A K's Johnson 2F

[Chas Levin]

Hello Nick, is that Kapton tape you're using to hold the small pieces of brass wire in place for soldering? I've done that for years, but never seen anyone else using it! Amazing stuff - also very useful for applying a heatgun to a small area without upsetting nearby things...

[Nick Lawson]

@Chas LevinIt's Carr's Hot Tape from Phoenix/Precision. I hadn't heard of Kapton, but having just googled I see it seems to be much cheaper than Carr's, so maybe next time.

[Michael Edge]

On 29/06/2023 at 12:22, Nick Lawson said:

 

 

However, I may have misinterpreted the diagram; so, cutting to the chase, please will someone tell me what the function of these handles was? Also, assuming that they are correct for my period, should the toolbox be mounted between them or over the top of them?

 

 

The two handles are for the water valves which feed the injectors, the toolbox sits on a shelf behind them.

[t-b-g]

7 hours ago, Nick Lawson said:

The other day I applied some black satin finish paint from a rattle can. This served to beautifully highlight some glue blobs I had missed. Wah! Some touching up called for, (mostly on the other side of the loco from pic 1).

 

Also I have been trying to work up the brake handle/ tender handrail arrangement. The kit provides two brake handles, of differing heights, with short handles atop chunky, free-standing columns. According to  the MR diagram "http://www.midlandrailwaystudycentre.org.uk/documents/77-11807.jpg"  the real thing had longer handles on top of more slender columns, supported by the tender handrail.  I tried faking up a replacement brake column/handle from brass wire (pics 2 & 3). As always my soldering doesn't bear close inspection, but I think this gives a better effect on the size of the top, although the column looks too slender, so I'll try again with some thicker wire.

 

My method for making handbrake pillars is to use small diameter brass tube for the main column and to solder a handrail pillar into the top. The L shaped wire handle is then soldered into the handrail hole in the handrail pillar. I have made them with a butt soldered joint before and they don't seem to last very long!

[Nick Lawson]

Thanks @Michael Edge that's really useful to know.

[Nick Lawson]

@t-b-g Ooh, I like it. I'll give that a go!

 

[Nick Lawson]

@t-b-g Ok, take 2. I have used your idea of tubing, but slightly differently. I cut a short length of 0.7mm o.d. tubing and cut a notch into the top of it. I then slid my existing skinny brake column into it so that the handle is embedded in the top of the tube. The skinny column was then fed through the horizontal L-shaped handrail, faked up from scrap etch, then a longer length of tube below the rail, down to the floor. As the prototype had a bearing in the handrail for the column, I cut three slivers of 2mm o.d. tube to slip over the inner tube; one either side of the handrail, and a slightly thicker one down at the base. This lot was glued together.

 

I drilled out holes in the floor to take the brake column and the bottoms of the two handrail stanchions. I superglued the brake assembly in place, then dropped in the two handrail stanchions. The end result is slightly off - the brake column seems slightly too high and the handrail stanchions are not as parallel as I'd have liked - but I'm going to leave well alone; at least until I accidentally bang into the tender and knock this lot off again!

[Chas Levin]

On 27/08/2023 at 17:08, Nick Lawson said:

@Chas LevinIt's Carr's Hot Tape from Phoenix/Precision. I hadn't heard of Kapton, but having just googled I see it seems to be much cheaper than Carr's, so maybe next time.

From your photo it looks like exactly the same stuff so you should be fine with the Kapton branded stuff, though if you do find it behaves differently please would you let us know?

[Nick Lawson]

A while back I made a toolbox from plastikard as the original was missing. As I had opened up the coal bunker I needed a visible means of support for the box. Bob Essery's article in the July 1964 Railway Modeller says toolboxes in this position were supported by angle iron brackets. My free interpretation of this was to make a pair of brackets of arbitrary dimensions from square section point-rodding. (pic1) These were to have fitted either side of the coal hole, but in order to span the gap I had to fasten them to the ends of the box rather than underneath.  Hopefully this won't be too noticeable.

