Jamieson Freelance industrial loco kit in EM Gauge

[Barclay]

Time for another loco.?

 

I had started a Midland Railway 1377 class 0-6-0T (they actually had some at Birkenhead, just up the road from Saltport), and got as far as making a chimney and some frame blanks. However, I was then thrown a curve-ball by Mike Wiltshire, AKA @Coach bogie, who asked me if I wanted an old Jamieson kit for a 'Free Lance 0-4-0T dock shunting loco'. Naturally I did, and have for some time, so I accepted gratefully. It's funny though, that Jamieson, well known for making decent scale kits at a time when most model railway stuff was pretty basic, should think that for an industrial, a free lance loco would suffice, and not even a typical industrial, but an 0-4-0 side tank that looks like nothing I have ever seen! Just shows the contempt with which most enthusiasts treated industrial railways back in the day.

 

Mike sent the kit straight away, so, what to make of/with it? It's a fair size for an 0-4-0, and inside-cylinder 0-4-0's are quite rare. However, staring out of the pages of 'Steam Locomotives in Industry' by the Industrial Locomotive Society, was a Lowca Engineering 0-6-0T. Some hasty guesstimation from side elevation photo's showed that the kit is quite similar to one of these loco's, so that's going to be the plan. It's not going to be an exact scale model of course, since the kit is slightly shorter than the examples of these loco's I have found in books and on-line. However there were a number of different classes, so it's possible... As a semi-freelance loco., this will join the fleet of Saltport Estates Ltd., together with the Hawthorn Leslie-ish loco. I built a few years ago from an old Stewart Reidpath casting.

 

First task was to sketch out a plan to establish where to put the wheels, what diameter works best, etc. It's looking like 3'6" wheels on a 5'3" + 5'3" wheelbase.

I think the kit superstructure will assemble more or less as intended by Jamieson, not much point anyway if you start replacing half the parts. The chassis will need replacing with an 0-6-0, the original frames being far too thick to meddle with. Other than that, a straightforward build? We'll see!

 

By the way, I'm interested to see if anyone else has built one of these, so please post pictures if you have.

 

 

 

[Ruston]

It will be interesting to see what you make of it.

 

Is this the Lowca engine that you mean?

[Barclay]

Yes, and a number of others of different classes that appear more or less the same. I'm not changing the shape/size though, or adding rivets (maybe on the smokebox) because if I start getting into it too deeply then I might as well scratchbuild a Lowca loco properly. This is about doing something with the Jamieson kit, an example of which I have been keen to get my hands on for some time, while also trying to make it slightly more believable!

 

Unfortunately Narrow Planet no longer take on custom work, so I'm now trying to find another supplier who can make Lowca plates for me (among others) - any ideas?

[Ruston]

Sorry for the needless photo. When I looked at your original post there was one photo not showing. 

[Barclay]

At the weekend we took the EMGS demo stand to the Chatham Exhibition, back at its spiritual home, the Historic Dockyard. It was a great show and they looked after us very well. I even found time over the 2 days to have a fiddle with the loco. So we have the square brass bar soldered underneath the running plate to represent valances; buffer beams in place; beading on the tanks and bunker, and the bunker soldered into place. As supplied the boiler is a little on the fat side and certainly doesn't fit between the tanks, so I have slimmed it down and made a brass ring to put between smokebox and boiler to reduce the diameter. This isn't fixed yet as the Nickel boiler is going to need annealing before it will accept its new size.

 

 

 

 

[Barclay]

The tanks have been soldered in place and had their tops fitted, and a riveted wrapper made for the smokebox. the basic cab has been assembled and fitted to the boiler, but the whole unit is still removable and will probably be araldited into place for safety's sake. The cab cutouts have been re-shaped to suit the Lowca profile. I have also made a longer cab roof.

