Beer and Buckjumpers

[Paul Willis]

Two separate days on business in Amsterdam this week, and an evening seminar in between means that there has been precious little time available for any modelling. However I managed to find a quick ten minutes last night to knock up a quick jig that will help with future jobs.

The period that I'm going to be modelling is Great Eastern Railway, circa 1909/10. The exact date hasn't yet been fixed, but it will be around then. Thanks to Adrian Marks on the Templot forum, I have plenty of information on the different types of track formation that would have been used.

At this date, the quieter branchlines of the GER would still have been laid with rail in lengths of 30 feet, if not even the earlier 24' length. A standard was established in 1883 (rather than 18.83!) set that there would be eleven sleepers per thirty foot section.

I am knocking up a quick piece of board in order to sit rolling stock on to check buffer height, coupling alignment, etc, etc. This is just on a small offcut of wood pinched from the back of the garage. It's conveniently long enough to fit two 30' legths of plain track on it, and next to it I can put an A4 turnout that will be a test to see how stock runs over pointwork and crossings, and will be a good proxy for some of the more severe curves that will be found within the to-be-built brewery.

Adrian provided a set of measurements for the sleeper spacing of this rail length, so I printed off his diagram, and then transcribed the markings at 4mm to the foot on the side of a piece of stout card.

IMG_3136.JPG

This was then placed next to the length of track that had already been prepared with
separated C&L sleepers taken from the individual P4 trackbase panels. These work very well on their own, but they don't simulate the variable spacing around rail joints and the large gaps between sleepers that I wanted to capture.

The spacing marks on the card could then be easily aligned with the centre of the chair on the outside of the rail for each sleeper.

IMG_3139.JPG

A bit of shuffling around, and we have one prototypically spaced length of GER track. The railhead is notched with a piercing saw to simulate the gap between the railends, and I'll add an etched brass fishplate to the join afterwards.

IMG_3140.JPG

I'll now attempt not to nudge the sleepers out of position (being separated from each other means that they do move more easily out of alignment) and when all is square I'll glue it down to my bit of nicely varnished board.

[Paul Willis]

No, not a raid on the Thomas the Tank Engine trainset for some rolling stock, but an inspired source of one of those things that you can't easily find elsewhere...

As part of setting up my short test track, I want to be able to check the operation of the Sprat & Winkle autocouplers. For a piece of board, I can't and don't want to set up an electromagnet beneath the board - too large and too easily knocked, and needing to be wired in to a power supply every time something is tested. However to get hold of a small button magnet to put under the level of the sleepers was also problematic.

Maplin sells them, for use with reed switches, but at over a quid a shot, a few for testing purposes would be pricy. I didn't have anything like spare kitchen cabinet catches to dismember, so I was feeling a little stuck. And then inspiration struck...

My nine year old stepson has a number of plastic "bones" with magnets in the ends so that they can be stuck together to make sculptures or designs. He won't miss one, will he? A quick snip with the modelling pliers and I've liberated two button magnets that are about 5mm across and 3mm deep.

Then I got my Dremel out, and drilled a shallow hole between the sleepers in the board. A couple of taps with a hammer on the end of a drift, and the magnet is tightly in place. I've popped a drop of superglue in for security, and that should be that.

The photos show the board, and then the close-up of the magnet and the "bone" that I got it from. The intact one I will be slipping back into his room later tonight - I don't need *that* many for a test track.

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The magnet fixed in place:

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[Paul Willis]

Fishplates and crossing-timber strips to be precise...

IMG_3145 (Medium).JPG

In a quick ten minutes before a trip out of the country earlier this week, I fired up the soldering iron to add a couple of fishplates to the length of test track that I made. There's only one (fake) rail joint, but I want things to look good.

I'm using Colin Waite etched brass fishplates, and whilst the basic etching is good, the fitting method is a right PITA! The problem, in my hands, is that the two plates for the two sides of the rail are linked by a brass strip to make a H-shape. This means that they don't get lost so easily, and in theory it is possible to attach them by clamping them in place with no solder or glue involve.

