David Andrews Princess Royal - 6206 Princess Marie Louise

Well I managed to get my head into gear and work out a way to get past my issue of not being able to retain the cylinders in the chassis without the body in place.

From a piece of 3mm diameter nickel rod I turned a short length down to 2.2mm and threaded it 8BA. I cut it off using a piercing saw then reversed it and face it off until I had just the merest hint of a head as the thread ends.



I drilled a couple of holes in the top plate between the cylinders and tapped them 8ba there was already a slot in the frame spacer to accommodate one of the screws but I had to drill a corresponding hole to allow the second screw to pass through the spacer.



There isn't a huge amount of screw thread in the holes so I soldered the screws in to reinforce them.

 

The day before leaving for Stafford I had a bit of a disaster with the motion on the Princess in so much as one of the combination lever's snapped off while it was running on the rolling road. Initially I thought that it was due to there not being enough material left after opening out the holes for the locating pins but once I got back from Stafford and was able to remove the top end (the simple task of unscrewing a couple of 14ba screws) I found that the rod had actually snapped part way down the fluted section. I think that I have just been unlucky in that it was over cooked etch wise and that there was very little material left. there is so little that I cannot get my camera to focus on it to show what I mean.

Thankfully I had a couple of spares courtesy of Nick Dunhill so I have prepped a replacement. Not taking any chances on this one I have soldered a small strip of 10thou (0.25mm) onto the back of the rod to add a little extra strength. This has been done in fits and starts because like many other Chris and I picked something up at Safford that has taken a bit of shaking off. We have started to feel better one day only to feel crap again the next. Fingers crossed it's behind us now.









I just have to refit it to the loco now.

 

Well with a proper two forward one back amount of progress I think that I am now back to where I was pre Stafford.

When fitting the replacement combination lever I really struggled with the pieces of brass wire which I had previously cut and peined over to hold the various rods in place. After the 4th or 5th pinged off into space I got fed up and chucked up a length of 1.9mm nickel rod in the lathe and turned down some small pins. These combined with some etched washers that I found on a spare etch now retain the rods in place.



It was just prior to refitting that I thought that I had best remove the other combination lever and beef it up as I didn't want lightening to strike in the same pace twice.

After soldering another strip of nickel to the back and filing to shape I happened to place the two combination levers together on the bench where I realised that the replacement was longer that the one that snapped. As luck would have it I was able to solder a small piece of scrap etch into the bottom end of the fluted section and then drill through to the correct length. The last job was to cut of the over long bit and file the round on the bottom.



These are the four stages of the operation but the good news is that it's all now reassembled and I am subject to test running back to where I was and ready to fit the return cranks.

 

A few more micro fixings later saw. a major milestone both mentally and build wise.

These are the pins which hold the eccentric rod to the bottom of the expansion link. Initially I made the two fully threaded versions but then realised that it would be better if they were only partially threaded (14BA).




I had already fitted the return cranks and after this it was a short step to getting the full motion running.

 

Still beavering away making slow but steady progress. Next up were the front bogie top bearers (or that's how they are referred to in the instructions) and the fitting of the bogie itself. The former were easy, tin with 100 degree solder and use the RSU to heat from inside the frames.


The bogie fitting was a little more challenging. My fitting of the representation of inside motion had scuppered using the method that the kit provided. At Guildex I had a chat with Nick about how he had done his and he confirmed what I had thought would have to be the solution. Which is do it like the prototype (simplified of course) and fit a plate to the bottom of the frames. This proved challenging because of my seeming inability to drill a hole in the middle of a rectangular plate... It took three attempts before I got the hole in the ruddy middle. Actually, I am being a bit hard on myself. The first one was in the middle it’s just the plate was too small…


With the part finally ready to be fitted I turned my attention to the mounting screw and the 'nut'. The kit comes with a nice turned elongated top had type bush which is threaded 6ba in place of a conventional nut.


