Giles

Google Translate is your friend! That's quite a site..... Amazing 4 x 4 chassis kit.....

Hi Redkiterail, The Bagnall has always been a favourite of mine - this is an old Roy Link kit which hasn't been available for quite a few years. It was a good build, although the saddle tank needed care, but came out very well. More recently, Wrightlines did a white metal version, which it may be possible to get hold of - also a good kit, but inevitably not quite as excellent as the Roy Link etched brass version.

I finally managed to put my finger on why I think this is such a stunning layout. Apart from the superb modelling throughout, it is on of the very, very few narrow gauge layouts that has modelled a station terminus as it would genuinely be in reality - and this makes it so very watchable. And then you've got the standard of modelling.........

I should say that the most useful reference I've found for much of the missing bits is Phil's very generous photo site https://www.flickr.com/photos/45131642@N00/sets/72157640174384343/ Which has not only much better quality photos than my own, but many, many bits that I missed and couldn't get to..... I must say I would be well and truly up a gum tree were it not for this reference - so thank you Phil!

However - we require the water feed...... This comes from the left side of the Boiler Cradle, where we need to fit a sump box, fed from large bore pipe (it needs to be 2.4mm dia. to be scale)running both forward and backwards from the box, so as to take water from the tanks on both the front and hind engines. These pipes run inside the diagonal 'braces', and should have a 90 degree elbow taking them through the frames level with the engine pivot points. Obviously neither the pipe nor elbows are supplied, so I heated up my 2.4mm brass rod (bought at an exhibition) to red heat on the cooker gas ring, and bent it round sharply to form the 90 degrees., trimming it off afterwards. The upper pipe feeds the LH injector, and the lower pipe crosses over to feed the RH injector. HOWEVER, the pipes need to clear the brake shaft - which also isn't supplied, and neither is the brake crank, cross-shaft or mounting brackets, all of which I had to deduce from photos - so it may not be bang-on....... (I have drawings of the Vivian Garrett, but the Brake gear is one of the differences). When you get into the cab, the handle should be of 0.5mm, and should be approx. 9mm wide. Lastly is this part of the saga, (and one of the reasons I made the injectors) There should be a small water valve operating rod on each side attached to the valve on the injector. This is again missing from the kit, but I wanted to fit them, as I felt they were a fairly prominent detail. Most of the rod is actually behind the fire-box cladding, with only the final 18" poking out. Lastly, here's a shot of the underside to show how the exhaust pipe from the hind engine fits to the inside rear of the smoke-box (correctly) and its relationship with the front engine when it's fitted.

Before handrails go on, the other 'pipes' must go on - as these pass underneath the handrails. These pipes are (at the fire-box) the steam feed from the whistle turret to the injectors, and then the water from the injectors to the clacks on top of the boiler, in front of the steam dome. Thus starts the story.... I actually only had one injector casting supplied with the kit (there should be two - one for each side) and that bore little resemblance to the actual injector (Gresham & Craven No. 9) as the casting was too long, and had no water feed valve at the top. I therefore decided to knock-up a fairly crude pair (one RH and one LH) something closer to the correct length, and with a valve on top. These were made of 3mm dia. silver steel (because that's what I has to hand) silver soldered, so that I could soft solder pipes to them with no fear of them falling apart. If you have never silver-soldered - it's very easy with a fairly small torch, and borax flux. I dare say there are countless YouTube clips on it. Just so people know, an injector needs four pipes connected to it - steam in, water in - steam/water to boiler, water over-flow. some injectors have a built in valve to control and fine-tune the water flow coming in - and this is one of them. Pipes were then bent and fitted from 1.5mm brass (to be truly scale it should be 1.3mm) and soldered in.

Be fair! If everyone's got to actually compose their own jokes, we are in trouble!!!