The theory is fine, but I found that in practice the springiness in this joining strip actually kept them away from the rail. It also made it difficult to align them properly. I wanted them to stay in place, so soldered them in place, with the iron turned up high and a quick in-and-out so that I didn't melt the plastic chairs. Looking at the photo below, I wasn't that successful with the soldering

IMG_3150 (Medium).JPG

The solder paste that I had didn't help. It's Carrs 188 stuff, which is normally excellent. However I hadn't used this stuff for (literally) several years, and it was starting to get very thick, and gave rise to some very blobby application, which shows in the messiness of the end result.

Thankfully, Brian Lewis of C&L (vendors of the Carrs range) runs the Finescale list, and very shortly after posting a question about what could be done to revive the solder paste, he replied with the information that I could use Green Label flux to let it down a bit. And now it's back to as good as new

The strips bit relates to the fact that next to the plain track, I'm building an A4 turnout for testing purposes. From my last stretch of P4 track-building I still had a bag of cut and punched sleepers from various turnouts. Not referenced, of course, that would be too easy.

So in the manner of a jigsaw puzzle, I spread them on the bench next to the template and matched the individual lengths and holes to the relevant places on the plan. Now I've never tried to build an A4 turnout before in my life, so I know that these are all stolen from B6, or B8, or double slips, or whatever. But they fit, and now I have the full set of timbers to start work with.

IMG_3152 (Medium).JPG

I know that I've got some blades and vees from other projects that I have in a bag somewhere, so I'll rummage through those as well, although I'm certain that I'll have to make the A4 vee from scratch.

Now out with the double sided sticky-tape!

[John Bateson]

Paul,
Re. your soldering - I would be concerned about melting the chairs as you are (easily replaced) and locking the rails which would inhibit any expansion.
An alternative might be to dab a little cyano on the rails on one side then close the fishplate over the joint with a pair of flat nosed pliers. Painting with rust will hide any loosness. Use an oiled Rizla paper if worried about gluing up the pliers!
John

[LesGros]

Paul,
Re. your soldering - I would be concerned about melting the chairs as you are (easily replaced) and locking the rails which would inhibit any expansion.
An alternative might be to dab a little cyano on the rails on one side then close the fishplate over the joint with a pair of flat nosed pliers. Painting with rust will hide any loosness. Use an oiled Rizla paper if worried about gluing up the pliers!
John

As a matter of interest, what is the expansion rate of P4 bulhead rail? It would be useful if this were to be expressed in mm per degree Celsius per some convenient unit length.

Cheers

[John Bateson]

I use NS rail which has a coefficient of expansion of 9ppm/deg F. Since my attic can move from below freezing to above 110 I allowed a range of 100degrees which over 1 metre comes out at just under 1mm if I have got my sums right. This is a worst case scenario though.
I know this doesn't seem a lot but I suspect that bits of my track (I like to lay in long lengths which is why I always buy 1m lengths from the stores) have pinged from time to time and while easy to fix can be a nuisance and embarrassment.
So these days I rely less on copper rivets and more on glueing chairs to wooden sleepers and I also break the 1 metre lengths after laying usually into multiples of the scale equivalent of 60' and eitheer make cosmetice cuts or real cuts before fitting the fishplates.

I still have a couple of 'pings' to repair though! Perhaps I am being over-cautious but if you have ever soldered a thin carriage side to a thick base you will have found just how much the side can bend when expansion happens.

John

[Chris Mitton]

