I think most of the details are done, and I have put it all together.
These are some pictures taken on my new iPhone:
And others from the normal camera:
So for the first time, it can run as a complete locomotive:
It doesn’t run smoothly because of electrical “shorting” between the front steps and the pony truck wheels at the from, when traversing the tight curves on my test track.
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The “fall plate is (I think!) the footplate between the locomotive and the tender. This clearly has to move up and down, and even on a model some movement will be necessary.
In the MOK kit the fall plate is an etched rectangular plate with the grip etched onto one side. There are cutouts for the hinges, which were assembled onto the cab sub-assembly earlier.
There were no instructions as to how to fit this part. There is a second matching rectangle with no surface grip. Both have a half-etched edge, but it is far from clear how this could be used. I didn’t use the second plain etch. I curved the etched plate (as seen above) and decided to hinge the plate by attaching a tube to the underside and using 0.5mm wire through the hinge-brackets. I couldn’t find any small tubing in my scrap-box, but a U-shaped piece of brass channel made a better substitute.
So I soldered a 35mm length of the channel to the edge of the fall plate, and then filed the rear edges of the plate to resemble the fall plate seen on p76 of the “Locomotive Profiles” book of the Stanier 8F (IMO an essential acquisition if you are going to make an accurate model).
The picture in LP shows two fall plates, not one, so accurately to represent this appearance, once I had soldered the brass channel in place, I used a piercing saw to separate the two halves (well, actually not quite separate them, but create that appearance).
I then added the “hinges” by sticking paper squares onto the fall plate with cyano-acrylate glue.
I then threaded the 0.5mm wire through one hinge on the rear of the cab assembly, then through the channel on the fall plate, then through the other hinge. Easier said than done!
I then cut the wire just the right length to fit between the cab side etches.
This gave the right appearance (I hope) with some flexibility to flap up and down.
We are getting to the final stages of construction now.
The details is being added to the body and the frames. I have added much of the detail, provided by the kit manufacturer, to the body itself. This is about adding the sanding gear. On the prototype, this is the equipment aimed to spray sand in-between the rails and the driving wheels to improve adhesion in slippery conditions. There are three sandboxes, with tubes going out of them down to just in front of the leading driving wheel, and both in front of and behind the third driving wheel.
In this kit there are brass castings of all three sandboxes, even though two of them are inside the frames. The outside one goes to behind the third driving wheel and has an additional mechanism (I don”t know what function it has) beneath the sandbox itself. The sand-delivery tubes are represented by 0.8mm nickel-silver wire bent to shape, and I made support brackets from thin strips of scrap n/s with 0.8mm holes bored in the ends, twisted and bent to shape.
Here is the one for the outside sandbox, with a folded-up section of wire to represent the additional mechanism.
Once bent up and soldered onto the frames, this is the (unpainted) appearance.
The central sandbox, supplying sand to the front of the third driving wheel, was even more of a challenge, and in the end I made wire with multiple bends in it, allowing one end to be anchored to the sandbox, with the other supported by a bracket in position near the driving wheel.
This shows the course inside the frames of the central sandbox “tubing”.
This side-on view shows all the three sanding jets in place. Of the sandboxes, only the rear one is outside the frames and visible.
I had an excellent day playing cricket yesterday. Actually, it does’t sound much, 11 runs, but it was very good, for me.
I opened the innings for our side – facing the first ball – with a target of about 112 I think. We had an opening partnership of 43, off about the first 15 overs (out of 35). We weathered the storm of their opening bowlers, and not only could I defend, but this innings for the first time I managed the transition from pure defence to starting to attack. I managed to pick the bad balls and hit them, whilst picking the danger balls and defending. A few really good shots gave me confidence. A nice square cut for two (I was disappointed it didn’t reach the boundary, it was hit cleanly but along the ground) and my first four. Actually I have this vague recollection of accidentally edging a four a couple of seasons ago, but that doesn’t count.
Nick was there to see me bat, and says it looked good. Even Dave Hadden, who is a very harsh critic, said that I played some good shots. When I was out, it was to a pulled shot which went up in the air and was caught, but by that stage we had laid the foundations for what proved to be a successful run chase, and I either needed to accelerate the scoring or get out of the way of someone who could.
So I was pleased. Ridiculously pleased. Even several of the opposition (a really good bunch of blokes from Glenmore Park, many from “the subcontinent”) said I had batted well.
