Just a Simple Cut-and-Shut?

[Bilco]

In the past I’ve built layouts to a cycle – two years building the layout, exhibit it at Pewsey, repeat. But Berger Hall proved to be unexpectedly popular, and I've had requests to exhibit at other venues, once already, and again in November, and next year I have one in March and some others as possibles. This has meant that I’ve had to keep Berger Hall, and I have no room for another layout – or so mai laidy waif says, and she has the casting vote …

So, I need other projects to satisfy the modeller’s itch. Now that the sow’s ear has been transformed into something vaguely silk-purse-like the workbench is looking forlorn and empty – or was. The post by KDRuthless on June 13th - http://ngrm-online.com/forums/index.php ... ent-533068 - showed a 4mm scale 3d-printed Heywood Ursula, and something stirred in what’s left of my brain …

Now, I know I said in my thread In a Bit of Estate that I didn’t want to build any more Katies after finishing the third one, but it seems to me that I might just find building an Ursula acceptable. I got out the Katie drawing I found back when I started on the Heywood path, photocopied it a couple times, and set-to with scissors and Pritt to produce an Ursula drawing. I have a table showing the dimensions of the various Heywood locos, and the main dimensional difference between Katie and Ursula is that the latter is 2 feet longer, or 1” in 1:24 scale. So, all I have to do is insert an inch into Katie – stop sniggering at the back, that boy ...

Of course, the other minor difference is that Ursula is an 0-6-0, so I trawled t’Bay for a suitable chassis, and ended up with these two buys for the princely sum of £10 inc. postage …



… and after hacking various bits off, lowering the rear upper surface to match the front, filling in various levels and squaring off the ends, and filling and painting the wheels, I have this …





I thought I might use an old motor, but in the end splashed out another £6 on a new one. As the chassis originally had the open frame X-04 motor and I’m using the newer Smokey Joe type I also had to raise the motor mounting so that the motor sits flat and the worm meshes with the gear wheel properly.

Now that Smallbrook have supplied a Katie kit I’m busy sorting out the usual Bilco mods to the footplate and body before getting the saw out and performing the ‘sawing a loco in half’ trick …

Hours of fun ...

[Bilco]

Right, before reaching for the saw I thought it might be a good idea to consider exactly where to make the cuts and joins in the Katie body and footplate castings. After cudgelling the atrophied logic circuits of my poor old brain I decided that the joins in the body should be over a solid bit of the footplate, and the joins in the footplate should be under a solid bit of the body. The cut lines would, therefore, be just behind the front of the tanks for the body, and just in front of the firebox backhead for the footplate.

Here are the castings after I’ve done messing about with them …





The footplate has had the buffer beams deepened by a millimetre or two, and the centre opening widened to accommodate the bigger wheels of the 0-6-0 mech I bought. I’ve also narrowed the area between the uprights for the derailing guard so that the mech is held tightly between them. The instructions (see, I do read them – occasionally …) call for sanding the top of the footplate casting to get rid of the meniscus caused by the casting process, but this was a bit deeper than previous ones I worked on, and the footplate ended up rather thinner than the prototype. But I have a cunning plan for the joining stage …

On the body I spent a lot of time squaring-up the tanks – they were wider at the bottom that at the top, and wider at the rear than at the front. The left-hand tank front also needed making square. Then the cab sidesheets were removed and the tank sides sanded down by a millimetre or two – until the upstands fell off. I usually do these actions for the Katie kit, and then clad the sides in styrene – I did it the first time because I mucked-up bending the cab side-sheets straight, and liked the result. In this case it will hide the joins in the tank sides.

Then it was time to attack the inoffensive castings with sharp implements, with this result …






The pieces necessary to make the extension will be a little bit bigger than the 1 inch suggested by the table of dimensions, to take account of the saw kerf and subsequent sanding smooth. Also, the footplate extension is a tiny bit (0.15mm) longer than the tank extension to accommodate the mech without mucking about with that any more.

So, the ‘cut’ is done, now for the ‘shut’ …

Hours of fun ...

[Bilco]

Right – time to get the glue out.

I started the ‘shut’ process with the footplate. I cut two 3cm lengths of 2mm plasticard and started to assemble the front and rear sections of the footplate with these inserted, all glued to a piece of 0.5mm plasticard to bring the footplate up to thickness. All was weighed down with my railway souvenirs …



The whole operation is done on a sheet of thick glass, with a straight-edge to keep things aligned. As the 0.5mm plasticard isn’t going to do much to strengthen the joins, even with an additional piece of 0.75 mm plasticard on top, to form the ever-so-slightly overhanging top plating, I glued two lengths of flat-bottom rail to the underside to provide some much-needed stiffening. The weights were again called into play …



… and the result so far.



I’m leaving it to harden off overnight before I try to prise the assembly off the glass sheet.

Hours of fun ...