I've found the linear expansion coefficient of nickel silver given variously as around 15 - 16 parts per million per degree Celsius (steel, depending on its composition, is slightly less). My loft layout is being built (slowly!) in four-foot-ish baseboards, and I've allowed for a temperature variation of 30 degrees between winter and summer. This works out at just under half a millimetre per metre, or about 0.6 mm over a whole baseboard. Since nobody makes rails more than a metre long, even a length of plain track extending the length of a board must have at least three rail joints (including the board ends), usually more, so I think I can get away with losing all this variation in the joints. The proviso is that the rails can "float" longitudinally without distortion. I've come to the conclusion that this can best be achieved by building the lot entirely from wooden sleepers and plastic chairs: the chairs hold the rails securely to gauge (MEK / wood is a pretty strong bond) but the rails can slide in them. Each rail is only "anchored" at one point in its length, by the droppers (brass lace-making pins à la Jim S-W) - actually two per rail, to avoid creating a single point of failure, but on adjacent sleepers so that expansion between them is negligible. There is of course a theoretical risk of expansion short-circuiting an insulation gap, but judicious use of Exactoscale plastic fishplates should prevent that. Maybe the answer is to build the track in summer, thus making the problem contraction rather than expansion..... However, from conversations with gents far more experienced than I, a bigger worry should be warping of baseboards caused by humidity changes.

I realise I'm pontificating here, as I'm still quite new to P4 so none of my track has yet survived a complete seasonal cycle, but the baseboards have so I'm still reasonably optimistic it'll all work one day!

HTH
Chris

[Paul Willis]

Thanks to all that have contributed their knowledge on the matter of track expansion.

It's certainly given me something to think about when building a larger layout, and correspondingly longer lengths of rail. For the moment, I'm not going to worry too much. The total length of the test track is two x 30' lengths, so 240mm all told.

I've popped a couple of hoops on the end to stop rolling stock from, well, rolling. All looking pretty satisfying so far. After so many years of just having stock put in and out of boxes, it's nice to have something just to sit it on.

Anyway, I got a little more done yesterday, so maybe I'll find time for a quick post a little later.

TTFN
Flymo

[Paul Willis]

I had some time free on Sunday afternoon, so I thought that I would gather the tools together to turn my miscellaneous crossing timbers into something that I could construct a turnout from. First, gather the tools...

IMG_3154.JPG

I used to have a lovely solid aluminium sawing block - the type that you clamp to the edge of a workbench - that was great for peening rivets over on. Sadly, that has disappeared in the mists of time, so i had to look for an alternative. That's the very solid block of steel making up that set square, so that will do nicely. It's propped up on the end of my soldering sponge just so that it is level.

For actually turning over the tubular rivets, of which a few can be seen in the foreground, by using the centre punch on the left. I use it unconventionally, by turning it upside down and tapping (okay, belting it quite hard..) on the pointy end with the small hammer on the right. It usually needs three or four taps to get the back of the rivet level with the sleeper, and then it's closed for good.

The most problematic bit that I found was getting the rivets into the holes in the sleepers. I had problems lining them up in the first few sleepers, and then I snapped one by mis-aligning the rivet with the hole and pressing too hard. So after that, I just reamed slightly out the holes so that they slipped in more easily. But it just shows that even on the simplest tasks it's possible to make mistakes.

I had a second template stuck down with double-sided tape, with more tape on the front to hold just the ends of the sleeper. After each sleeper was riveted, I transferred it to the appropriate position on the second template.

IMG_3156.JPG

And after they were all in place, I dug in the spares box for some rail parts that I could recycle to save making them again. I found a pair of point blades, and a pair of wing rails.

IMG_3157.JPG

Some work with a fibreglass brush and they'll be ready to use again. But first I need to make the 1:4 angle vee, as that is the part from which I remember that the pointwork is built from. I really should dig out the Scalefour Society Digest sheet on building turnouts, rather than trying to do it all from memory

[Paul Willis]

I've just spend a pleasant five minutes tinning the tops of all my rivets in my turnout sleepers

It may have been completely unnecessary (or it may not...) but it seemed that it helps speed the formation of the solder joint.

I've never done it before but it was rather therapeutic - just a pinhead of 188 solder cream and a wipe of the iron. Alas, two days away on business in Amsterdam mean that it will be the end of the week before I get a chance to do any more. Still, I have the 1:4 vee filed up and fitted now. One more decent session, as opposed to snatching a quick ten minutes at the end of the evening, and this thing will be built!

[Paul Willis]

No, not one of Gresley's finest, but the A4 turnout I was building.

I finished it off in a couple of hours at the weekend. This is the end product.