So what had changed? Actually in some respects I think it is that I hadn’t been practicing so hard, and so in a bizarre sort of way didn’t feel quite the same pressure to show results!
I can hardly walk today, though, for my aching muscles.
I’m beginning to wonder just how obsessive/nerdy I can get.
On my recent visit to England (see John’s ‘blog), we travelled behind one of my beloved Stanier 8Fs on the Scarborough Spa Express. I took pictures of the engine, and noticed many details that would be useful for my model.
Amongst these were the mechanical lubricators and their pipes. They were all cleaned and nicely polished, and so were a quite prominent feature on the footplate of the locomotive. In working life they would probably have been grimy and not noticeable, I suppose, but now I had seen them, I felt I had to model them accurately.
The MOK kit comes with the two lubricators, but not with the pipes which go from them. So I had to somehow make the pipes from scratch. Stripping some mains cable I found multi-strand copper wire with which to make the pipes. Each strand was about 0.2mm thick, so approx. scale for a pipe 8-9mm across, which seemed about right. However, how to make them into the beautiful fan of pipework was not obvious, to say the least. I tried soldering the wires to the lubricator castings, but apart from clogging everything with solder, well you can imagine how successful that was. I then tried soldering the wire strands into ribbons six wires across, intending to use lower-melt solder to attach them to the lubricators. However I couldn’t solder the wires together over a short enough length then to make the elegant curved sections onto the castings. Lots of burnt fingers and strained eyes.
This is how I eventually did get something approximating to the desired appearance.
Click to enlarge.
First I found some thicker copper mains cable, and flattened a section out with a hammer, evening its edges up with a file.
Next I cut a small section of this cooper strip and folded it over the necessary number of strands of 0.2mm wire and hammered the folded copper strip together to hold the wire, applying a tiny amount of solder to keep it all fixed. Then I could bend the curves into the ends of 0.2mm wire and separate them to go up to the lubricators.
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The one in between the two lubricators had to take ten wires/pipes, divided to go different directions, of course!
The fixing strips were then used to attach the pipes to the footplate, in a position so that the curved pipes are coming from the sides of the lubricators.
The other end of the multiple-wire constructions help to hold the curved ends in place when soldering, and can then be bent into shape to represent the lubricator lines as then do down or across the chassis – a few travel across to the other side over a chassis cross-member, and are visible from above.
Was it worth all the trouble? I don’t really know, but it is satisfying to have succeeded, so if the painting eventually makes it invisible, i may just have to be content with that.
Nick has been playing hockey again this season. Note the left knee brace to protect his repaired ACL.
We went to watch his matches. His team didn’t play particularly well in the semifinal and won.
They played well in the Grand Final but lost.
In the end I had to take much advice from the fellow-members of “Western Thunder” – a model railway nerds website. I dismantled the tender and much of the running gear and made sure that all of the compensation mechanism was free to move. One suggestion had been to twist the chassis, but in the end I achieved much the same effect by introducing a spacer at one corner between the outer farm and the chassis, thus effectively applying a permanent twist to the latter.
The tender now runs:
However I realised that as it is the front wheels lifting off the track by 0.5mm, testing the tender on the S-shaped curve but with a dip in the track might not be good enough: the concavity of the track might keep the front wheels in contact when flat track or even a hump in the track might have the opposite effect and cause a derailment.
So instead I had to raise the centre of the test track and make the tender run over this. The only realistic way to do this is to pull it behind the locomotive! This became the first trial runs of the locomotive and completed tender:
It doesn’t run smoothly though – this is because there are electrical short-circuits created between the pony truck wheels and the front locomotive steps, and also between the guard irons on the tender (the metal posts which clear the rails of anything before the wheels run over it on the real thing). However the assembly never de-rails, which is a triumph!
Here is a picture of the whole assembly as it is now.
Click to enlarge
Now in some respects I am very pleased with my progress, but in other respects quite distressed and appealing for help!
I have finished the tender, with reservations – it doesn’t run as well as it should and needs to!
As you can see, i
t looks OK (given that it isn’t painted).
