Engineering pickups

The Super D has a fantastic chassis, amazing motor and so I need to do a decent job with the electric collection. Fortunately, there is enough space down there to do something I've wanted to do for a long while - some engineered rather than bodged pickups.

The idea isn't new, in fact I'm sure it dates from a very early MRJ. What you do is fix a bit of copper-clad inside the frames behind each wheel. Then you make the pickup in a U-shape. One leg is soldered to the paxolin and the other bears lightly on the back of the wheel.

In theory, the wheel can move up and down in its hornblock and stay in contact with the back of the tyre. Adjustment can be carried out one wheel at a time as well without mucking up the others.

Well, it was fiddly but I built it. The copper clad strips are attached to the frames with epoxy. This took longer to dry than expected but overnight it fixed them well. Soldering the wires wasn't too bad once I'd done a couple. The wheels have sideplay but stuffing some tweezers behind them moved the wheel as far out as possible. As long as wheel and pickup touch at this point then everything should be fine.

Anyway, the result was, it worked ! Every single pickup worked. On the track, the chassis runs up and down the length of track. I did this for quite a while as I was so chuffed with it.

The Super D gets back on its feet

The freshly cut metal is hanging under the back end of the chassis. It supports the linkage that connects the brake pull rods to the control inside the cab. A bit more planning and I've have remembered to drill holes for the fixing bolts first - as it was I had to fiddle things a bit to allow the heads of these in.

At the front, sand pipes curl around the brake hangers. In real life these are separate but on the model, fixing everything together makes more sens as the separation would be so small as to be invisible. Anyway, the pipes need some support or they will be bashed around in service.

After a good scrub, I masked the hornblocks and blasted a coat of primer followed by some weathered black over the chassis. A bit of touching up with a paint brush to cover the areas where I'd over-masked such as the detailed part of the hornblocks. Life's too short to fiddle around with tape here and you can't tell under the loco as the paint brushes very well.

24 hours hardening later, the wheels and motor go back in. I still need to add rear sand pipes, but apart from that it's ready for the body.

Cutting out metal parts

Work recommences on the Super D with the discovery that I'm missing some bits for the chassis - the guard irons (the locos ones, I have three pairs for the tender) and supports for the brake pivot under the cab.

Luckily, in the mountain of paper that came in the box of bits, there were several drawings of the locomotive from which I could trace the parts. Ideally, I would have preferred to use carbon paper but couldn't find any. Luckily the print was strong and the paper I wanted to trace on to thin.

Needing two of everything, I laminated a couple of bits of nickel silver together with a little solder, lots of flux and plenty of heat. The drawing was stuck on with spray glue.

After this it was just a case of making holes (pictured) and hacking away with a piercing saw. Straight lines are formed by cutting near to the line and then filing back to it. Once happy, more heat and a scalpel blade forced between the sheets of metal separated the bits. A course file cleaned away the solder and was followed by a rub with the fat fibreglass stick.

Result: parts that look pretty much like they would if I'd been able to cut them out from an etch !

Super D Chassis video

One for the gearbox pervs among you today - and yes I know there are some out there !

Powering the Super D will be a Cannon motor working through an ABC Models gearbox. The whole unit came from ABC ready assembled. All I had to do was file a flat on the axle, slide it in place, tighten the grub screw with an Allen key then apply power.

This is literally the first test. No lubrication yet, no running in and electric from my trusty H&M Duettee. Compensated chassis aren't at their best when not on the track either. Considering all this, the running is superb as you'd expect from a Rolls-Royce power unit. Mind you, at approaching 100 quid, it's not cheap but definitely worth it for the beautiful quality of the engineering. It goes to show, that in the UK we can do something other than make c**p telly and pizza after all !

Best of all, the body slips over the top of this lot with the motor in the firebox. I could fill the boiler with lead for some serious traction...

Compensating an 0-8-0 chassis

The Super D box of bits contains really lovely item - the chassis. It's scratchbuilt and fully compensated. I post a picture, not because I want to claim any input (It was built when I got it) but for those who fancy doing the same thing and want to know which wheels should move up and down.

Now I've actually seen the beast, it's simple. The front pair use a normal compensation beam. A fixed third axle is then followed by one able to tilt. The pivot is cleverly a bolt so the ride height can be adjusted.

On a 7mm scale loco, this is a serious level of sophistication. Most people just fill the boiler with lead and let the weight bend the world, or at least the layout, around the loco. Some may whinge about the lack of inside cylinders but then they probably don't build their own toy trains. This thing might be lacking in this department but, by golly, it will be able to pull the side off a house.

Making the footplate flat

Wary of my experiences trying to rescue the old kit bits, I took a critical look at my Plan B Super D.

In the main, it was very good but I still wasn't happy with the footplate. What should have been a long flat thing was slightly twisted. It's an easy thing to do and the wonkiness was very slight, but still (IMHO) not good enough. However, I reckoned if I could rotate the boiler very slightly around its mounting at the firebox end, all would be well.

A little work with a gas torch released the 100 degree solder but this don't entirely do the job so I cut down with a fine blade along the front face of the 'box and by the time I was 3 or 4mm down, the tube would move.