I had already made the side control springing block to accept this threaded bush so I wanted to use it. However now that the fixing point was much lower in the frames.


What I couldn’t work out was whether the bus was threaded all the way to the bottom of the hole or not because I didn’t have a long enough 6BA screw to check. So rather than trying to shorten the existing bush I thought it easier to turn up a new shorter version. I also turned the first 0.45mm to just fit tin the hole in the mounting plate which is slightly larger than the screw.


Despite my messing about for quite some time with a stack of washers trying to work out how long the shortened bush needed to be, it ended up slightly short.


Thankfully I had the foresight to leave it attached to the rest of the stock so once I worked out how much longer it needed to be, it was and easy job to turn another 2.5mm down to the same diameter. A short length of spring allows the bogie to float up and down by about 1mm.




Having got this far there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of swing before it hits the inside of the cylinders but this may change when on track and the side control does its job. Time will tell whether I need to cut back the cylinder wrappers.

 

I am working my way along the chassis adding the remaining details as I go. Two quite prominent features are the injectors. The kit included a nice brass casting for the live steam injector. This just needed some of the 'pipes' extending so that I can attach it more securely.

The exhaust injector was another matter as I couldn't find a casting for it so I had to buy one in. I had a look on Ragstone and LG Miniatures and the LG one seemed nearest to what I needed. Living out in the sticks as I do I was most impressed that I ordered it on Monday morning and it arrived yesterday lunchtime.


This is what you get from Laurie and the image below is what I need it to look like.

To completely misquote Eric Morecambe, 'Most of the right bits, but not necessarily in the right order'.


Sadly this means a bit of butchery is in order to get pipes facing the right way and one pipe joint that needs removing. The hardest thing about doing things like this is actually holding things to work on them. Luckily there are plenty of holes and spigots on the casting so a bit of work on a few offcuts of brass later and we have a few handles soldered on temporarily.

The small hex nut fitting is a part on one end that wasn't present in any of the castings, so I filed a hex on the end of a bit of rod and turned the spigots on it.

More to follow when I have it back to together.

 

I agree the LG castings are advertised on Laurie's site as being suitable for LMS/LNER and SR locos. The thing with injectors that you need to be careful of, is that there are multiple classes of injectors. This particular one is a Class J, but when searching for details most of those that I found were Class H which are quite different in the details. As you can see there are variants of Class J in terms of the orientation of pipes etc. All good fun.

 

I am almost at the point of reassembly of the exhaust injector, having added bits, chopped other bits off and repositioned the main elbow bend.

This is a small taster of what I have been up to.



First I milled a square section on the end of a piece of brass rod and drilled a 1.6mm hole in the middle and then a 0.6mm hole at each corner before taking it back to the lathe to part it off. This is the basis for a very visible pipe flange.





Then I made up some miniature fixings and soldered them to the copper pipe. The much magnified photos make it look much messier than it is to the naked eye.

 

This morning saw the injector back in one piece with all the right notes in the right order - for this loco at least.





This was the set up for attaching the copper pipework using my RSU and cheapo self locking tweezers.



I do have one thing to work out and that's the bracket below. There are etched slots in the rear frame assembly for it but I am not sure at the minute how it attaches to the injector itself to allow it to mount. The other bracket which I have already attached is quite visible in the photo above to no issues with that one.



I also see from the photo that I need to clean up the etching cusp from it too if I plan to use it.

 

Hi Ken,

I have lots of patience for making things, where I lack patience these days, is most things to do with people!!!

 

A friend advised that the spurious bracket was a generic item included in quite a few David Andrews Kits to aid in fixing the exhaust injector casting. in the end I elected to do without it and drilled and tapped the main pipe. I will probably do the same to the flat on top of the bracket too because I have fixed one problem and create another - where it needs to sit there is nothing above it to screw it to. I will add a small plate under the main plates that fit under the cab to extend it and allow me to fix to it.

Hopefully it will make sense when I have done it and taken photos. I have also added the missing control rod on top of the universal joint.