IMG_3159.JPG

The sleepering through the turnout is Scalefour Society ply & rivet build. The dark brown sleepers at the ends are ones cut individually from C&L trackbases.

The whole thing is stuck down firmly on my test-track/reviewing board. This serves the purpose of allowing me to look at a vehicle to see if it is "right", to test the fitting of the Sprat & Winkle couplings, and to see how it runs through pointwork. Not as good as a full shunting plank or test track, but a sight easier to have on a workbench.

There is a tie-bar fitted that I _think_ that I got from the Scalefour Society.

IMG_3160.JPG

Although you can see it is soldered in place, I have yet to work out a latching mechanism. I may drop into Maplin tomorrow to see if I can find some form of surface-mounted switch that does the trick, possibly in conjunction with an Omega loop as well to take up the extra movement.

What to do next? Hmmm... Let's wait and see.

[Tim Horn]

Hi Flymo,

Nice work!

Took a few pics for you whilst taking the dog out last month. Still got several 11 sleeper panels in place at North Elmham, a siding, but still original I think.





Cheers
Tim

[Paul Willis]

Hi Tim,

Thanks so much for posting those pictures. I never expected that any track like that would be in situ anywhere in the country. Just the date of the chairs says that they are 120 years old. Absolutely fascinating

The location is a little too far away for a site survey trip this early in the year (even without our current snowy confinement...) but I will certainly intend to spend a day or two poking around that area in the middle of summer. I googled the location, and the whole railway environment on that line looks like a very worthy spot for some research. It looks as not too much has fallen foul of "touristication" and therefore is well worth recording before much longer elapses.

Thanks again!
Flymo

[Paul Willis]

Causes of poor running #137

Or idiot's mistake #6.. Look at it how you will

As part of renovating my fleet of tired P4 wagons, a Coopercraft GWR open wagon with sheet rail came to hand. I've had a preliminary look at it, taken off the old S&W couplings that were not as well-fitted as the ones that I build now, and given the wheelsets a spin to see if there was any wobble.

There wasn't, but one wheel was catching very badly on the brakeshoe. Looking at the one on the other side, it was running well clear of the brakeshoe. Odd to find. So I popped the wheelset out, and looked at it carefully, and this is what I found.

End of axle1.jpg

End of axle2.jpg

Notice the difference? When I had checked, and presumably adjusted, the back-to-back setting on this wheelset I had made a simple mistake. I'd pushed the wheels along the axle until one was far back from the coning, and one was actually sitting over it. So although the wheelset was to the correct measured back-to-back, it didn't sit squarely in the chassis.

A lack of care on my part, and something to make sure that I don't do again in the future, but if you get poor running from a particular piece of rolling stock, it's something else that merits checking.

Flymo

[Paul Willis]

Two things came together this morning: Allan Goodwillie's post on the use of ad-hoc jigs to make modelling easier (here: viewtopic.php?f=39&t=666&start=25#p3809) and me chasing another upside-down wagon around my workbench. Grrrr!!!!

Whilst fitting and tweaking S&W couplings, my activity seems to require one hand for a soldering iron to melt the parts in, and one hand to hold whatever I'm fixing, and then one hand to stop the wagon sliding around the workbench. Now I'm not anatomically gifted, so this has become very much of a sweary language moment, particularly when I drop the part that I'm trying to fit.

So out with the camping mat and the steel rule and the craft knife. A few swipes, a waft of the hot-glue gun and I now have this:

Wagon cradle 001.jpg

The central fence means that I can use it for either low sided stock on the left side, or taller wagons and vans on the right hand side. A bit like these:

Wagon cradle 003.jpg

Held securely in the cradle, they are like this, with the innards exposed for easy work:

Wagon cradle 002.jpg

When I next go out to the garage, I'll look for a piece of board that I can glue it to. Whilst it works as it is, a little more weight underneath will make it less likely to slide around.

A note on construction - if you're using a camping mat, unroll it and let it rest for 24 hours, to get the curl out of it. Otherwise you'll find that your base and fences aren't straight and may even try and pull against the glue into curves.