 

Eddies in the space/time continuum (is he?) - I don't know about eddies but there's definitely a wormhole of some kind on my workbench. I recently made up a whole set of loco brake gear, left it on the bench, and it simply vanished while my back was turned. Now it is the turn of the smokebox front, a brass washer, which was definitely in the box when I got back from Chatham, I remember reaching in to pull it out together with the other items I was working on. I finished working on the other items and the washer had gone. It never came back, and had to be replaced with a copper washer from the garage. At least the search ended up in one of my very rare workbench tidy ups, so it's looking quite tidy, and giving me a sense of enormous wellbeing at the moment!

 

 

 

 

[Kevin Johnson]

Your kit build is looking good Stuart.😉

[Barclay]

I've been thinking about wheels for this project, and it has been harder than I thought - I want 3'6" 14 spoke H-spoke wheels, and there aren't any of those. Probably Markits Barclay wheels would be OK but they are off the menu at the moment. The only 3'6" that Gibson do are 10 spoke normal type. They do a 3'8" 12 spoke for the Caley Pug which may be OK, but what about the H-spokes? I'm tempted to try to scrape the spokes with a very sharp blade to make the front face squarer, does that sound feasible? Sharmans do a 14 spoke 3'6" wheel that might be a better bet for this but the cost is almost double that of Gibson. I don't remember them being so expensive when I used to use them all the time, but perhaps they were? So, no decision made then!

[Barclay]

Done it now - ordered the Sharman wheels !

[cornelius]

On 17/07/2024 at 08:09, Barclay said:

Unfortunately Narrow Planet no longer take on custom work, so I'm now trying to find another supplier who can make Lowca plates for me (among others) - any ideas?

 

Just to clarify, because I've already had one "are you alive?" email as a result of this post, custom work refers to bespoke design and etching beyond the products listed on the Light Railway Stores website - which are all always available and made to order.

 

https://www.lightrailwaystores.co.uk/collections/custom-etched-products

[Barclay]

14 minutes ago, cornelius said:

 

Just to clarify, because I've already had one "are you alive?" email as a result of this post, custom work refers to bespoke design and etching beyond the products listed on the Light Railway Stores website - which are all always available and made to order.

 

https://www.lightrailwaystores.co.uk/collections/custom-etched-products

Sorry for the confusion, yes, by custom I meant the one-off jobs! I will continue to use your products as a very satisfied customer. In fact I've already been looking for something that looks close enough to the roundish oval Lowca plate.

[Barclay]

The Jamieson buffers, dome, and smokebox door have been added. The tank fillers, now I see the photo's, look like nothing on earth - I may have to replace them (Perhaps they are sandbox lids?!) Did I mention that I don't have the instructions?

 

Unfortunately the chimney hasn't made it this far - Having successfully bored out a couple of white metal chimneys on the lathe I tried doing this one and ended up damaging it. However a CSP Models copper chimney for a GWR 1361 0-6-0ST has done the job - it's the original short version that I didn't use when I built the 1361, and, being slightly shorter than the original is more like a Lowca one anyway. In the cab, a firebox has been made up from brass, and will receive some modest detail in due course.

 

 

 

 

[Barclay]

The Sharman wheels arrived, and I used a fresh blade to scrape the spokes on one of them slightly to create a squarer profile. I think it will be worth repeating on the others, though it won't fully replicate the H spokes of the original.

Meanwhile the body has received a front to the bunker with a cutout for the handbrake column (tube, handrail knob, and wire). The cab roof has had supports added but is not fitted yet. I have also made up sandboxes from rectangular section brass tube, wire, handrail knobs, etc. Now I see the photo of the original again I realise they are rather too large but this is a semi-freelance model so I'm not going to worry about it. 

Finally, some frame blanks have been cut out but I need to order some hornblock assemblies, probably London Road Models, as they are easier to use than MJT, before I go any further. I'll also need a gearbox at some stage. The motor will probably be an unbranded 5 pole, skew wound job that I got two of from ebay a few years ago. The other is in my GWR 1361 and it runs so smoothly and quietly that I would love to buy some more (they were also about a £ each!). Typically I can't find where I got them from...