[Steve Holland]

Are we allowed to use standard gauge rail as weights? I am guessing that it is 110 pound or 113 pound flat bottom, there is some lurking on my workbench as well. It also makes a useful mini anvil for bashing bits of metal on.
It's not as heavy as another one of my railway souvenirs - a cast steel wagon wheel found in an old quarry some years ago. It is about 12 inches or so in diameter and nearly escaped from the boot of our old Ford Cortina on the way home when I went round a corner a bit too quickly. As for its weight I have not got a clue although it caused a lot of bad language when I dropped it on my thumb!!

[Bilco]

Hi Steve - the smaller piece of rail is from the 2' gauge railway on Masirah, and the larger is from a metre gauge railway between a gravel pit and the Rhine in Nordrhein-Westphalia ....

[Bilco]

I wasn't able to do any modelling over the last two days - up to Lunnon for a Prom on Wednesday, and up to Brum for a visit to the Coffin Museum and the Barber Institute yesterday. So, today I buckled down to it, despite the steamy tempertures, to make a start on the second part of the 'shut' - the main body ...





The bits ready to get stuck in - the sides are pieces of 3mm plasticard with 8mm L-section to beef up what would otherwise be rather weak butt-joints, and the top is a piece of 2mm plasticard. Still to come is the curved boiler top - but I have a cunning plan for that ...

Once the glue on the L-section bits is dry I can get down to some serious glueing ...

Hours of fun ...

[Bilco]

OK, last bit of glueing tonight - the side pieces to the rear part of the main body casting ...





The heavy lumps of rail come in handy again to keep everything in tightly.

Tomorrow I'll check on the squareness, and then glue on the front and, finally, the top ...

Hours of fun ...

[Bilco]

Right - on with the show ...

With the side extensions securely glued in place I added yet more bits of the L-section to form a bigger surface on which to glue the top ...



... and then glued the front on ...





Finally, I glued the top in place, which should make the extension pretty strong and rigid ...





When everything has hardened the next job is fitting and fixing the boiler top section ...

Hours of fun ...

[Bilco]

And the next step - the boiler top. I found in mai laidy waif's sewing basket a cotton reel with the centre diameter an almost exact match to the boiler, so it was purloined while she wasn't looking - " Reel of white thread? No, haven't seen it anywhere dear ..."

A section was cut out oversize, and it was then trimmed and fettled until it was a good fit ...



... and then glued into place ...



Just for fun, here is a shot of the horrors under the extension, seen from below ...



... they won't be visible on the finished article, thank goodness ...

[Bilco]

Now that the 'shut' part of the exercise is done, I thought it would be fun to see how it all looks on the newly-extended footplate ...



... with the chassis and motor in place. Because the wheels are bigger than the Smokey Joe's the flanges protrude above the footplate, so need cut-outs to suit. The extended footplate is nicely rigid - at least, as far as I dare stress it ...



The various bits propped together. The joins in the tank sides will be covered by the side overlays - the dome covers most of the boiler top join. It's beginning to look like a loco now ...



... and from the front. It's amazing what a difference the 1 inch extension makes to the look of the thing - here is my first Katie at a similar stage ...

kaffie cabbed 03-crop_zpsm7hoovgn by Bill Corser, on Flickr

On with the overlaying!

[Bilco]

Right - overlaying complete ...

Time has been a bit limited this week, but I managed to get the overlays cut out and ready for a rapid, glue-wielding 30-minute session to fix them in place ...



The tank side overlays hide all the ropey joins that the insertion of the 3 cm extension produced ...



..., while the equally ropey joins in the tank tops were treated to a filling of Liquid Green Stuff. The outer overlay is 0.75mm plasticard, with pieces of 0.5mm plasticard to thicken up the cab side-sheets and the side upstands.



More 0.5mm plasticard was used for the footplate top plating ...



... and then the two parts propped together ...

The last part of the extension process will be to replace the beading along the top of the sides - coming soon to a workbench near me ...

Hours of fun ...

[Thorness]

Superb!
Looking forward to the finished loco.

[Bilco]

Well, things have progressed, albeit slowly. I applied the beading around the top of the tank sides - nothing interesting there to photograph - and then gave the whole thing a spray of grey primer. This showed that my smoothing and filling hadn't been quite a thorough as I thought, and I've been through several iterations to get things looking vaguely respectable. Also - confession time - I dropped the body at one point; it landed on the carpet, on the smokebox front, and the wings on either side broke off, so I had to glue them back on and fill and smooth yet another area.

Anyway ...

Things are back on track now ...



... the chimney and cab front are just propped in position. Again, it makes an interesting comparison with the first Katie at the same stage ...

kaffie ucoat 02-crop_zpspehsgdai by Bill Corser, on Flickr

I've also been working on the chassis - the cylinders are painted, lined and varnished, and the slidebars affixed. I've made crossheads and piston rods and fitted them to the connecting rods, so it's all well on the way ...

Hours of fun ...

