In Its Natural Environment

I thought I’d post another photo of the 20, this tome on my layout Morpeth. I can’t emphasize how significant it is to me personally to finally have a Z20 class taking shape whixh will eventually run on my layout. This is the locomotive that ran on the Morpeth line. It was ubiquitous on the line and shared duties with only one other class of loco in the period I model that I’m aware of. I’ve been modelling Morpeth for 14 years and this is the first time a Z20, or anything even remotely resembling one, has sat on one of my layouts. And there have been three that used Morpeth as a theme.

Very pleasing! 🙂

I started work on the rear water tank/coal bunker after I made the post this morning. This started out as a test in bending some nickel silver but once I’d started I couldn’t see any real reason not to continue. The first test piece ended in the ever-growing pile of off cuts and scrapped pieces in my ice cream bucket but the final box was able to incorporate a section from one of the larger off-cuts that was already in there, so the traffic is not all one way. The plain box will eventually get a wrapper with rivet detail applied.

I got some of my scratch building books out this afternoon to look up how the experts bend metal with curves in the corner. Geoff Holt described a simple method of clamping a length of solid brass or steel rod into a vice and bending the sheet material around this. I gave it a test and it worked fine. I then did some calculations and ran a test piece. This turned out to the exactly the same width as the footplate in spite of my best estimates: I even drew a plan! 🙂 When I deducted some mm and re-bent a new piece it came out fine. Nothing wrong with the technique, it was more my experience in estimating how much material I would need that needed sharpening up. I drilled some holes and bolted this box onto the footplate with some 12BA bolts and nuts. The nuts are soldered inside the box on a small flap I bent into the rear wall. I’ll run shelf of angle around the inside top edge about 1.5mm below the top edge which the top plate will sit on. As this is the largest internal space by volume in a 20 I’ll probably try to fit the speaker inside this box with the decoder in the boiler.

PS: if you want to hear more about my adventures in scratch building the 20 class why not come to the Aus7 Modellers Group Forum next Saturday the 31st. I’ll have the loco there with me. Follow the link for details