 

However when I came to fit the box I found that the water valves, identified by Mike Edge above, were in the way. (pic2) These were rather lumpy castings and didn't have handles anyway, so I filed them flat; filed in the sides of their bases to accommodate the toolbox brackets; soldered brass wire handles on for the water valves and then glued the toolbox over the top. (pic3). The apparent lean on the toolbox is just a photo perspective. I haven't managed to capture the curved shape of the toolbox lid, but I might risk a bit of filing to try to improve it.

 

I have also now fitted the off-side handrails on the tender front, although they still need some finishing off.

[Michael Edge]

Yes, the handles normally turn outwards away from the toolbox, the cast ones were turned the other way.

[Nick Lawson]

Tender body now primed. (pic 1- where autumn sun nicely picking up the dust which has already landed on top).

 

I haven't done lamp brackets yet, but otherwise the only other things to fit to the tender body are the couplings.

 

I have hand painted the buffer beam, but it looks terrible, so I need to work it back and try again. Luckily it is masked in the picture!

 

I'm using Sprat & Winkle couplings. I had thought of trying using http://www.5522models.co.uk/ brackets to mount the bar beneath the buffer beam, but the tight fit of the brass chassis against the inside of the buffer beam means this would be too much extra work to retrofit, so maybe next time.

 

Consequently I drilled the buffer beam to take the wire bar. By the time I did this I'd forgotten why I was doing it; so then found that I'd managed to drill through in line with the guard irons I'd added to the frames, such that these would prevent me bending the wire ends down. There was enough space though to drill new holes further out from the centre and closer to the buffers.

 

I also want to fit cosmetic couplings. I had been thinking of three link couplings, but looking more closely at the available picture, I see my intended loco had screw-links. I dug out some old hooks which I rejected as overscale and have made up a pair of Masokits couplings, (pic2). These have the benefit that they allow construction of the shackle-bolt-through-hook used by the prototype.

 

I realise that I missed the opportunity to assemble them with the bottom link tidied up over the screw bar, as sometimes seen in photographs. I sprayed them and they still need another spray, but they're looking a bit blobby already  so I think I'll scrub them off and use brass blacking instead, as I did for the S & W bars.

[Nick Lawson]

Electrical connection to tender

 

Picking this up after a trip away:

 

I had made it difficult to arrange an electrical connection between loco and tender that could easily be separated. This was as a result of:

a. not having thought about this early enough and

b. having gone off piste a number of times during this project.

 

I have ended up with a less than ergonomic solution.

 

Late in the day I set out to acquire some micro plug & socket pairs from the internet. The first attempt turned out to be bigger than anticipated. A second attempt was more successful.

 

However these still couldn't be applied easily. The relevant factors are:

 

1. I had chosen to replace the original K's lumpy pin and bar physical connection between loco and tender with a more discreet arrangement that slotted through the “dragboxes” in the whitemetal bodies. On the loco, the connecting strip is held in place by the rear screw that holds body to frames, so removing this allows the tender to be detached. Therefore ideally the electrical connection would also be on the loco; but my arrangement of spacers and copper-clad board for loco pickups had not allowed space for this. (pic1). I didn't want to disarrange this again, so what about the tender?

 

2. The tender body is held on the frames by mounting points roughly 1/3 & 2/3 of the way front to back. (Standard K's practice). At the front the body sits on the frames, but there was insufficient material for a retaining screw that allowed the drawbar to be detached from the tender. Instead it is permanently pinned into the tender frames. This means that separating the tender body from its frames can only be done when the loco and tender are already separated; and the rear of the tender frames have to be angled down to allow them to be pulled backwards for the drawbar to clear the body.

 

3. I had positioned copper-clad strips on the tender frames for electrical pick up such that there was insufficient space to insert a plug between them up into the body.

