Morpeth MkIV

I’ve been referring to this version of Morpeth as Mk IV to myself through such things as labelling the folder where the photos I’ve been taking have been stored on my computer. It’s far too complicated to outline the details of Mks I to III here. I’ve made reference to the earlier layouts and iterations of these layouts on this blog but I wouldn’t bother trying to hunt these posts out, that’s all ancient history now. What is worth mentioning is that I did a lot of work on Morpeth in the lead up to the Aus7 ExpO which was held in March 2014. I worked on the layout quite intensely in the lead up to that show and once I arrived back home the layout sat essentially untouched for a time before I decided to try installing it at home as a semi-permanent layout. I made some damaging changes to Morpeth Mk III to get it to fit and then personal circumstances led me to selling the house I as living in at the time. So these half-implemented plans went from being planned changes to planned damage. As a result of moving house I packed the layout in its dedicated trailer, towed that across the range of hills that separated me from my old home about 100km away and there it sat, inside the trailer while I built my Z20 class locomotive and put some rolling stock kits together.

Now you might ask why it’s taken me so long to start working on the layout again, especially as it was approximately 75% complete in March 2014. It would only have taken a good push along for another 12 to 18 months to get it “finished”. This is a very pertinent question. Perhaps the most important thing stopping me from pushing straight on with finishing Morpeth was the June 2009 issue of the Australian Model Railway Magazine magazine which has a very nice photo of my previous layout, Queens Wharf on is cover. I’m very proud of this cover as it was the first that featured a layout built by me, so proud in fact that a framed copy of it hangs on the wall above my workbench. Now while I’m proud of having my layout on the cover of what I consider to be Australia’s premier model railway magazine there is something that grates with me and it’s that at the time the photo was taken I didn’t own a steam locomotive that could be used in the photo. As such the 32 class steamer that does appear was borrowed from a friend. Now there’s nothing wrong with the 32 class (thanks for the loan Paul) and I actually don’t have a problem with someone else’s loco appearing on my layout in a photo on my first and hopefully not my last magazine cover. However I do have a problem with the fact that I hadn’t yet built a steamer of my own that could have been used. Not because I couldn’t build one but simply because there always seemed to be other things (both modelling and life things) to be getting on with. At the time the cover appeared I made a promise that no layout of mine would ever appear in public again without at least one steam loco built by yours truly gracing its rails. I had to make an exception for the Aus7 ExpO in 2014, it was initiated and organised by the O-scale modelling group I happen to be president of. 2002 was and my 19 class loco are the result of that resolution to build some steam locomotives.

So we get to 2014-2015 and I’m implementing a plan to install Morpeth at home as a “semi-permanent” layout and just after I chop 150mm off the end of one of the modules and rearrange a couple of the buildings’ locations personal circumstances lead me to come to a full stop! In the house move I also managed to drop a desk lamp on one of my buildings doing a pretty thorough job of rendering it back to its constituent components; some paint, a large decal and of a pile of plaster chips and dust.

I have a bit of a weakness for building kits and this is an “in progress” shot of the original brick building that sat on the bank at the rear of module 3. It started life as a Downtown Deco building marketed as Archie’s Bar. On my layout it first of all became a billboard for Rosella tomato sauce and then it became a pile of plaster chips after I dropped a desk lamp on it! After it was damaged I decided it couldn’t be saved and I tossed it in the bin.

This past few days I’ve reached a bit of a milestone in that I’ve managed to get back to where I’m not just fixing planned damage on Morpeth but actually starting to make some genuine progress toward finishing the layout and getting it ready for a public showing. One of the biggest changes I’ve been planning to make is to turn my train turntable from its original purpose into a 4th scenic module. This module appears on the plan I posted a couple of days ago and it consists of a 2mX600mm slab of river that will eventually hold a long wooden trestle up on which will sit a ship model I’ve had stored away for about 5 or 6 years and onto which I have been dying to get my hands!

