David Andrews Princess Royal - 6206 Princess Marie Louise

You may well be right, but we are who we are. Plus my good lady keeps telling me that I haven't to change so I must be doing something right

 

More work on the roof in the last few days, starting with the roof shutters. You get a pair of half etched pieces to represent the shutters which you can solder in position open, closed or somewhere in between. Looking at the GA in the Wild Swan volume and a really good photo that I found online of Princess Margaret Rose I thought that it shouldn't be too difficult to make the shutters slide.





While I was at it I added the really prominent riveted strips across the middle of the roof and a pair of handles for the shutters.

 

My next plan was to dress the back head, a part of the model that I always enjoy. Sadly when checking the parts it seems that we are missing a sprue or two which contain many of the bits need. The plan is to source replacements from Ragstone and until I get those I did a bit more of the cab internals.
There are a couple of took boxes within the cab which David has done the same size however the trusty GA reveals that the right hand side box was only half the size of the one on the left. A fact that I didn't discover until I had folded and soldered it together. A quick bit of piercing saw action soon had it the right size.

The left hand box has a nice half etched representation of the door to which I added a 4mm scale handrail knob as the door knob (I filled the hole with some rod first). The other box didn't have anything supplied so I added a false top and hinges to it.







It was my intention to fit the backhead to the floor and have it removeable as one unit but the toolboxes as they are don't sit close enough to the cab side sheets. I will probably end up removing them them from the floor and fixing the floor and them in permanently leaving the backhead to be fixed later.

I also fitted the fall plate which is a nice design and easy to fit while making it rise and fall.

 

Thanks Andy,

After my initial post on the Guild forum a fellow member contacted me by PM and showed me photos of how he had articulated the outer section of the cab doors as well as the inner. Never one to shy away from the challenge I modified them the cab doors this afternoon.

Not only is Chris's suggested method very simple, it's also very robust.







They are still removeable for painting too.

 

More done on the Princess in the last day or so.

Fitted the window stays above the windows in the cab these are extra from now extinct HobbyHorse Range.



I also fitted the Chimney and the boiler bands. Normally Warren doesn't like boiler bands fitting as he prefers to do them to scale using transfers. The problem in this case is that they are designed to be fitted to hide the joints between the smokebox and boiler and once you add one you need to add the others...




Finally I am working on cleaning up the top feed casting which although nicely shaped had quite a castings step in it which is taking a bit of work to clean up. Here it is part way through the clean up process.

 

Moving on from the last post has involved a bit more micro surgery in the form of boiler band cleats.

You do get etches for them in the kit and the suggestion is to tie them together with a length of 0.5mm wire. Me being me I had to make some nuts to go on each end...



And with the obligatory item for scale.

 

Once all the boiler band cleats were made I fitted those to the boiler section that I could. There is another to fit to the firebox but more on that in another post.

There are three boiler bands on the boiler itself and the two front ones have the band cleat underneath the boiler while the one in front of the firebox is fitted on the top as is the one on the firebox.

Another fact that I picked up from the GA in the Wild swan book is that on the combustion chamber boilers which were fitted to 6206 at this point in her life was that the band cleats were slightly offset to one side.




This is the bottom of the boiler.

The rear one up on top.

Next I fitted some of the details to the smokebox

 

This week has mainly been about returning to the elephant in the room, the Firebox. There had been some discussion on Western Thunder some time ago about issues with the resin casting and I must admit I didn't get 'it' and after a (very!) rudimentary measure up, it didn't seem far out so I left it at that.
Fast forward to last week and Nick Dunhill posted on my thread on the GOG forum and mentioned how far out his had been on all the ones that he built (he built four in total) and how much work it had been to rectify the problems.

The talk also mentioned a whitemetal cast firebox produced by DJH for Gladiator (prior to David and Trisha buying the range). After seeing the discussion the guy that I am building it for rang me and told me that he had one of the Gladiator/DJH fireboxes which he would send me.

Once I had it in hand, I imported some GA's into Fusion from the Wild Swann book scaled them and started to compare the castings to the real thing.














Once I had done the comparisons it all clicked into place.

Because the ends of my casting were at 90 degrees to the footplate I thought that I had better castings once I realised that Nick had lowered the front by circa 2mm and raised the back by another 1mm it made sense why his front and rear face were no longer at right angles to the footplate and why the subsequent chopping and gap filling.

Nick's advice was to scratch build one or get Mick Davies (of Finney7) to draw one up and print it for me. I have initially opted to have a go at drawing it myself.







This is where I got to after the first session. Subsequent study made me realise that I needed to bring the curve under the front down a bit.
After my second session I had this - I did a short video capture of Fusion as being easier than taking multiple renders which I was struggling with.

 

Hi Andy,
No the front end is covered by the boiler and the rear fits against the cab front. The cut out is for the motor/gearbox but also you wouldn't want a big solid casting without that void. It would waste a lot of material and be very heavy.

 

Sorry Andy, I misunderstood. The gap will (in theory) be filled by the splashers. Filling it in means more cutting back of the splashers to allow the firebox/boiler to fit in between them. This morning I did the last bit of actual drawing now it just needs final fitting to the model footplate/splashers etc. Or as much as can be done by measurement on curved surfaces. The reason for this is that while I have been working to scale for the firebox, I already have the rest of the footplate, splashers, cab etc. assembled.

Next I need to make 'scale' mate with the existing model. If I were drawing it all up from scale I wouldn't need to do this but that said if the model firebox was correct I wouldn't be doing it either.