The value of photos..... I've just seen that I've soldered one of the rails in upside down..... What a. ......" ..... 22.03.14. Easily sorted - un soldered the offending rail, and replaced it the right way up! Now all the rails are in-board, and tapered thin at the top, thick at the bottom! I've also taken a leaf out of Phil's book, and sold re strips of nickel silver all orotund the top of the cab to aid in glueing the cab roof on later. I'm also in the process of soldering on the brass fittings onto the boiler where I can, before I make a start on attaching white metal fittings.

Clot of the week goes to ..... me!!!!! See those nice cab grab rails? The instructions have a very crude drawing, which I took as an indication which appeared to show the boss for the rail (on each end of the cut-out beading) on the outside - and therefore I soldered the beading onto the cab side sheets with the boss to the out-side..... I was looking at some photos today, and noticed that actually the grab rails are to the INSIDE of the cab side sheets. This meant that the rails had to come off, and the beading had to come off, and each re-solder onto the opposite side (after salvage...).. Not my favourite job.... but successful, at any rate. I've also altered the ash-pan, so it sits about 1.5mm higher than it did before

The boiler was then epoxied in (so as not to disturb all the other soldered stuff) I thought I'd have a look at the cab hand rails. 0.9mm wire is supplied, but the real thing has tapered rails. It's one of those things which can look quite nice, and is quite easy to do if you've got a lathe. I have a little Unimat 3 which ha been around for 30 years, and is brilliant. Putting some 1.2mm brass wire/rod in the chuck, poking out just enough, I very easily dressed a taper on with a fine 10" file by hand. The wire flexes away and prevents you from putting a deep cut on. As long as you're gentle it's really quite easy. a final rub with 600 wet-and-dry while it's still rotating and it's finished. While I was at it, I made two tapered rods for the grab posts one for each end.

It's the smoke box saddle next. First of all, it's worth carefully matching the saddle end plates to the actual smokebox wrapper curve - bearing in mind that your finished smokebox may not be perfectly round..... The saddle is a four-piece assembly which is a slight fiddle, but nothing unreasonable. Check it sits neatly on the bottom of the smokebox before fitting to the frames. It is vital that you locate the saddle by using the fully finished boiler to position it correctly, and don't rely on anything else!. The smokebox should sit down on the flat of the frame stretcher. If like me, you correct the boiler length, you'll need to grind back the top of the pivot pin to allow the smoke box to sit down fully. The rear of the saddle lines up with where the front tube plate would be, more or less, so there's a very large over-hang at the front. (see my pics) The etch for the front cover plate would have been a real fiddle to solder in, so first I soldered on a short length of angle on each side to support it. This made fitting the plate sooo much easier. There's a rectangular hole missing in the RH running board (mentioned in the instructions) - but there's no mention of exactly how big and what position it should be........ This is my best estimate of the missing hole (in relation to the correct smokebox etc......)

Phil – thank you for the vote of confidence in my build! I hope it gets there...... At least I'm under no pressure from Paul...... :-) Slight inaccuracies and simplifications to the prototype for whatever reason (access, lack of drawings, photos etc. ) I don't mind too much, but I have found myself deeply frustrated by inconsistent drawing on some of the etches - such as significant asymmetry to components - even simple ones like buffer beams, let alone cylinders and roof curves. These ARE basics for etching artwork (fortunately should be historical now with CAD) and I suspect that the kit may not have gone through the final stage of pre-production testing/building that would have found these issues. I wasn't aware of any issues at all when I bought the kit, a couple of years ago - and so was slightly disillusioned to find out some of these things early on when I started the kit (it was a model I really wanted) – but I'm determined to get a decent loco out the other end of this - and I hope other people do too! It takes more work than one should (comparably) have to put into a kit, in terms of corrections and rectifications, but not a catastrophic amount, but I hope it will be helpful if people know they need to file 2mm off that bit there BEFORE they've soldered it on, rather than afterwards......

Thanks! I'm not so very sure it will, but I'm trying to detail all this so that anyone who does want to build one has a bit more information to go on, and knows what to look out for. Obviously they don't have to go to the trouble of making new wrappers and that sort of thing, but knowing about things is half the battle! (And it's a nice prototype!)