Before fixing it back in place, I made a jig to hold the footplate perfectly flat. Basically this is a bit of wood with holes drilled in to match the body fixing bolts. The body is fixed to this and construction can continue. And yes, I did check the wood was flat against a mirror first.

I just wish I'd done this a couple of days ago. Never mind, maybe I'll learn for next time.

Realism and a plan B

Last week, the Super D was looking good. Then I went to sleep and had a good look at it again in the morning. Overnight the model railway gremlins had struck and ruined it.

The front plan view was the worst problem. Despite marking and (I though) soldering the smokebox in the right place, adding the boiler had twisted it horribly. To be fair, the photo exaggerates the error but it was till there and bad enough I couldn't ignore it.

Running rulers and dividers over the model, I found other "issues":

The footplate was quite badly distorted. On one side it was was spot on, the other could be pushed up to a flat edge but refused to stay there. I suspect this happened when the boiler got dinged. The metal hadn't just bent, it had stretched and distorted.

At the back, the cab and side tanks (?) were pretty good but the front of the firebox wasn't perpendicular to the footplate edge. This gave the boiler an natural path diagonally along the loco. Fixing this probably contributed to the wonky smokebox issues.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is why taking on kits someone has already had a go at is harder than starting with a fresh set of parts. I need a plan B.

Those with sharp eyes will have noticed that the tags at the bottom of this post include one marked "G2". You might even have clicked on it and realised that this isn't the first such loco I've constructed in 7mm. The last go became a still-born project that has been gathering dust for a couple of years.

Unearthing it made me realise I had another option. If I nicked the body from this loco, I could marry it up to the parts I already had. My construction didn't look too bad and it sat on the chassis OK. I've ordered a replacement body kit to go in the box I'm robbing stuff from, but for the moment, it looks like this will keep the project on track.

Replacing the dented boiler

Blimey, this was a job that took longer than expected, but the end result was worth it. A Super D doesn't actually have a lot of bodywork to worry about so the stuff there is needs to be right.

When we left the story, the dented boiler had been removed. I'd also taken off the smokebox. I had a replacement bent bit of nickel silver that just needed to drop in. First up I soldered the tube to be the right size. On the front of the firebox there was a nice whitemetal stub to guide me. A couple of tack solder joints to ascertain the basic position and then working away from the whitemetal, seam soldered the bottom along its length.

With the smokebox loose, I could see that it had only been tacked together. Not brilliantly either but after a few burnt fingers and a bit of poking with wooden lolly stick, this was sorted out. I even remembered to clean this part up before fixing it to the footplate. I must have been on a roll at this point because I also realised that it had been in the wrong place earlier. 6mm from the front of the buffer beam is correct, not 8. And to carry on with the theme, the body retaining nut went in before I blocked access with the tube. Mind you, I did bung it up with solder so I suppose normal service was being resumed.

To fill the gap between boiler and smokebox wrapper, a quick wrap spare etch part bent around a small metal torch was made up. Lots more tack soldering and fiddling until everything lined up properly. The footplate, the one part I'd planned to keep because it was right, was wonky. Strapping a steel rule to this sorted it out and now the whole thing is locked together solid.

Boiler chopping

The process of building a Super D starts with some destruction. The steps sticking out below the footplate. They get in the way when I'm working on the model locomotive - I like it to sit down on the workbench and so they are more of an inconvenience at this stage of the project. A quick blast from the gas torch melted the solder so they fell off and were dropped in the bits box for possible re-use later.

Next, the biggie, the boiler. I reckoned that some heat would be required but first, I wanted to separate the front and back parts. A couple of fine blades in the piercing saw later, it was chopped in half. The firebox end turned out not to be attached at all so it was easily removed. At the front, the boiler pokes into the smokebox so I'll need to dismantle this to remove the offending metal and replace it with a nice round item. This probably means the whole smokebox will fall apart but that's not a huge issue. After all, it's no worse than building a kit.

Super D

I seem to be the target for "unusual" projects. The ones that aren't straight "Take the kit out of the box and stick it together without deviating from the nice simple instructions". This is one of those.

My task is to build a Super D. To aid me, I have been supplied with a loco that looks almost exactly right - apart from the almighty dent in the boiler. In addition there are loads of slightly random bits in the box. Some of these duplicate bits already on the model and other don't. I just have to pick the best of the bunch, and make a complete loco out of them.

I also get some information including a Model Railways Magazine from July 1973 with the "Bazzing Around" feature on the class. For those who don't remember him, Baz was a bloodhound who used to write a very informative column covering details of individual classes. I have read his words and still don't understand the history. It's a good job that the pictures are excellent.

So, I have a dented loco, loads of bits and a magazine article written by a dog. What could go wrong ?

Stop procrastinating

g2tenderchassis
Originally uploaded by Phil_Parker.

Got to get a move on with this or it will never get finished… Must tackle one of those jobs I keep putting off…

It’s brake gear time again. Since the bits are hidden behind the side frames of the tender they aren’t full of detail. Each hanger and shoe is a single etching – not a lot of depth but enough (for me) with the limited view you get. Besides, this loco is going to run on a garden railway where it will have to deal with slugs and snails on the rails. A friend describes how he had to remove the remains from the inside of a loco once – not pretty.

