David Andrews Princess Royal - 6206 Princess Marie Louise

While still deciding whether to take a little more off the cylinders (which I am leaning towards) I decided to do a dry fit of the cylinders, slide bars and the inside slide bars/ cylinder front to make sure that all fitted snugly but freely.

The outside cylinder unit, screws in place and I had deliberately not fitted the frame spacer that it fits to, until I was at a point where I could determine whether or not I needed to modify it to allow the inside slide bars to fit.

As it turned out I did. I needed to cut a slot out of the middle of the spacer between the two nuts.

Now I could have done it with the piercing saw but knowing that I would never have used the piece that I cut out, I found it far easier to pop it in the vice and mill it out.








Next, I added a representation of the bottom to the inside cylinders and then assembled all the parts to the frames to check the fit.

 

Before going any further on the chassis I decided to make up the footplate to ensure that all fits as it should.

This has involved lots of filing of etching cusps and much rivet pressing.





This is with about 35% of the rivets pressed out on the footplate. I have had to do it in short sessions. In between I have been working on the brakes for the J6 but more of that on my other thread.

 

Hi Jim I have a GW MODELS (George Watts) rivet press that I have had since I modelled in 4mm scale. They are still available and George advertises in the model press.

 

Next comes what for me has been the trickiest bit of the build so far.

The bending and fitting of the two dropped curved ends of the footplate. These are full thickness etch and at0.45mm in Nickel they take a bit of bending.

First I fitted the valences using a piece of square bass bar and some surgical clamps to hold it in place and vertical to the footplate. Just a case of tack in several places along the length and then seem between them.

Next on to the dropped sections, I started with the rear section for no other reason than the front section needed the rivets pressing out and I had done enough of that for the day when I finished the footplate earlier in the day.



I marked up the start of the bend and another line which should have been the middle of the bend but fell somewhat short. In the event this wasn't an issue as by some miracle I managed to bend it almost perfect first time. It just needed a gentle bash with a rubber mallet to get the last bit of the curve where it meets the footplate to the right shape.



While I was on a roll, I added the drag beam too.

Then it was more rivets prior to fitting the front section

 

In my last post I mentioned that bending the full thickness nickel was a bit of a bu**ger. The front drop section proved doubly so.

The handicaps on the front section being that it’s physically shorter so less metal to get leverage with to make the bend and all those rivets that I didn’t want to flatten in the process.

I folded a sheet of printer paper (an old invoice which I keep for scribbling notes on the blank rear side) several times to give me a nice thickness of padding and started to make the bend. To my relief like the back one, having tried it against the side of the valence, I had got it pretty near on the first go.

Then I tried it sat on top of the valance and you can understand my complete and utter dismay! when I noticed the recesses for the lamp irons were sat up under the front of the footplate.

I had somehow managed to turn it around when I wrapped it in the paper and I had nicely created the curve in the wrong end. I am surprised that they didn’t hear my exclamation of Oh sh*t! in York. The only saving grace was that it was a bend not a fold and I hadn’t started to further the bend to get it to fit flush under the front of the footplate.


The good news is that I managed to recover it and re-bend it at the right end.

These two photos show it after straightening and re-bending at the right end and a dry fit before soldering






These are of it fitted along with the buffer plank.







Finally, the weapons of choice used to get me out of my self-created mess.



Plus, the all-important ‘how I did it’.

It’s worth mentioning right from the outset that I didn’t anneal it, nor did I consider doing so.

My workbench is partly covered with a sheet of toughened glass, while the other ‘half’ has a cutting mat. I usually use the glass section for soldering and making sure that things are flat/square.

I put the dropped section rivet face down on the folded paper on the toughened glass and gently tapped it with the rubber mallet to start to reduce the curve. Once this had been reduced some. I moved over on to the cutting mat with a 6” x 6” square of hard acrylic sheet that came with my hold and fold.