 

4. I had chosen to chop the tender body to make a more realistic coal space. This of course means there isn't much space inside the front of the tender body anymore.

 

5. I had decided to add tender brake gear including a transverse main brake rod under the front of the body.

 

 

Because there isn't much room in the tender front (point 5) I needed to mount the socket further back. Because the K's mounting points for the body need to sit directly on the frames in the middle (point 2), and the frames front semi-assembled into the body front (point3) this is effectively right at the back. This is doable as the plugs come with 120mm of wire which is just enough to reach to the rear of the tender even when it isn't connected to the loco.

 

The socket has two short pins. I really wanted it mounted on the upper, copper-clad side of the pick-up board; but really it needs to be mounted on the clean side of the board, so the ends of the pins can be soldered to the copper cladding underneath. Consequently I made a small piece of copper-clad board, mounted the socket to it in this way, tinned the rest of the copper and then managed to sweat this sub-assembly onto the existing pick-up board without  that all melting and falling apart.

 

I was able to carefully enlarge the space between the front pick-up mounting block and frames (point 4) such that the plug from the loco can be slipped between the brake rod and frames and then pushed up at right angles into the body. (pic2) Tweezers are then required to pull the plug over the top of the body mounts and finally push into the socket. (pic3)

 

Well it's not elegant, but it works! (pic4).

 

No I won't do this again. Yes I will think about electrical connections sooner.

[Nick Lawson]

Decals day!

 

HMRS Pressfix. Some of the smaller items took more than one go, as I managed to apply them rotated. The bufferbeam "M" I managed to peel off and stick back in the correct orientation with "glue and glaze". I'll see if it's still there tomorrow!

 

The only picture of this loco I have seen is from 1920, at which time this number was on the side of a much older, smaller tender. I have chosen to imagine that this was a temporary arrangement and that by 1923 (my year) it had managed to get an upgrade back to this more normal configuration.

[Nick Lawson]

Nothing to show this week.

 

I glued the sandboxes on to the frames, but then found I'd set them slightly too high, such that the body couldn't engage properly. Back off they came.

 

I had some fun trying to make up lamp irons. I tried soldering staples as others have done, which seemed quite reasonable at the time, but the next day I decided I didn't like them after all. Waiting on some phosphor bronze strip to try that.

 

In the meantime I decided to take a break and set up my layout to test:

a. would the loco work at all, away from the workbench?

b. Would it still go round the sharpest curves as expected?

c. Would it haul a load?

d. Would it work across my self-built double slip point, unlike my only existing loco - an Ebay purchase which only works tender first on one particular path.

 

My layout is a semi-portable one, under-construction. The idea is that if I shunt some of the living room furniture I can set it up between, and over, these obstacles for a running session.

 

Unfortunately since I designed this the Senior Partner has refurnished the room such that what I have built so far doesn't all fit. (Nooooooooo!)  We tried rearranging things again, but no good; so I will have to alter a couple of sections and some sweeping curves will have to be rather less sweeping. Also since I last set it up, various bits that do still fit the room needed fettling to work as they used to. However, by the end of the day, the answer to the questions above seemed to be YES!

 

In particular I assembled a short train of whitemetal wagons, notably a thug of a brake van which weighs as much as any three normally weighted wagons (yep, Ebay again) and the loco lifted it. I look forward to trying this with a longer train.

 

A full test of the slip point will have to await my mk2 baseboard configuration, but the initial result seems to indicate that the slip is ok after all - it is the secondhand 4F that is at fault. So that's all good.

[Nick Lawson]

My layout-under-constuction has always been intended to be DCC and is wired accordingly. This is a new departure for me and up to now I have simply run it with an analogue controller and "one engine in steam". This worked fine when I only had one working loco, but the advanced state of the 2F meant I had to start getting my head around DCC.

Phase one of this was to acquire a Gaugemaster Prodigy set which then sat in its box maturing for months. Phase 2 was to shop for decoders at Warley in November. I was a bit concerned at advice on the lines of  "expect to blow the first one" and cheery references to "letting the smoke out". I came away with three decoders of different prices.