....the hole I cut in the bottom of the firebox..... The firebox was very simply soldered on the the cab front by placing a pice of solder (and flux) along this joint on the under side, and quickly heating it with a flame until it 'flashed' Thrash pan in place, and all in situ. The ash pan is extremely close to rail level - but so is the real thing (on the Bressingham, at any rate) it may be a mm too low but not much more than that. There is a fairly straight forward mod I can do if it proves to be a problem with the steam pipe and brake gear, but we'll see. It will be smoke box saddle and mount the boiler next. One think I forgot to mention, when I assembled the articulated units as shown when in swung the rear engine as if for a left hand curve, the boiler unit tilted to the left....... This proved to be the coal shute fouling on the cab back plate, as the coal Shute isn't quite central, and nor is the rear engine body... The answer was to open out the square aperture in the cab back sheet to allow the coal Shute to clear at full swing.

It has become obvious that the boiler can't be 'removable' for a variety of reasons - especially the ash pan, which is too long to fit through the gap in the frames. I have therefore soldered the firebox onto the cab front, having made sure it's at the right height, and centred to the cab. The ash pan gets built up next - reasonably straight-forward, when you work out what shape it's all supposed to be... This unit then solders on to the underside of the firebox (after I cut a hole in the underside, just in case!) Incidentally, if this thread is a waste of everyone's time - for God's sake be kind and tell me, and save me the trouble....!

After soldering the plugs in, the wrapper solders onto the former, and the white-metal throat-plate solders onto that. The throat-plate casting was trimmed off at the bottom (flush with the frames) as it represents the cladding, rather than the firebox itself - and the cladding actually does stop short on the real thing. I order to fit the firebox into the boiler cradle, I found I had to reduce the square plate between the frames by about 2mm (which by my reckoning was oversize anyway) Because the loco will be fitted with DCC sound eventually - and I don't quite know how I'm going to sort it - I have cut holes in the underside of the firebox, and in the centre of the throat-plate, so as to keep as much access open as possible.

Pleasingly, some replacement castings arrived from Mercian, as I was missing a pair of sand box fillers - so those are now fitted on the rear engine.... The next job on the list is a new firebox wrapper. A direct copy of the supplied one, but with the rivets on the outside, and the washout plugs on the left hand side corrected to off-set from the right hand (washout plugs are positioned to enable the entire crown to be cleaned and inspected between the rows of stays so far as possible). The wrapper is then supposed to solder round a three-sided former, which is a bit of a fiddle - so I decided to add a fourth side to the former to a) give it some rigidity and b) give another surface to solder to. This actually made the job very much easier. Before attaching the wrapper, one has to add the separate washout plugs. There is a very simple etch provided, which I didn't find very plausible. I therefore chose to add another layer of brass to the back of the wrapper, drill through from the front, open it out full diameter with a tapered reamer, so I got the appearance of the thickness of cladding and insulation, and then added a second layer of brass, which I drilled and tapped 8BA. Taking an off cut of 8BA bolt, I put it in a pin-vise, and filed a square on the end to form a wash out plug, which then screwed into the recessed thread. ( X 6)

Someone's got this 1:50 Bedford VAL, som of which were running well into the late 70's. I'm not struck on using 1:50 myself, but it's a matter of choice! http://www.ebay.ie/itm/Corgi-Classic-1-50-Bedford-Val-Coach-Wallace-Arnold-Tours-35305-/351004169303?pt=UK_ToysGames_DiecastVehicles_DiecastVehicles_JN&hash=item51b97a9457 Dinky also did a Vega Major which you can still pick up on EBay - also 1:50, I believe.

Duple Dominant, Plaxton Panorama is typically the sort of machine.....

