David Andrews Princess Royal - 6206 Princess Marie Louise

It is I agree but of my own making sadly. ince posting I have been doing a bit more research and unless I have made a mistake in scaling the GA i seems that the David Andrews castings are a bit over scale which is probably why they are so different to the others that I have in my spares box. Subject to getting answers to queries from a couple of more knowledgeable friends who are LMS aficionados, my plan is to use the piped up, oil boxes for those that have visible bottom pipes and then bite the bullet remove the pipework from the others. I for the four boxes fitted to brackets which are visibly piped from the rear I will replace the pipes but for those that are sat on the footplate/top of the frames I will just solder on the oil boxes and leave it at that.

 

Hi Ken,

A good idea, but sadly not.

I have the Wild Swan Princess Coronation book and it's supplement, a quick rummage through has the oil boxes being completely different. My Finney Duchess and JLRT Royal Scot kits were my first port of call when looking for replacement castings that I might borrow.

 

Not yet, but I am aware that it might be tight.

Or rather I should say that I have tested it with just the trailing truck fitted but not with the rest of the wheels on and running the chassis around any kind of curve. I still need to work out a suitable motor restraint too.

 

Mine is too long to move it that far back...

 

I have managed to make steady progress over the festive period despite the setback of a power cut all day on Christmas Eve.

I now have all the oilers repiped and soldered to their respective brackets or direct to the footplate.





This was the setup that I used to solder the pipes into the rear of the bracket mounted two port oilers. An oak block with a hole drilled in it to accommodate the leadscrew f the handvice. The hole is quite a snug fit so that when the block is clamped to the bench the vice itself doesn't move. The brackets were clamped in the vice with a piece of square bar supporting them which seemed to make up for the third or fourth hands that I could have done with when soldering pipes to the others.





I won't fit the bracket mounted ones until I have the firebox and boiler fitted in the next couple of days or so. I have also done work on a few other details but I am not ready to share them yet as they aren't completed yet.

 

They say practice makes perfect and doing most of them twice must have improved the technique. It certainly extended my vocabulary...

 

Thanks Ken, I will look that up.

 

Progress since my last post has been steady with a number of small details added to the build.
I added the door latch and the lamp iron to the smokebox door. It looks slightly wonky in these views something I will need to double check.




As I mentioned earlier I had added the wrong covers for the pipes leading from the top feed so these were removed and replaced with the correct ones.



Finally for this post I also fitted the cab seats after adding a stay which allows them to be lowered into position.

 

I am trying to get all the small details at least made into sub assemblies before I add them to the footplate once the firebox and boiler have been attached. I have worked on the firebox print and got that to sit down nicely. I needed a bit removing from the underside of the cutouts in the ring that fits inside the boiler to get it to sit down over the rear splashers.

I also assembled the reversing levers which was an exercise in clumsiness n my part. The various parts are all held together with rivets but I decided to turn some nickel pins to do the job instead backing them up with some etched washers.

Using some 2mm nickel rod I fit it in a collet and having the smallest stick out that I could I attempted to turn them down to 0.8mm. I broke the first three off, trying different tools (carbide insert first and then a round nosed HSS tool). Lastly and successfully I tried a new sharp edged HSS bit straight out of the packet. As supplied it had a diamond shaped grind on it with the leading point towards the chuck.. Running the lathe at approx 2000 rpm I managed to make the four different pins needed for this part of the build.

I mentioned clumsiness on my part as I was starting to assemble the various bits on to the turned pins I thought it a good idea to pop a few etched washers onto the longest pin to make filing of the etching cusps a bit easier. No sooner had I got them threaded on than I dropped the thing on the floor. Or rather I dropped it onto my apron where it rolled to the edge, hesitated for a second then dropped off. Could I find it, not a chance. despite moving various items stored under my bench and wiping over the laminate floor with a cloth.

Back to the lathe I went and turned another. I got most of it assembled when I happened to bend down to pick up a file that I dropped and found the missing pin complete with washers. However not 30 seconds later I managed to drop the last pin that I was fitting almost a repeat of the first where it dropped into the ether after slowly sliding down my apron. Thankfully the one that I found has allowed me to escape having to turn yet another.

Below is the reversing levers all assembled but not yet fixed in place.


David Andrews Princess Royal Reversing Mechanism
Lastly I returned to the lathe to turn down the spigots on the bottoms of the safety valve castings so that they would fit in holes drilled in the top of the fire box as they came of the sprues the spigots were anything but round or parallel.



DA Princess Royal Safety Valves turned spigots
I wrapped each casting in a slice of aluminium drinks can to protect it and popped it in a collet. Then I faced the ends of the spigots off and turned them all to 1.7mm diameter.