Its primary use is a firm base for cutting parts from etches. But it in this instance it provided a firm base where I could tap a bit firmer without risking breaking my glass sheet.

I managed to get quite a bit of the curve back out it before moving to the vice and after fitting one side with the soft jaw (the black angle piece in the photo) I started to bend the curve again at the right end.

Once I had the curve in and seated against the footplate, the front end still had a slight curve left in it (see the first photo). To remove this, I placed the part rivet side down on top of the vice jaw with the curved section overhanging.

Then using the length of 10mm brass bar in the photo, I laid it along the length of the curve and gently tapped with the mallet until it took most of the remaining curve out and then I finished of by putting a piece of green pan scrubber under the paper to allow a bit of give and then used the brass bar to ‘roll out’ the remainder of the curve. Making sure to stop before it started to curl the other way.

I share this in the hope that it will give someone else the confidence to have a go at recovering from a wrongly bent piece at some point.

 

Although I intended only to make sure that the footplate fits the chassis correctly I got a little carried away and added quite a bit of detail. In reality it actually doesn't look much but probably represents 5 or 6 hours work.

In this kit there are quite a few parts that require trimming to fit. In fairness, the instructions do mention it and it's better to have them oversized, than parts being too small. But it really does create a time sink.

The buffers provided are some rather nice Hobby horse items but like the LG valve guides, the etched holes are too big for the stems. So I had to turn up a couple more spacers to locate them properly. I wont bore you further, with photos of them.



I had in mind that the piston rod covers were whitemetal items so I was fully prepared to turn replacements if they were out of register like some of the other castings have been but I was pleasantly surprised to find some nice brass castings on the sprues.



Although I have wittered, above about having to trim a good number of parts. Despite having to trim them to fit, the design of the splasher tops made them some of the easiest I have ever fitted. That is once I had them bent to the right shape and managed to hang onto them to tack solder in place - they kept slipping out of my fingers... can't blame the kit for my being clumsy.

 

Life has overtaken me this week so far so not much progress on the Princess. I did manage to solder up the boiler which to be fair had been quite nicely rolled and only needed minor tweaks to get it completely round. I had to shave a small amount beyond the etching cusp off the former to get it to fit in the half etch slot in the boiler front but other than that it was quite a smooth process.

Here it is sat on the footplate with the firebox

 

Today has been very productive in terms of tackling the smokebox.

After a conversation about rolling a 0.45mm sheet including rivets pressed out with Richard Spoors @Richard Spoors. Where we concluded that my GW 10” rollers were not man enough for the job and would flex. I decided to have a go at rolling the smokebox using the rolling bars on my Warco ‘MiniFormit’ which are a touch over 28mm in diameter so unlikely to flex.

Although I have had it for a number of years, I have only ever used it as a guillotine until today. Rather than risk the actual smokebox to an unknown piece of equipment I decided that I would cut a similar sized piece of 0.45mm sheet and have a go.

Although the actual process of rolling is broadly similar to the GW roller the Warco rollers are of the pinch variety and I must have pinched a little unevenly because I noted on my test piece that one end was marginally wider than the other. Not enough to be an issue but something to be aware of.

The other issue that I encountered was controlling the amount of ‘roll’ On the GW rollers there are two cap head screws on the top that you tighten down simultaneously to get an even roll. The adjustment screws are on the back of the Warco unit so harder to see. They consist of a threaded rod with a round knob locked on with a nut.


Those issues aside, the first go turned out pretty good and it’s perfectly usable. If I don’t find a use for it on a loco at some point, I can always use it as a wagon load.






Having done the rolling, I had some thoughts about how best to regulate the amount of roll as the screws are adjusted and came up with the idea of adding a blob of paint on the flats of the locking nut.

I wound both of them to a fixed point and then put a blob of coloured paint on the opposite flats on both nuts – White, Red and Blue so I can now see that I have turned them both by equal amounts.
Not the easiest thing to photograph as it's bolted to the bench and the screws are on the back.