Ivatt 2-6-2 Mickey Mouse tank engine in 7mm scale

No worries Dundee... that would just about put the icing on the cake for this great Acme Challenge, we could do a Cashmore's scrap yard scene with this kit.

 

Your best working in the printing department Andy... there's a ton of work there for you to get through

 

Quite agree with these words of wisdom from Keith, my only other point to mention is start with all your ACME or ACE kits which contrary to popular belief and what the name suggests are actually far from that... you can then work on all the half cocked second hand ebay purchases slowing progressing through the ranks until enough confidence builds up to tackle an MOK top of the range one.

 

No it was really only a tongue in cheek comment, since this sort of kit needs a lot of input and has often been referred to as an aid to scratch building, certainly not for a novice. Jim's kits are great and the first one I built was an F5 which was a dream to assemble, so I'd recommend his starter kits from the Connoisseur range as well any day.

 

This is looking much more like an Ivatt engine now the new smokebox door is fitted, the Riddles Class 3 tank on the left is just for comparison.

 

Finally got the cab roof to sit down properly as well... feeling much happier with the result now and well worth the effort.

 

I've now finished fitting out the bodyshell, even added extra scratch built details in the cab like the drivers heat shield by the reverser and fireman's grate rocker levers, also some grey putty filler applied to a few dodgy areas and the body has been washed down with Bar Keeper's Friend... I think I'll give the body a quick flash over in grey primer now. Next stage is complete the chassis detailing.

 

Having put a coat of etch primer followed by a coat of grey primer this afternoon the Ivatt spent a couple of hours in the warm airing cupboard letting the fresh primer settle. Here is the result which shows where the body seperates from the cylinder block front end and the chassis. Tomorrow I shall start the motion assembly proper.

 

Two backheads, the one on the left is for the Riddles 3MT tank and the one on the right is for the Ivatt which I have yet to detail. The 0-6-0 frames standing behind the backheads is a kit build which cannot be discussed publicly in case a hate crime is inadvertently committed.

 

The etches on the ACME Ivatt kit are nickel silver 16 thou thickness, a little thin for my liking so special care had to be taken with a slightly different approach to fabrication in order to avoid warping. In this instance the method adopted was to tack fabricate ensuring a constant squareness, once done I added in addition strengtheners to maintain integrity of shape then and only then was the work piece seam soldered fully. Avoid unnecessary heat build up from the iron tip. The design faults with this loco is that the whole footplate platform is made from two pieces which connect under the tanks, this makes initial alignment difficult but still doable, the second fault area is the cab to bunker bulkhead which strains the actual cab floor because of the weight of the bunker, this makes setting the cab roof alignment hard to achieve because the cab front and back bulkheads need to mirror each other. So to overcome the "bending or floppyness" issue I added reinforcement pieces the length of the underside from buffer beam to firebox area, this did the trick. A final thing to watch for is when the body is married to the chassis the whole rear end sits 2 mm too low... it acts and looks like a car with very weak rear springs so that reinforcement and additional packing around the rear holding down nut fixes this issue and I am happy to report the loco sits at the correct ride height with regard to the rear buffers.

Now the loco frame you can see is indeed a *W* 0-6-0 *a*nier tank of the 19*0 class originally built at Wolverhampton Stafford Road works. Why did I buy it... well jeez I ask myself that same thing everyday , seriously I got it to build then sell on raising funds to reinvest in a couple more smaller kits but then the global lurgy arrived so selling this when complete has disappeared into the sunset.

 

Out in the natural sunlight this morning pretending to run light engine.

 

Portrait of an unfinished tank engine.

 

Right that's it last one for now... I've got serious modeling to get on with... thank goodness I hear you all say

 

Just a very quickly taken pic to show the cab internals with backhead fitted all now finished, the cab roof sprayed white with some grime added for starters... I'll weather everything into detail later on as we go.