Flymo

[Paul Willis]

After another bout of five or six wagons having new couplings fitted, and generally renovated, I fancy something different.

So before diving straight into a full etched kit, I thought that I should warm my skills back up on an easier RTR conversion. Rather than a simple conversion using drop-in wheelsets, I have two of High Level Kits' replacement chassis for the venerable Dapol Pug.

I bought these two bodies over a decade ago, and made a start at scratchbuilding a chassis for one of them using hand-fretted frames. Since then the HLK chassis kits have arrived, and I've parked my effort to one side.

So this is what I have: one stout white box, and one body with original chassis and motor.

High Level Pug 002.jpg

The body will be backdated and repainted in L&Y colours, but that is for the future to worry about. In the meantime, what's in the box???

High Level Pug 004.jpg

A comprehensive range of plastic bags, full of all sorts of bits. Several sheets of very comprehensive instructions, including a cross-reference to an article in Model Railway Journal. I've added some Alan Gibson wheels, and with the kit I bought a suitable motor and gears.
So apart from some etched L&Y number plates, the kit is complete.

Let's hope that I get some free time tomorrow to get started!

[Paul Willis]

Well, on Sunday I had some free time to make a start on the High Level Kits chassis kit for the Dapol Pug.

After five minutes the Dapol body was reduced to its constituent parts:

High Level Pug 001.jpg

There is one typo in the instructions that confused me at the outset - it refers to unclipping the cab at the sides and FRONT of the cab, where a quick look at the model showed that the clip was at the REAR. Simple to spot, so not exactly a deal-breaker. The metal weight is the source of ballast for the original model, and the space where it sits will be occupied by a motor in future. I'm going to have to be slightly cleverer to get more weight into my model.

One of the next steps is to remove the hideous cab shutter that formerly disguised the motor that intruded into the cab. This was done by using a miniature drill with a burr in it to carve away the mass of the shutter, then finished off with a scalpel. I managed to do it without breaking any parts of the cab, nor carving off the beading around the opening, but I made one slip when trimming the very last bit off. I hadn't realised that I was so close to the back of the cab window and scratched it with the tip of the scalpel. So that's a bit of disguising that needs doing in the weathering stage. Ho hum...

High Level Pug 002.jpg

It's a fantastic improvement to get rid of the shutter and to be able to look straight through the cab.

High Level Pug 005.jpg

After that, things went well, with the replacement cab floor fitted, some dummy front frames, and then onto the two coal bunkers that are in either side of the cab. These are exquisite pieces of design, all folding up from a single piece of nickel silver. They are finished off with some 0.4mm brass rod and etched handles for the injectors. This shows just how small and delicate they are.

High Level Pug 010.jpg

The piece of wire sticking out the front of the bunker is as yet unidentified. It may be a handle for the coal-door, but it isn't clear yet. Therefore I've left it overlength until its use is clear. I don't want my fireman catching his shins on it.

And after three very satisfying hours, that is it More tonight if I get chance...

Flymo

[Paul Willis]

A couple of hours more this evening working on the Pug. All spent on the firebox build, and if I'm to do it properly, an intensive and painstaking job.

It started off by the curving and building of the firebox itself. The tab and bend method works very well, helped by the half-etched lines that help form an even curve. I started by tack-soldering the ends in place, and then filling the rest of the join around the entire edge with a fillet of solder.

Pug firebox 001.jpg

After this can fixing the lost-wax brass castings of the steam turret and the safety valves. The ends of the steam turret are drilled out slightly and some 0.5mm wire soldered in to represent the pipes. They aren't quite even, but I had a heavy handed fitter in the shed at the time of the last bout of maintenance

Pug firebox 003.jpg

The handwheels are so delicate that I really didn't want to flood them with solder, and I am already using two different grades to stop previous work falling apart - 188 degree and 147 degree on this.

I then had to switch to the 70 degree solder to start on the firebox back. The gauge glasses are now in place and the holes drilled for the wire on which the firehole door handles and the regulator will be mounted. The casting is only propped in place at the moment, and the gap around the edge won't be there when it is soldered in place.

