Wild Swan volumes.
All that said if you want to lift your model. Then drawings and photos of your chosen example in the time period that you are modelling are essential.
For those modelling post grouping there were many changes to take account of but this is offset by there being many more photos taken. Examples of the more obvious changes are the fitting of AWS equipment and depending on the loco type, the fitting of smoke deflectors and double chimneys.

 

Yes, where would we be as modellers if the railway companies hadn't employed draughtsmen and more importantly, that so much of their output has survived for us to make use of today.

We should also consider the many volunteers who have spent countless hours identifying and cataloguing the drawings so that we might get an inkling of what exists and obtain copies of them.

 

The bogie as supplied is a fold up box to which additional end pieces are soldered. I forgot to take a phot of this so I include a snip from the instructions to show what it consists of.



I have some very nice castings in place of the etch parts B6 but sadly as you will see not much of them is visible on the finished bogie.


I built up the bogies frames to create the I section where needed as with the trailing truck. I also added some rivet strip along the top. Parts 164 are whitemetal castings which were passable, but I chose to remake them from brass

You will also note parts B10, this is where period photos are essential because these were not fitted until the 1940's which is later than this model is to be depicted (around 1938). There were location marks half etched into the spring plates so I reversed them to hide the marks.









I have also elongated one pair of holes so that I can provide some basic springing of one axle.







Once it's all assembled you can see what I mean about the visibility of the springs.