This photo shows the train turntable in the process of being dismantled. I’ve already removed the table and other hardware and soon will move onto cutting down the sides and installing a solid table of 7mm plywood which will serve as the Hunter River’s surface.

The change of use for the module in the photo above is not that the turntable didn’t work, in fact anything but: it was a remarkable success. However it was big, unnecessarily big in fact, and required one full parking slot in the trailer that houses Morpeth. In thinking over what I wanted to do with the layout and what possible redesign work could be carried out on the train turntable, I made the decision that I could make better use of this module as a fully scenicked entity and that a new slimline train turntable could be made and fitted into one of the 100mm high utility slots at the bottom of the trailer rack. I have convinced myself that I can make the train turntable work in a slim form, all I have to do now is make it. That will happen further down the track.

Peter and Phil, two very hard-working friends of mine dropped by on Wednesday last week to give me a hand on re-purposing the turntable module. I was a little worried I wouldn’t get everything done in the two days I had available for this work but, with their help, we got the whole job done and even had time to dawdle over a cafe lunch. Thanks guys, I never would have finished this on my own.

The work was carried out at my partner’s home in her double garage as I don’t have the space to carry out such work in my abode. The only problem with working in her shed is that there’s no power or lights in the shed so taking decent photos is a bit of a challenge. The work went swimmingly and by the end of the day we were able to pack the new module back in the trailer ready to be hauled back over the range.

While you have to squint and squeeze your imagination really hard to see it this module will eventually come to represent the Hunter River. Module 3 can be seen in the background at right angles to the re-purposed turntable module.

Over the past couple of days since arriving home I got some wiring upgrades done on the station module before I packed it back in the trailer. This is the module with the Shell Depot on it that I posted about last week. While some track needed to have wires reattached I also wanted to cut some rail gaps and install some NCE BD20 block detectors that I plan to use in conjunction with an NCE Mini-panel to allow a couple of locomotives to shuttle back and forth on the layout. The plan for this is that I would like to be able to have the option to have something moving on the layout automatically to take the pressure off the operators at exhibitions. With block detectors and a bit of basic programming I should be able to have a small tank loco shuttling back and forward on the pier and a railmotor doing the same thing from the fiddle yard to the station. Spending 3 days moving trains back and forth on a fiddle yard to terminus layout gives you a new appreciation of tail-chasing layouts.

So today I swapped module 2 for module 3 in my workroom and got to work looking at what I needed to do to complete this module before I could move on and get to work on the pier and ship models, to say nothing of the yet to be built slimline train turntable.

I have been aware for the past 3 or 4 weeks, as this stage in the layout work approached that I would need to start by finding a replacement for the brick building that originally stood on the bank a the rear of module 3. I’ve decided that the Outback Model Co kit of the small country church would fit the bill. This photo shows a test of the kit in the same spot after a bit of judicious scenery “remodelling”.

I’ve lived all over the state of NSW in the past 30 years and I’ve seen at least 5 or 6 examples of the church that is represented by the Outback Model Co’s kit of St Agnes’ church. After taping together walls of the kit with low tack blue masking tape I plonked the resultant box in the space left by the previous building. It is perfectly sized for this small space: very Australian and very appropriate for this space.

This recently repainted church is just one example of the St Agnes’ kit produced by the Outback Model Co. It fits the site perfectly when this was made vacant by the damage to the previous building. This example is situated in Nevertire in central west of NSW.

A Z20 at Morpeth Station (Finally)!

I’ve been working on a Morpeth based theme for something like 16 years. The Z20 class tank locomotive was ubiquitous on this short branch line, in fact I know of only one photo that shows a different class of locomotive on the line and that was a C30, another tank locomotive of the NSWR that at a casual glance is a very similar looking locomotive. The point I’m trying to make is that I’ve been working on a series of layouts in a range of formats based on a branch line that essentially only had one class of locomotive that ran on it and for all those years I haven’t had a model of that class of loco. I do now. To put this into some sort of perspective, in that 16 years I’ve built two separate versions of the station building and platform you can see in this photo. This is number 2.