I decided to cannibalise my old scratch-built boiler, as I wanted to get the extra 3mm length back (5 inches, scale), however, I did have to reduce the diameter down to 37mm (rather than the correct 38mm) in order not to create more problems for myself, as the frames aren't quite wide enough otherwise. I then needed to re-create the detail on the bare boiler. Joints in the cladding were done by using a scriber and heavily scoring the line. Rivets were achieved by drilling 0.5mm, inserting hoops of 0.5mm brass wire, and soldering the reverse side, followed by trilling and dressing down. Note, even if you are using the supplied boiler, the chimney isn't actually supposed to be centred to the smokebox. It should be slightly forward of the centreline - with the chimney centre 10mm back from the front of the smokebox. Rivets trimmed and dressed New, longer boiler next to supplied wrapper

I've never built a Mercian kit before - so I'm not in a position to speak from first-hand knowledge. I would say that this one perhaps has had unusually difficult birthing pains....... I'm now looking at the boiler - the etch of which has been through a roller, slightly on the skew. One of the reasons I'm looking at it carefully is that it is a few mm shorter than my scratch-built one (and 1mm smaller in diameter) the correct diameter shout be 38mm (5' - 5" over cladding) and the etch allows for 37mm dia.. The Manchester drawings show the front of the smoke box finishing directly over the centre line of the driving wheels - (which is where my scratch-built boiler ended up) and it looks to me as if the kit boiler may fall a little short - so I shall investigate before I commit. Similarly the firebox wrapper is sooo wrong. The left hand side (incorrect) is the same as the right hand side (correct), and the rivets for punching have been half etched on the face, instead of the back..... I'm therefore considering making a new wrapper and using my old scratch-built boiler! But we'll see after I've slept on it and double checked the lengths. Whichever option I choose won't be straight forward.

This afternoon I've been having a look at the cab. I've known for a while that the roof curve of the front and back sheets is asymmetrical, and that one side of the etch is higher than the other. This means that both etches need truing up by flipping one on top of the other, and filing the larger one down to meet the smaller..... etc..... this results in a shortening of about 1mm, and necessitates the cab sides being shorted by 1mm to match - OFF THE BOTTOM. this means you lose the half etched rivets which have to be replaced. It might sound a bit of a kerfuffle, and it is... but a cab whose panels don't meet up draws the eye to my mind, and getting it right looks sooo much better, and I shall sleep at nights...... I ended up reworking a fair amount of rivets to get them in a more reasonable position. Incidentally, what the instructions don't say (which would be helpful) is that the sides go INSIDE the ends - joint wise (overall cab front-to-back of 35mm which is the correct 5'- 0 1/4"

The bogie pivots have been next on the list. A length of brass tube, 3/16" dia is provided to use for this, in conjunction with a pair of top hat bearings. However, if you simply use this combination, you will have bogies that rotate from side to side, but have no other form of articulation. This is what's known as a bad idea, and will result in bad running, and quite possibly de-railments. The engines, just like coach bogies, must have some ability to rock fore and aft, and one bogie at least must be able to rock from side to side. There are at least two viable ways of doing this (sensibly). One is to use the supplied tube, and open out the 'loose' top hat bearing into a taper, so that you get your rocking freedom that way, and the second method is probably the harder way (which is presumably why I did it....) and that is to make a new pin from solid with a basic ball joint incorporated (at a very simple level). I then cross-drilled the protruding bit of the pin to take a piece of bent wire ( or a teeny 'R' clip if I can find one) which will hold the engines on to the cradle. Either will work, but one way or another, you do need to introduce some sort of articulation.

I've added all the sanding pipes to both engines whilst I'm at it., and before I get tempted to fit slide bars etc... And then on to the boiler cradle. This went together fine, although I have added the middle vertical stretchers - either side of the flat plate with four hole in it. I've cheated slightly as I've robbed these off the version I was scratch-building years ago..... They will be reasonably visible under the boiler when it's done, so I think it's worth putting them in. (they're not supplied with the kit) At this stage, I've also been filing down the brass bearings that form the engine bogie pivots, to make sure the Boiler Cradle ride height is correct. The side valances on the cradle should be the same height as the valances on the engines so it all lines through nicely...... (not shown)