However even on my S-shaped test track it de-rails: there is a compensation mechanism which should allow there to be free movement of the rear four wheels almost independent of each other but this doesn’t seem to work completely effectively. If it did, the six wheels would all be always in contact with the rail. However the front axle seem to be able to have one rim off the rail, and so with the small S7 flanges, it de-rails. Adding weight to the front end of the tender makes no difference.
I had been so careful …. !
At every stage of construction I had run the tender chassis up and down behind the locomotive and it ran without problems. However at the some stage it becomes necessary to put it all together, take a deep breath and solder it up in such a way that it cannot be taken apart to adjust it.
By the time I had the water-scoop parts and the split-axle pick-up components all crowded together, it looks like this:
Click to enlarge
I dread having to unsolder it and take it all apart again!
It looks so good.
However looks aren’t everything, and unless additional lubrication of the moving parts frees up the mechanism and allows it to run over uneven track, what else can I do?
I visited England just before the referendum which was to see the UK population decide that they wanted to leave Europe (at least figuratively, although many would like it to be physical as well, I suspect). Whatever your politics are or your opinion on “Brexit”, I think it is safe to say that there will be a significant price that Britain and the EU will both pay for the vote in the short term. Whether there will be a long term benefit seems very uncertain, and that is why I did not believe the vote would be to leave.
Back to my UK visit.
I travelled with Etihad Airways, who are/are excellent. The Middle Eastern airlines are amongst the very best to travel with. Its just a pity that they come from such repressive counties. I was reading about the United Arab Emirates whilst I was away, and by flying with Emirates/Etihad/Qatar, a traveller is supporting a racist, evangelical, intolerant and unforgiving hierarchy in that country, I now realise. However Etihad gave me flights that were good. Lying flat makes such a difference, and I probably slept six hours between Sydney and Abu Dhabi. As part of the deal the airline provided a car to take me anywhere within a 100-miles-by-road of the arrivals hall. The driver took me to Sheffield! From Manchester the driver took a back route to avoid traffic which turned out very well for me. I picked up the SIM card for my ‘phone, but was without choice transferred by O2 (the provider) to a “Big Bundle” with 1000 “free” texts and 200 min. “free” talk time – but none for overseas calls! So the family could track me on Find My Friends, and could call me, but I couldn’t call them. Annoying.
I had a walk around Sheffield: it has so many signs of its old industrial past in once-magnificent, or at least very imposing buildings now in a derelict condition. Gosh they trashed the environment, or at least really didn’t care or understand the damage that was done. I started off on the “Five Weirs walk” but it turned out just to be through old polluted areas and I’d soon had enough and went elsewhere. Steve, Christine are well. Alarmingly for me, Steve will retire next year – how can I have friends who are old enough to retire? We went out walking around the reservoirs above Sheffield the following couple of days. Cold and windy but no rain.
The train over to Manchester was very crowded. I was lucky to get a seat. Train travel has become very popular, probably because the roads are so crowded. The authorities are repenting closed railways and even thinking about building new ones. So unlike the government in Sydney/NSW. I arrived early enough yesterday to be able to look around central Manchester, which actually is quite impressive now. Mainly because there are some very impressive Victorian architecture buildings. There is also a canal which runs through the middle! During the conference we had some lovely weather: blue sky and sunshine (in Manchester!). The long days are good also: daylight at 4am with the birds twittering outside is a mixed blessing, but daylight at 10pm is good, at least when the weather is nice. During the conference we had an hour’s talk from Alice Roberts (the TV personality and Professor of Embryology and Anatomy in Birmingham), and from a wildlife photographer! I like this conference innovation, and judging by the audience, lots of other people appreciated it also. I went out to eat at “The French” restaurant with John. Another restaurant by Simon Rogan (from l’Enclume – see entry from a couple of years ago) It was good, but seriously expensive.
John arranged for us to go on the steam-hauled Scarborough Spa Express on Thursday, pulled by a Stanier 8F. We had a good day: Scarborough was more interesting than I had expected. It is mostly the Brits. demonstrating how to go on holiday and lose both your sense of value and any sense of good taste. There was a ridiculous boat made to look like a children’s pirate ship in which you could float around the harbour for a pound. The operator would have had to pay me to be seen in it, and pay me a lot of money. However there are also some interesting things to be seen – the castle is superb, and some of the buildings are worth a good look.