Pug firebox 007.jpg

And that's it for the moment. I'm out of the country for work tomorrow, so it'll be the end of the week before I can pick up a soldering iron again. And yes, soldering these sort of details is tough on the eyes and the fingers!

Flymo

[Paul Willis]

To write things up, that is! There has been much modelling going at home, but not much spare time to write this blog up

On the Pug, the cab is finished, and one day so will be my notes, and there has also been baseboard shaped activity as well, taking advantage of a quiet weekend. More on that soon, but for the meantime here's a taster showing how I solved the "three hands" dilemma to solder the regulator through the firebox backhead...

Pug chassis 014.jpg

And yes, those are a pair of Pug sideframes in the background. More soon!

[Paul Willis]

After a rather busy couple of weeks with things both work, and non-work, I've a moment to catch up with progress. At the start of February, I'd got to the stage where the cab interior was nearly completed and I simply had a few details to attach to the firebox back.

As with all of the kit that I've completed so far, the parts are beautifully prepared, and assembly is a joy. This picture shows the etched regulator handle shaped and soldered to a length of straight brass wire. This was prior to cleaning up, so fitted it looks a little neater. But for comparison of the size, the object in the background is a fibreglass burnishing pencil...

Pug chassis 009.jpg

A tip for anyone contemplating doing something similar. Not only did I solder the join through the pivot over-length and then trim it back, but I left the whole of the length of the wire in place as a handle. I drilled through the entire firebox back and soldered it in place from the rear.

Pug chassis 012.jpg

I then snipped it flush and filed down the rear to remove the solder blob. I then repeated it for the two pieces of wire that form the firebox door handles. And this is the completed item.

Pug chassis 015.jpg

A masterpiece in kit design and manufacture... So that's it for the cab interior at the moment. More on other areas later. For now, I've got an Alan Gibson E4 kit to drool over.

[Paul Willis]

Well, although I haven't posted anything for a couple of weeks, I've been busy with the Pug and a few other things - of which more anon - so I'm not going to go through a blow by blow build of the chassis. Rather, this will be a picture essay, with a few comments where appropriate.

Where I left it previously, I'd finished the cab fittings and was ready to move on to the frames. As previously, before doing any construction I gave the etchings as a good going over with the fibreglass burnishing brush to remove any surface oxidation. That gives the best possible start for soldering to be done.

So to start, this is the basic chassis with the frames and the P4 spacers erected. I had one minor mishap where I filed off a locating tag by mistake. There *is* a warning in the instructions, but it comes after you've removed the part from the fret and (if you're of a fastidious mind) already cleaned the etching up :-/

Never mind, there are plenty of other location references, and the kit naturally goes together absolutely square.

Pug chassis 017.jpg

Pug chassis 022.jpg

One of the next tasks was to laminate the coupling rods. This was done using solder paint, and a cocktail stick rammed through the holes in each end to keep them together and aligned.

Pug chassis 024.jpg

This is the finished item. The slight banana shape of the rods isn't actually there. It's a function of the camera lens in taking pictures of some very small objects at very close range.

Pug chassis 025.jpg

The next picture shows the sliding bearings and the matching hornblocks being held in place by a coil spring so that they stay in place whilst being aligned using the London Road Models tapered axles. These allow the centres of the coupling rods to match the bearings exactly. One axle is fixed in my model, so it only needs one set of moving bearings, and not the two pairs if I was going for a fully sprung model. A conservative choice on my part, given this is the first loco kit I've built in around 15 years.

Pug chassis 028.jpg

I've hit the limit on attachments, so more in the next instalment...

[Paul Willis]

This shows where I went away from the instructions slightly. The suggestion is that to provide a mounting point for the front chassis bolt, it is possible to tap into the body moulding. I found that there wasn't enough meat in the material for this. As an alternative, I carved a larger section away, and filled it with a couple of layers of thick plasticard laminated together with PlasticWeld. I then left it 24 hours to dry thoroughly and harden before drilling through and using the mounting bolt to cut its own thread.