This the fist photo I’ve taken of my newly completed Z20 sitting at Morpeth station. The passengers have been waiting for 16 years for the train to arrive.

Now everyone brings to their modelling a different set of beliefs and principles when it comes to what they will and won’t run on their layouts: some people are happy to run just about anything that has wheels others won’t run a locomotive on a line that depicts a particular spot that never ran there on the prototype. Now I’m fairly flexible with what I’ll run on my layouts, as long as they’re the correct scale and are generally speaking of a NSWR origin (and not too ridiculously large) locomotives that never ran on the Morpeth line get a run and even those that weren’t even running till after the line was torn up might make an occasional appearance. However I do have one bug bear about prototype running that has caused me pause a few times over the years before I built 2002. Locomotives run on Morpeth that never ran to the real location however I’ve always felt less than comfortable with this without at least one example of the class that was synonymous with the line, namely the Z20 class. I consider this informed consent: I’m ok with the non-prototype locomotives running on the layout as long as I know they didn’t run there and that I also know what did and I have one example of that class running on the layout. Having 2002 is the fulfillment of a 16 year journey and having a photo of the loco in front of a station building made by myself with a station name board with the word Morpeth on it has resonance for me. This photo is my hobby.

This module has sat untouched for most of the past week as I’ve been busy with work and life but I managed to do some track laying tonight.

This photo shows the gap in the scenery where the engine shed once stood. I’ve installed a short length of track here to extend the siding and this is now wired up so I can move onto filling the gaps.

The hole in the scenery left by the relocation of the Morpeth engine shed sits on the front of the module in front of the station. I spent some time tonight wiring up the new length of track (just over 400mm long or 17″) and cleaning the track on the module and testing the loco. This is the first time in over three years that I’ve run a train on this section of the layout and the only work needed is to fill the holes in the scenery and lay down some new ground cover. After I’ve done this I’ll install a bit of fencing and some pipes and this siding will become a minimalist fuel siding. Once that work is done this module will be placed back in the trailer and out will come module 3 to take its place in my workroom. Module 3 is the scenic heart of the layout and it needs at least three new buildings, a lot more trees and shrubs added, a creek/river bed completed and a concrete culvert that leads onto a curved pier that runs onto a module that I haven’t actually built yet.

I’ve set in my mind that I’m going to offer to take this layout to an exhibition in Sydney or Brisbane in 2017 but it’s got to be finished before that happens. I’m pretty sure I can get the basic infrastructure done in time but the models take me a long while to build and the goods shed, while largely complete, needs a bit of work to get it where I want it. The new scenic module will be formed by the base freed up by recycling my train turntable module that I believe I can reproduce in a much slimmer form so it can sit in a small slot in the trailer which will allow me to build the pier as a fully completed unit with ship in situ. I plan to have the pier wired up and locomotives will run on it but at exhibitions I’ll utilize a shuttle module that will allow my Manning Wardle to shuffle back and forth on its own with a wagon or two in tow. I’ve also been thinking about how I can make the ship model rock up and down gently as it sits next to the pier and how I can light the module as it sticks out from the main layout at right angles, thus making a lighting rig that doesn’t intrude too much into the scene a real challenge. Lots to do…

This photo shows an early stage of construction on module #3. Things are much further along than what can be seen in this photo but I think this gives a good overall impression of the bones of this section of the layout. I”ll move back to working on it when I’ve filled the hole in the scenery on module #2. Looking at this photo I’ve remembered that brick building you can see behind the loco is a Downtown Deco structure that suffered a fatal accident when I was moving house the last time. A desk lamp fell on it from the top of my work bench so I’ll need to find a replacement for it when I come back and start to work on the module in a few weeks. Make that four buildings I have to construct…

2002 Running At Tenterfield

A few days ago I visited my friend Peter Krause to give 2002 a bit of a run on a longer length of track than I have available. Peter is building a slightly scaled down version of the northern NSW town of Tenterfield in a shed in his yard. The result is below.