Once the brakes are on I quickly cleaned the metal, primed it and squeezed the can of matt black spray to get sufficient coverage.

The only change I made to the chassis before painting was to beef up the tops of the outer bearings. While a single thickness of metal should be OK, I have visions of carving a groove in the axle after a few miles of running. A bit of spare etch soldered in at the top should be enough.

Now all I have to do is fit it to the body. Some packing will be needed as the tender is a bit of a “low rider” at present. Nothing that a slice of plasticard won’t cure though.

Summer time and solder flows easy.

G2 in the sun
Originally uploaded by Phil_Parker.

No retail therapy for me today. I decided I didn’t need anything in town that couldn’t be purchased online or in person during the week. This gives me an entire afternoon working on the G2.

Sometimes things just seem to go right. Today was one of those days. The kit parts fitted properly – OK I had to make new tank tops but everything else was fine. Solder generally went where it was supposed to. Maybe it was the heat which must be at least 27 degrees. Not too hot to do stuff outside but very pleasant sat in the shade with the windows open and Guildfest on the radio. It’s days like today I wish I could get into cricket as I’m sure some Radio 4 Long Wave commentary would be very condusive to my workmanship.

I had to put the first whitemetal part in, the massive firebox front casting. Ignoring all good advise I used the 40W iron that was giving good service for the rest of the kit. There wasn’t much chance of melting this beast !

The boiler is level after a slight trim of the smokebox saddle. Because this is such a plain loco I spent a fair bit of time confirming this before finally soldering everything in place. Get it wrong and no amount of work will improve the model.

So for 4 hours work I went from a footplate to something that looks like a steam engine. If I wasn’t going out tonight for beer I’d probably get most of the model built at this rate. Still, I must make my contribution to Gordon’s revenue must I ? Civic duty and all.

G2 Tender

G2 Tender
Originally uploaded by Phil_Parker.

After a bit of break in the work on the G2 I fancied starting on the tender instead of carrying on with the loco. The tender will be a bit special on this model – it will hold the fuel for the model. By this I mean there will be a chunk of battery in there.

So, I ploughed ahead. There are a few interesting features of the kit. The footplate for the tender appears to be etched back to front. A problem but not insurmountable. Far more of an issue is the big lumps of brass required. I used a miniature blowtorch to run solder around, as even my (40W) iron wasn’t man enough for the job.

The difficult bends in the sides (the wrapper is a single etched part) were achieved with reasonable ease. Fold up strengtheners are included so ignore the instructions I put the back bends in first, solder these in and the made the front bends.

After only a little fiddling with fingers and re-bending the job was complete. So far it looks good and my square says all is well. Long term my plan is to cut out as much of the floor as possible. The battery will fix to a false roof with velcro and then the chassis will bolt on the bottom to give extra security. I still have to fit a charging socket and speed switch so I’m not out of the woods yet.

Splashing out

splashers
Originally uploaded by Phil_Parker.

The G2 splashers are made up of three parts – the bit you fold up from the footplate, a face with half etched detail and the flat bit to go over the top.

I thought the top part was too long initially. Only after fitting the first I realised the technique:

Bend the end a little so it forms a tongue.
Form the main bend over something round (I used a plastic tube).
Tack solder the tongue under the footplate and it holds everything in place while the main soldering is done.
Then the free end is flattened against the bottom and soldered up. It takes longer to describe than to do.

6 splashers done in minutes. Who says model making takes ages ?

Lots of brass

G2 footplate
Originally uploaded by Phil_Parker.

7mm kits – just like4mm ones really. The G2 footplate assembles in the same way as it’s smaller brethren would. The only problem is that the valences were missing. However at 2mm deep they are a lot easier to cut than the same thing in 4mm scale !

A lot of scoring with the Olfa Plasticard cutter on some thickish nickel silver and I had the parts. Very little curl to worry about and that that there was was easily removed with finger pressure.

G2

G2 Chassis
Originally uploaded by Phil_Parker.

Clear the decks, a new project has arrived. A G2 in 7mm scale.

Yet another Mercian kit but I’m not using the chassis because Trevor was able to supply me with a milled brass one. It even had the wheels and rods fitted.

The loco has flangless wheels and the chassis was correctly fitted with these – but only on one side. For some reason the wheel was in the wrong position on the other side. I suspect when turning the model around and putting the wheels on the builder got confused. I rectified this when installing the rather nice motor and gearbox.

Then I found a problem. The wheels are cast iron (wrong spoke pattern but we’ll ignore that), drilled and tapped for the crankpins. The builder hadn’t been very accurate with this on one wheel. I tired running it without the crankpin and everything seemed fine. The solution was to ream the hole in the con rod out to huge and let the pin wallow around. It looks OK as long as you don’t use a magnifying glass.

Since this is intended for a garden railway I don’t suppose it matters. A friend was telling me this evening about the damage a loco of this size can do to a slug – and the fun of getting it out afterwards ! You don’t look too carefully after that I suppose.