Pug Chassis 029.jpg

So after readying the body and test fitting it, the original cylinders and slide bars are re-used and mated with the frames. This was done using a 14BA bolt. Not too fiddly in isolation, but unfortunately when it needs to be weedled into a gap between two spacers with tweezers it became a job that needed much patience and a few rude words when it came to getting the nut on the end of the bolt.

Pug Chassis 032.jpg

The next (slightly blurred) picture also shows the compensation pivot point. It's a chunky piece of steel rod, so there's no danger of it wearing down. Fixed in place with a little reaming of the mounting holes, and the use of Carrs Brown Label flux, it was very easy to solder securely.

Pug Chassis 033.jpg

It does seem as though the spacer and slidebar hangers could be more closely aligned. I may have made a mistake here, but tightening the mounting nut up tightly does induce a distinct bend in the crosspiece that is the slidebar hangers. Perhaps a spacing washer should be used to keep things parallel.

Pug Chassis 035.jpg

This shows a more complete state, with the connecting rods soldered in place. It remains to be seen how much clearance I have when I come to install the wheels behind them, but there is still meat left in the backs of the bushes that can be filed down. Also visible is the dummy inside motion, which makes the chassis look nicely prototypically cluttered.

Pug Chassis 038.jpg

And that's the end of this post... More in a moment.

[Paul Willis]

The ashpan is fitted next. I pressed out the half-etched rivets by hand, using a sharp scriber and even hand pressure. This was done on a slightly soft cutting mat, to give a yielding surface to form them against.

Pug Chassis 040.jpg

And finally, some neat little webs not only represent the strengthening ribs on the prototype but also neatly locate the rear guard irons. Another piece of really clever design that is a hallmark of the High Level Kits.

Pug Chassis 042.jpg

After all of this, the chassis had a good rinse with Neutralising Rinse (Carrs again) and a dunk in my wife's ultrasonic cleaning bath. That really made all the accumulated crud and chemicals drop off it, and it was followed by an overnight dry on the top of a radiator.

More again soon...

[Paul Willis]

I've not done very much on the Pug recently. However I picked it up again earlier this evening to get started on the brake gear. This is very cleverly designed as a one piece unit that can be removeable.

To start it, I made up the brakeshoes and put them ready to be fitted to the crossbars. Here's a picture of all four of them prepared. The next step would be to mount the wheels to set the shoes to the correct position.

Wheels 002 (Large).jpg

Unfortunately, after I'd mounted the wheels on the axles in the chassis, I went to pick up the brakeshoes (centre of picture) and found only three of them ((

I suspect that whilst fitting the wheels, I caught one of them with a sleeve and flicked it into the far corner of the room! I've spent twenty minutes on my knees on the floor grubbing around and not found it.

So out with the nickel silver scrap and the piercing saw when I next start on this again. Sigh...

[essdee]

Paul,

Hi - and commiserations, I know the feeling only two well. I work on a confined desktop workstation (a version of the Rice 'Boite Formidable', of a few years back, though 'Crate Incroyable' is perhaps more accurate), and still suffer this too often.

A tip - it has reduced the incidence of the problem considerably. I always have 'work' and 'hobby' projects on the go at the same time, and find it invaluable to use small open or lidded perspex boxes about me, to store smaller items or sub assemblies. Over the last 20 months, my main build - SDJR 2-8-0 81 - has generated a maximum of six, but more usually four, such boxes of bits. At the end of the day shift I move the work project boxes to the side of the bench and bring on the evening shift stuff, and vice versa.

Incidentally, I think it is essential these days, for those of us with competing calls on our time, to have a dedicated work area, and I would strongly recommend anyone to dig out Iain Rice's article and make their own 'Boite Formidable' - it saves a heck of a time in setting out and tidying up.

Perhaps someone here has the reference for Iain's article? I will dig out a shot or two of my own version and post here.

Best wishes - and I bet you find the missing brake hanger as soon as you make its replacement!

Steve Duckworth