 

Over Christmas I started by fitting the cheapest one (Lais something or other, £13) to my second hand 4F. This one has a tender drive (big chunky Mashima 1624) with plenty of space around it and nice easy access wiring. I managed to fit the chip and eventually press the right sequence of buttons to get it running. No smoke!

 

I then set about fitting a £25 Zimo decoder to the 2F. This being my first loco build I had not wanted to bother with DCC until I was reasonably sure I'd have a working loco to control. This then meant I had another case of not having thought about something soon enough. I had not discovered the size of chips in advance and planned where to fit one. Because the loco has CSB suspension, the available width between the frames is insufficient; and the positioning of the frame spacers and  motor in the middle together with small boiler and firebox meant there wasn't quite enough space anywhere. In the end I have had to glue a packing piece between the CSB springs (pic1) and mount the decoder on top (pic2), such that it is visible, although not glaringly obvious, underneath the boiler. The decoder is actually a dark colour, but in the picture light is reflecting off its clear insulation.

 

I then needed to remove some of my industrial-grade pick-up wiring and wire in the decoder in its place. This was less easy than the 4F, but not too bad. Still no smoke! Hopefully soon I will be able to have a bit of a run with two locos at the same time for the first time in more than 40 years!

[Nick Lawson]

A few twiddly bits, in no particular order:

 

I spotted that Light Railway Stores do etched worksplates, so I ordered a set of Neilson plates for this loco; and, as there is a lead time, a set of Dubs plates for a future project. In 4mm scale it is arguable that the Neilson plates (cruelly enlarged below) could have been replaced with any other small oval:

 

 

 

but the Dubs plates are quite distinctive:

 

 

 

Anyway here is a Neilson plate in place and in proper scale

 

 

Also in the picture above, I have installed the sandboxes again. The one on the right was a bit wonky and has since been redone again. The pipes still need a bit of adjustment. The pipes should each have a support bracket, but the pick ups are in the way, so I will hope the pipes will manage unsupported.

 

Also a while back I ordered a Midland smokebox numberplate transfer from @railtec-models . I made a numberplate from scrap brass etch, so here is the final result, which is much smarter than my previous diy effort:

 

 

To assist Steve in working up Midland style numbers, I  had sent him some pics of various numberplates which between them contained the right numbers. He sent me initially a transfer for 3157 (as seen on the cover of Midland Locomotives vol 4). I tried to give this back to him at Warley but he waved it away. If anyone wants this, let me know. Otherwise one day there'd be the temptation to build another loco just to use up that transfer....😁

 

Lastly, I have glazed the cab windows. For another project I got a set of cab glazing for an N2 from SEF. This came with a spare set, and the round windows fitted this loco. I cut them out and stuck them with glue-and-glaze. I haven't fitted them very neatly and they look a bit smeary, but I like to think it's better than before.

 

 

[Nick Lawson]

I have allowed myself to get sidetracked away from actually finishing this job, by instead starting to round up the little pick-up goods train it will pull. This has mostly been a tedious task replacing slot-in-the-bufferbeam Sprat & Winkle couplings (applied a few year back before I decided I didn't like them) with the under-the-bufferbeam variety.

 

I had a partly-built-but damaged Slaters MR 10T brakevan that came in a job lot from ebay, I think during a covid lockdown. This wagon was missing the running board on one side. I have finally got around to faking up a replacement from scrap brass etch. The worst bit was (left-a-bit-right-a bit) placing the mounting stanchions which always managed to fasten in the wrong position.  They are still not quite right, but are as good as they are going to get.

 

 

 

I removed the broken ends of the original struts and drilled up through the upper steps to take the replacements. It's looking a bit low, so I may shorten them a bit before fixing. Also, somewhere I have a Mainly Trains rivet etch, so I will try to dab a couple on the centre strut before painting.