drduncan

Very nice. D

In the finest RMweb tradition of being wise after the event, I think you should have checked it at each stage... Maybe with that 20/20 hindsight I should move to P4? D

Hi Mikkel, Thanks. Well, the body moulding by Hornby is lovely, and will look great lined out. I wouldn't say lots of progress but problems are being overcome and hopefully things will go a bit smoother now. D

I don't think that's a good excuse. Scratchbuild. You clearly are slacking! D

Ha Ha, very funny. I bet I if we did it against the clock I'd still be winning. Can't wait to see your blog posts or workbench thread on building a Finney M7.... Maybe you'll have it finished for AP and I can see it then... D

I'm up to part 6! Oh now depressing... Anyway, having had a good moan about 2811's chassis (not at all a) kit, I thought some photos were in order. I also have sorted out the over long slide bars so everything now seems to turn as it should by hand. You can see in the image below the amount that has had to be trimmed. The dreadful sliding washer arrangement on the pony truck can be seen here. Anyway, now for more testing and another update in due course.

Right, 4321 was supposed to be a quicky. But... The BR black body was repainted proper green, and made ready for lining. A replacement tender (with the correct unstrengthened underframe obtained - it was a Hornby 3500 gallon spare, the type used on their 28xx or a Star) was obtained. The Perseverance chassis went together without any problem, the cylinders were rolled up, everything fitted where it should. I was busy feeling pleased with myself and loudly announcing my chassis building prowess to all that would listen (the Gosport Guru, no one else was interested). The wheels were then fitted, rear driven, middle and then the front. The cylinders and motion bracket assembly fitted (Comet 28xx chassis please note and copy) and then it was gently turned by hand. Disaster! No movement. The front wheel was jammed fast by the crossheads and slide bars. Even turning the nut around didn't free up enough room, nor did putting the slide bars on a slight outward pointing V. There was noting for it but out razor saw and cut the cylinders off the stretcher, fit some brass shims and resolder. Only the mod had the strength of very warm chocolate and wouldn't hope its shape. And it was out of gauge... So after wondering how anyone manged to build the kit in EM gauge let alone P4 as the designer intended and imploring the gods of modelling to smite mightily the objects of my despair, I realized that the only option was to, glup, use the Comet GWR 2 cylinder kit. Now I have said some rather damming things about the Comet 28xx chassis in another blog and the 2 cylinder kit is one of those items I noted was a standard item that was pretending to have been designed to fit the kit and the Hornby 28xx body. Now the 2 cylinder kit is rather nice - its just not part of a chassis setup that was designed as one item - and offering up the bare bones of it showed it would work on the 43xx and that its slide bars (from the Comet 43xx motion kit) were appreciably narrower than the Perseverance ones - and even had location points for the motion support brackets - result! But it wasn't designed for the Perseverance chassis and the Perseverance chassis wasn't designed for it either. Cue lots of filing, adjustment and a short introduction to a piercing saw. Thankfully it looks like the Perseverance motion bracket can be reused. Next job will be to finished the cylinders by adding the whitemetal covers and odds and ends, reassemble the chassis and hopefully it will work this time. Another update beckons at some point... D

