After doing battle with the cylinders and struggling with a drill bit broken off in one of the valve guides which I have yet to resolve (but I do have a fall back position should I need it) I decided that for a bit of light relief I would make up the bogie and trailing truck. I started with the trailing truck for now other reason than I had some of the bit's already removed from the fret during the course of removing other bits. Sadly I had got to this bit when I realised that I had made an error in my interpretation of the instructions. You get two options of spring/axle box for the trailing truck. You get an axle box and full thickness spring combined and an etched spring separate axle box and some hanger castings. There are also a pair of thinner springs which I had attached as in the photos above. The idea being that you use the full thickness castings for loco where they are to be used on track radius of greater than 7 feet or use the etched ones for less than 7 feet radius. It was only when looking at the bogie that I realised the the thinner cast springs were in fact for the bogie rather than the trailing truck and it all made sense. thankfully it was the work of a few minutes to swap them over and put the etched ones where they belong. There were some castings provided for the spring hangers as I mentioned but 2 of them were missing so I cut some off the thicker castings to make up the set.
Lovely work Rob may I ask what the procedure was for removing the full thickness castings, is it just a matter of applying just sufficient heat to the brass thus letting the white metal spring casting fall away by gravity?
Hi Paul, Almost, I had soldered them on with 100 degree solder so it didn't take much heat and instead of allowing gravity to do it I used hair clips to hold the bits in place that I didn't want to remove and then used tweezers to grip the casting that I wanted to ease off and applied the heat with the microflame easing it off gently so I didn't damage it.
It's probably worth practicing soldering then de-soldering scrap white metal pieces onto etch sheets to get the technique right.
Can I ask where you get your 100 degree solder from Rob? The only stuff I've found is the DCC Concepts brand, which is fine as far as the actual solder is concerned, but it's cast into the letters D C C with 'concepts' along the bottom block, and in this form, even cut into smaller bits, it's not ideal to use, thin stick, or better still, wire form would be much easier to use. Keith.
Hi Keith here is where I get mine from http://www.hobbyholidays.co.uk/products.php?cat=40 Be seeing you Bob
I have some of Phil's 145 degree solder wire, which is very useful, but looking at his catalogue, it doesn't state what size 'stick' the 100 degree is. In my working life, I've used both bars and sticks of 'Tinmans solder', the sticks of which are about 8mm diameter and maybe 250mm long, but I'm rather hoping for something maybe 3mm diameter or thereabouts for ease of handling, at least on 4mm scale models. Keith.
Hi Keith, Mine is in stick form from C&L Finescale the sticks are approx 5mm x 3mm and maybe 8" long. It's a bit of a pain to cut into small pieces (it has a tendency to splinter and fly everywhere) and I have found that the best way is to squash it in my smooth jawed pliers and then use the wood chisel that I use to cut my etched parts out to chop off a sliver which I then cut again into two or three smaller pieces which I apply where I want them with tweezers and then waft the microflame over them I use one of these on it's minimum setting for soldering whitemetal and so far I haven't managed to melt anything other than the 100/70 degree solder. My 70 degree solder along with my flux is from Building O Gauge Online but that is in a thick stick which is a real pain to chop small lumps off. I get around this by using my lowmelt iron to melt and drag some solder out on the sheet of glass that I solder on and then when it's cooled scrape it off and cut it up if necessary. To be fiar most of my 70 degree soldering is don with the iron rather than the microflame.
With the trailing truck behind me (see what I did there), I started on the bogie. Sadly having rescued the and fitted the springs where they should go you don't see much of them once it's assembled. Now you see them.... Now you don't.... I also made a start on the valve gear but more on that later.
Apologies for the slight step back in time on this one but my trip to the NRM last Friday afforded me this comparison shot: This was one of the better shots most were quite poor due to the abysmal lighting....
Wow ..... Yours looks better than the real thing. Maybe you should go back into production on a 1 to 1 scale. Might take a fair bit of brass though. Nice work Rob and good to see the comparison. Cheers Toto
Some very nice work going on here. The coal pusher comparison is one of interest. I would have imagined that the coal would flow down the tender by gravity, but then again, on a hungry engine like the Coronation, I'd hate to be raking the coal down the tender let alone shoveling it into the fire box ! Cheers, Gary.
Green, green wash your mouth out with soap, even BR finally realised that Red was the one true colour for a Princess Coronation