[Bilco]

I thought it was about time I turned my efforts to the mechanism that's supposed to fit inside and under the body that's been the focus of my posts for a while. In the first post of this thread I showed the extremely second-hand Hornby 0-6-0 chassis I found on t'Bay, with no motor or pickups - the latter another 'Bay purchase.

I hacked a lump off the rear of the block of metal - those Smokey Joe plastic chassis were so easy to work with - to level it with the front, and sourced a SJ motor to power things. I had to glue pieces of plasticard onto the block to bring the motor up to mate the worm with the gear on the middle axle,then glue the motor to the plasticard.

The pickups make contact with the wheels on one side only, contact on the other side comes through the metal block. I pondered how to connect the block to the motor, as it's insulated by the plasticard, and finally ran a wire from one of the screws that fixes the pickup strip to the block. A quick test showed that the motor would run from that lash-up.

Then I bodged together a set of cylinders with slidebars, and mounted them in place with a brass strip bracket. I bent up crossheads from more brass strip, with piston rods from big paperclip wire, and connected them to the ex-Smokey Joe connecting rods - I bought lots of sets of rods when I was in my double-Katie frenzy, so have plenty to spare. Finally, I fixed the original coupling rods, new connecting rods, and crossheads in place - I had drilled out the threaded hole for the crank pin in the middle wheels so that I could use a standard Hornby crank pin, as used on SJ.

Then it was crunch time. I applied copious amounts of PTFE grease to all moving parts, and anything that I thought might move, then I put the whole shebang up on a couple of blocks and applied power from my trusty old H&M to the motor terminals. And ... despite all the butchery, bodgery and general ad-hockery, she purred into motion! Even with the dodgy H&M output the mech is controllable down to a nice crawl, and contact through the wheels works perfectly, too. While they were rotating, I used a fine wire brush to polish the wheels, too.





Here is the beast - not pretty, but she should do the job. I discovered that the crank-pins fouled the bits of rail I glued to the underside of the extended footplate, so I've glued 1mm plasticard to the bits of the block that the footplate rests on, and that raises them clear - phew!

Next traumatic event is painting...

Hours of fun ...

[Bilco]

Not a lot done this week - we've had visitors, and the modelling room ... err, room where I do my modelling ... was in use as a bedroom. However, I made the faux-valve gear on the lines of the Katies I've done before ...

IMGP0064-crop by Bill Corser, on Flickr

I actually made the valve gear three times. The first time I decided when it was finished that the arms? levers? were too coarse and thick, so I remade it with thinner bits, then realized that it was all set a long way out from the wheel it supposed to be working from, because of the bits of rail I'd glued to the underside of the footplate to strengthen the joins. So, it was all ripped off again and remade much more inset - the state in the photo.

Although I'm satisfied and don't intend to change it again, I realized that it could have been made to move if I'd made an arm? lever? that was attached to the crankpin of the centre wheel. But I know my limits ...

I also sprayed the body with the usual green paint; the painting so far seems to have been pretty trauma-free, but I still have to apply the lining and satin varnish, so there are plenty of opportunities to b****r it all up yet ...

Hours of fun ...

[Bilco]

Well, the lining and varnishing are done. Not too many traumas - trying to get a long strip of lining to stay in place, and keep straight, produced a bout of shouting, and the old lady at the other end of the village duly complained, but otherwise ....





The boiler-top joints of the molding aren't as crisp as they were on the earlier ones (nor are my own attempts). Does anyone have a photo of the top of a prototype - I suppose there must have been a gap between boiler and tanks - could I represent that with a black line?

So, it's on with all those little details that take lots of time - no different to my other Katie builds, so I'll post the final result in due course ...

Hours of fun ...

[Bilco]

Right - at last those 'little details' have been done, and the splendid name and works plates from Narrow Planet have been fitted, and the result is ...



... which looks a bit like what I'd envisaged when I started on this project. Allow me to introduce 'Lady Frideswide'. Sir Macintosh had been getting a lot of grief from her Ladyship about the time and money he was spending on his railway, so he thought that naming the latest loco after her would divert the criticism - at least, for a while ...

Now all I need is a driver, so I bought in another of the Lemax 'Bird feeders' ...



Igor was pleased to have something to do, and cackled evilly as he dragged his screaming victim off to his foul-smelling lair. In due course he delivered the poor chap back, minus his arms and legs - he was a bit short in the limbs (and is even more so now), and I want to improve his reach a bit. I've attached armatures of thick wire, and my next trick will be to build his new extremities with Green Stuff ...





Hours of fun ...

[Mark Goodwin]

Hi Bill,

A beautiful creation.........
Warm regards
Mark

[Bilco]

Many thanks Mark - it's turned out better than I feared, although I can only see the infelicities, as ever. The next task is to get the driver finished in time for Warley - I also have the get the layout down from its hibernation and make sure it still works ...

Hours of fun ...