Thanks! D

While I confess time has been limited, I have also made some significant progress with 2811. Assiduous followers of this blog will remember that this has not been a happy tale to date. I now have a rolling chassis - well almost. The slide bars are too long and as a result the connecting rod strikes them jamming everything up nicely. This should be cured very soon with snips and a file. The Comet chassis 'kit' has failed to impress. I think the best way of describing it is a number of standard or generic components being passed off as sub-assemblies of the kit, but that are not actually designed as a complete kit. The result is that for every one step forward there seem to be two back. To get the chassis in the correct position under the body (remember its designed for the Hornby china made body) massive amounts of the cylinder stretcher had to be filled away. The motion bracket is laughable in its design - just the G shaped slide bar brackets which are soldered to the slide bars, but there are no location marks or any way of ensuring that they are in the right position and holding them them there; a perseverence motion bracket type design is clearly needed as advocated as the basic minimum for chassis kit designers by the great Iain Rice many, many years ago. The pony truck is generic and therefore again does not sit well under the chassis - in fact its a pig to get in the right position and solder a locating washer to it unless you are prepared to keep making adjustments to the washer position, each time removing the chassis from the body and the pony truck from the chassis, unsolder the washer, move it, resolder and try again. Repeat until you lose the will to live. The chassis frames and spacers are devoid of the normal tab and slot design making getting everything square a fun event (I used the Poppy models loco cradle in the end). The only compensation designed in is individual sprung axles. If you want a flexichas or csb set up get your ruler, scribe, drills and piercing saws out. While you might say that csb is too much to expect, I think that the other design issues make the 'kit' inferior to say a Ron Neep/Perseverence design standard of the early 1980s. Chris Gibbon, a 28XX chassis kit please!!! (or on second thoughts don't, I've nearly got this one done and a High Level kits version would just depress me...) D

Its been a while, but I've not been too idle.... Commissions have been keeping me busy (or as busy as a 2+ son and a 10 month old daughter allow) with P4 dominating over EM for the last few months (but I'm due to pick up a loco for converting to EM at the weekend. The Bachmann Hall was straightforward, although huge amounts of filling was needed to fit the P4 wheel sets to the tender. The Gosport Guru also prevailed on me to convert 3 Bachmann L & Y radial tanks as a rush job for an exhibition. Having made the deadline with hours to spare I handed them over to the Guru who then decided he would fit the dingham couplings and found that Mazak chassis blocks are a swine to file away. So back they went to his contact who had milled out the mazak tank sides to make space for the P4 wheels so have slots milled in each end of the chassis, which meant they didn't get to the exhibition anyway. Still he's very happy with the end result. D

Its been tried and the answer was 'no thanks.' drduncan

Mike, Any updates in the offing? Duncan

So whats the 2mm fs M7 for? D

looks like good progress is being made. D

Excellent work and a very informative post. Duncan

Excellent workmanship. And as to half finished projects you're a novice! You should see my pile.. Drduncan

Hi Mike, On my Dean Goods, I removed the metal weight and replaced it with lead. If you remove the cab the weight pulls out. You can also get an Armstrong style smokebox front to replace the one on the model from Quarryscapes of this parish. Regards Duncan

Having seen the hard copy print yesterday, you had to do a double take to check it wasnt a picture of the real thing. On the print the vegetation on the cliff face looks just like the real thing. Well done Daave for the modelling and Andy Y for such brilliant pictures.

Excellent work! D

I don't suppose there is anything approaching a specific release month in mind as opposed to sometime soon we promise... Drduncan

Ian, Inspiring stuff! Can't wait for the next update. Duncan

Excellent work. Look forward to the next project. Drduncan

I agree with sp1 that Toplights would probably prove very popular and could be done in at least 4 liveries (1912 lake, 1922 choc cream fully lined, 1927 simplified, 1934 shirt button with little modification to the body tooling (I think ww2 onwards sees an increasing use of patched repairs). However, it has occurred to me that brake composites - of any company (but pre grouping would suit me best and they did last a long time cascading into branch use) might be the best way to test the water as these were the staple of inter-company through workings. I did some digging into the North and West route and found that Caledonian, Midland, WCJS, and possibly NER, as well as L &Y were working through to destinations in the West Country, and GW vice versa giving lots of opportunities to model foreign coaching stock irrespective of the main modelling interest. Drduncan

So how did you use autocad to print out the map to 1:76 scale? Drduncan

Progress of a sort on the 43xx... I have now got a set of comet cylinders, slide bars and cross heads. The measurements are quite interesting. The comet and perseverance cylinders have the same em frame width, 15mm. The distance between the inner faces of the comet slide bars is just over 26.5mm, while the distance across the outer faces of the crank pin nuts is 25.55mm. The issue I think is in the width of the slide bars and cross heads. The Perseverence ones are 2.5mm overall, while the comet ones are 2mm. So I think that I might now have about 0.25mm at least of clearence. D