The train journey was good, traveling through beautiful countryside on a lovely day in springtime. The Vale of York is at its best at the moment. I managed to avoid fish and chips on the seafront. We ate nice salmon sandwiches and also crumbly Lancashire cheese ones, plus fresh orange and mango juice, all whilst we sat on the walls of Scarborough Castle.
We also saw Ann Bronte’s grave (she wrote The Tenant of Wildfell Hall – IMO the best Brontë novel), so it was worth going to pay tribute.
They inscribed the wrong age on her headstone!
The next day we went up to Cark and even though it absolutely poured down the next morning it couldn’t dampen my spirits: real Lake District weather. We went for a walk around the Cartmel Peninsula. It’s a lovely area, and shows the green of England at its best. That evening we went out to the Rogan & Co. restaurant, and it was very very good. I had a goats cheese-and-beetroot salad starter and sweetheart cabbage and roasted nuts for main course. John had pork belly as starter (what a surprise) and Goosenargh duck as main course (another surprise).
The next day we climbed Helvellyn.
Both John and I reached the summit. We chose a steep route up and a more gentle path down. Just as well, my knees couldn’t have taken a steep descent. It was a lovely day. I may even have been sunburnt in the north of England (well, OK, that’s a little of an exaggeration).
It was certainly hot work at times.
I lost my sole on the way up Helvellyn.
I lost my other sole on the way down, and by the time we had walked back to the car, the boots were beyond any thought of repair.
Off to Oxted the following day. It was grey and rainy there. Not the heavy rain that we had up north, though. Next day we went to Portsmouth, and it was a really good day. 
We went around HMS Victory. Gosh the sailors of that age were small and had a tough life. There were lots of other interesting things to see in the Naval Dockyard: unfortunately the Mary Rose exhibition was closed, but there was HMS Warrior (the first iron-clad warship), lots of small sailing boats, other smaller ships, etc.
Portsmouth itself is just a small town, the harbour itself quite interesting, and lots of UK naval ships there. GB cannot quite get used to the fact it fundamentally is just a small nation now. They are spending billions of dollars on two (two!) aircraft carriers despite the fact that they don’t actually have any aircraft that can fly off them. Yes, that is true ….
Then I visited Dave and Pauline in Hove: they are well. Dave is about to stop doing even the small amount of teaching and tutoring that he has been doing for Birkbeck College in order to concentrate on doing his PhD. He wants to change direction and become an academic lawyer: he’s certainly “paid his dues” as a criminal lawyer in Brixton! Pauline is working for another pressure group (“think tank”) in London, and both were campaigning to prevent England leaving the EU. No-one I talked to thought it was a good idea ….
Next I went up to London to stay in a hotel called The Rookery. 
It is a quaint old-style building, but clearly with the intention of being a very upmarket hotel. A very unpretentious entry – basically you just ring the bell of what looks like a normal house (for this area, which of course is not really “normal” at all, given that it is in central London). Every room has the name of a local personage. Not necessarily an eminent person, though: two of the rooms are named after Victorian era prostitutes! My room. Is named after George Peacock, but the history doesn’t say much about him.
Staying in London was so that I could visit St Bartholemew’s Cardiac Unit. It is amazing. Three MR scanners just for cardiac work. One super-fast CT. Bart’s effectively is just a cardiac hospital now. Bart’s is near to StPauls Cathedral and also Smithfield Markets. It is an interesting area of London. Lots of bars, pubs, restaurants, but very few normal shops.
Off to Cambridge the next morning with Tim Elsworth for Christ’s College Alumni Garden Party. Cambridge has changed a lot over the years, and almost only the colleges themselves are recognizable, Tim and I decided. I knew very few people at the garden party, basically just Tim, Chris Cane and a guy called Mike Collinson, who used to cycle a lot, and once came to live in Sydney with his wife who was the Philippines’ ambassador for a while.
I then visited Amaryllis, Isobel and David, which was an excellent day out. They are well. Isobel is now at Leeds University reading Art History. We went for a walk over the South Downs, up to an Iron-Age fort, which was very interesting. It rained on us on the way back though. Well, it is England, after all!
The final day, Mark and I went for a ride on the Bluebell Railway, partly because it is now an extension of the normal railway line through Oxted: we bought tickets at Oxted station and at East Grinstead we could essentially just walk along the platform to join the steam train going to Sheffield Park (the opposite end of the Bluebell Rly.). It was a lovely journey through the green English countryside of The Weald.