Click on any picture to enlarge it !

The start of making my model industrial 0-4-0+0-4-0 Beyer-Garratt in Scale Seven goes back to the middle of 2010.  The kit was a decade in my cupboards waiting for me to summon the courage to tackle four sets of valve gear, never having constructed a model with valve gear before!  The kit was a very basic one, designed for Finescale, “0-gauge”, and I decided to make it with near true scale-width frames, as well as the rest of S7 standards.

This meant that my first difficulty was to adapt the spacers for the driving-unit frames.  The kit had “fold-up” frames, held also at the desired width by the buffer-beams and spacers on the inside end of the driving units.

I was also planning to fit suspension to every axle, so slots to accept the suspension unit had to be cut in the frames themselves.  

This picture shows the flat fold-up frames with the scored markings to cut out the wide slots for the suspension units.  The actual frames are seen above and below a horizontal plate, with the original axle holes about to be cut out.

The buffer-beams and other spacers had to have new slots cut into them at the new width (29mm).

In the end the slots were just widened and scrap brass added to set the width of the frames, as shown.

Frames upside down to show the slots for the suspension units

This was all very worrying, as it appeared to be a very destructive approach to kit-building!  Fortunately all the calculations appeared to be working when I assembled the frames, as shown.

Front driving unit, from the front.

If you look carefully it is possible to see where the buffer-beam slots have been widened for the scale-width frames.

There then ensued a long struggle with the suspension units, the wheels, the “plunger” pick-ups and the coupling rods, just to get the units to move under their own power.

So many times I wondered if it was beyond me ….

This takes us up to the start of 2011, and the start of our website.  The valve gear was yet to be done.

April 2011
I should be able to put together some more of my model Garratt locomotive – an 040+040 industrial steam engine.  Here’s a picture of the front end driving unit as so far built.  The trouble building this to exact scale dimensions (Scale Seven) is a story in itself ….Looking after (ie staying in the house at the same time) as the two boys has some advantages: I took some time to construct some more of my Garratt.

Here’s my first ever construction of outside valve gear for a model steam engine – and it moves !  What makes it difficult is to make the joints all move.  On the assembly shown below there are five joints made with brass pins soldered to etched brass valve gear “rods”.  the pins are about 0.8mm diameter, 5mm long, and clearly the solder only has to fix the pin to one rod, and not the other.  There are about ten joints like this for each set of valve gear – and there are four sets.
I’m very proud to have successfully complete one!