David Andrews Princess Royal - 6206 Princess Marie Louise

I have changed the thread title to reflect the ongoing build as we are long past the competition ending.

 

The prints arrived yesterday afternoon and they look super. Sadly I have misread the drawing and got the front shoulders of the firebox too narrow.







As you can see from the last to images it's just to narrow to disguise so another iteration it will have to be.

I was hoping that I could modify a copy of my last drawing version but I think that I might have broken it....

 

After seeing how many fixes to broken paths etc. would be needed. I decided to redraw using the sketches from the last version or rather all except the front and rear formers. Those are the ones that need to be wider. It does help now that I have realised that I had misinterpreted the drawing for them. I am drawing in exactly the same orientation as the previous version, so I have high hopes that the lower parts will still line up with the new upper firebox.

 

The second redraw is finished with two aborted ones in between.

 

Although Happy with the final result drawing wise, I still wanted to improve the print quality by make it as good as I can. I consulted a couple of very knowledgeable people whose principle advice was that I had the walls of the print too thick. The recommendation being around 2mm (it was 7mm at this point). I did manage to reduce it to 5mm without breaking anything that couldn't quickly be fixed, but to get it to 2mm required another redraw. Thankfully I was able to reuse all the detail parts such as boiler bands and mud hole covers that I had drawn previously by using the derive function.







It's now gone for print so fingers crossed this should be the final iteration.

 

I seem to have been really busy with real life and not a huge amount to show for the work on the Princess.
I have returned to the chassis while I await castings for the back head and the firebox print - Royal Fail seem to be keeping their reputation intact FB posted a week last Saturday and replacement castings from Ragstone posted a week yesterday, no sign of either yet.

On the rear axle which is to be driven there isn't a great deal of room on the axle for the gearbox, hornblocks and taper pin. It turned out that after trying everything the taper pin actually sat under the left hand hornblock. Initially I tried cutting down the taper pin so that it just went through the axle and would spin inside the horn block. I obviously didn't make it a tight enough fit as it went walk about. Thankfully I do have a few spare taper pin so I was able to replace it but I didn't want the same thing to happen again so after some thought I hit upon the idea to thin down that hornblock. I took it out and milled 1mm off the rear of it. Which you should be able to see from comparing the first two photos





Next I moved onto fitting the representation of the inside motion. I had to solder the eccentric straps together and then make some location points for the slide bars and lotion plate.



I have done this with a couple of strips of scrap etch and the plan is to mill a couple of small angle plates to allow the cylinder front to be screwed in place. I will take some more detailed phots once I have finished this.



Subject to retaining it I have achieved what I set out to, you can see the cross heads through the openings in the frames, with a small amount of visible movement when the axle is rotated.

 

I am still working away on the details, a gent on the GOG forum pointed out that I had the front boiler slightly band too far from the smokebox so having checked photos and seen what he meant I moved it as far as I could. It's now sat on the very rear edge of the smokebox/boiler joint rather than straddling them as I had it initially.



Next I turned what are probably the smallest part I have done to date. A challenge but satisfying.



This is the working drawing - Fusion in it's wisdom seems to get a few of the sizes slightly under or over when creating drawings despite having defined dimensions in the sketches. So they are rounded to the full size i.e. 1.75mm for the overall diameter.



Finally with my obligatory 5 pence coin.

 

I was asked (understandably) what they were for. As soon as I posted the update I realised that I hadn't explained what they were but at the point I hadn't done this





This is a snip of the real thing on Princess Elizabeth




Looking at it I really need a nut on the bottom too.

 

Hi Andy,
Yes, that's what it is, a lubricator for the bogie support bolster.

 

Well, it's a good job I had decided to add the bottom nut as, when I was walking back into the workshop after taking the last photo I dropped the blessed oil pot and it disappeared into the ether. As it turned out if you will pardon the pun the bottom stem wasn't long enough to accommodate the nut and go through the hole in the bolster so I made too more.

 

Yep, it's nailed on that I will trip over it in the next few days.