I’d like to thank Peter for letting me run 2002 on his layout. We had a few technical issues with some dirty track and an incorrectly flicked switch but I got just enough footage to put together this video.

Finished! Really this time…

Well I got my free lunch out of Bruce last Saturday and the 20 wasn’t even really finished. I flew down to Sydney on Friday evening and stayed overnight in a hotel before driving out to Nth Sydney Leagues club on Saturday morning with the locomotive in my backpack. I always love watching the reaction of the security staff at the airport when they see the stuff I put through the screening on these occasions. I was watching as the lady sitting at the machine looked closely at the screen and then backed the bag up again to take another look before looking over her shoulder at me and asked “what is that”? Her reaction was a hell of a lot more priceless than an Amex card 🙂

You can clearly see the marker lights working in this shot. The loco is still in need of a coal load however.

What I hadn’t had time to install prior to my trip on Friday was the bi coloured LEDs in the front marker lights, the MV lenses on the headlights and the coal load. The photo above shows I’ve now installed the marker lights and the MV lenses are in place both front and rear. I’ll do something about the coal load over the coming weekend and then the loco will be officially “finished”.

I’ve really enjoyed building the 20 but I’m well and truly ready to make a start on something else. Bruce reckons we made our wager 9 months ago and that’s a long time for a single modelling project. As I’ve written here before, I work on one thing at a time so I’ve done nothing else but work on the 20 for all those months and I’ve decided that the next project is going to be some new work on my layout Morpeth. A friend of mine who is involved in a project to ship an enormous layout to the UK this September challenged me to get Morpeth ready in time for the Liverpool exhibition in Sydney this October. I might be crazy but I’m not dumb: it makes perfect sense to me for 7 or 8 blokes to spend a fortune on shipping a layout halfway round the world and back so some poms can whine about the GOG “subsidizing” a group of Aussies on a UK “holiday”, but it makes no sense to me to attempt the impossible and do 3 years work in six months to get Morpeth ready by October. OMG! If only they knew! I was talking to another friend involved in the project to ship the layout over there this past weekend and I swear I could see his already thinning grey hair get thinner and greyer as we spoke about what he’s putting himself through. He used to be a school principal so he’s tough 🙂 However, taking a leaf out the wacky play book of the Arakoola group, I’ve decided to challenge myself to have Morpeth ready to show at an exhibition by Oct 2017.

Is 18 months a real challenge? Well I’m not kidding when I say there’s about 3 years work left to do. The buildings are mostly in place but there are still two major structures left to complete from scratch and the goods shed is still a long way from being finished. What I’ve decided to do is get the section you can see in all the recent posts on this blog (section 1) completed and when this is done move onto section 2. Both of these have the least work to do and I can probably have them completed within a couple of weeks. Sections 3 & 4 are another matter however.

I’ve numbered this plan so that what I’m talking about in the text makes a little more sense.

Section 3 has a creek bed to finish and Rundles Mill is still just a cardboard mockup that was painted grey for the one exhibition Morpeth has attended in 2013. I would guess that there’s probably 6 months work is left in section 3 at my usual leisurely pace. However its section 4 that is yet to even be started and the amount of time I need to complete it is anyone’s guess. This section of layout is going to be formed from a base provided by recycling the present train turntable/storage roads which I have decided can be re-made with a much narrower cross-section allowing me to fit the entire layout in the trailer for transport (including section 4). Until the present plan to re-arrange the layout was developed I could never work out how to fit 5 sections of layout (section 5 being the train turntable) into a trailer with only four slots available. I think I’ve solved this problem but we’re all going to find out whether it’s a workable solution over the next 3 weeks when I finally start on the work to recycle the turntable and make a start on the base for section 4 which will house the pier and ship models. My reasons for being fairly vague about how much time it will take me to complete section 4 is that it has a whacking great ship on it and as I’ve never built a ship model before I’m a little unsure about the amount of modelling time this is going to consume.

It took me nine months to scratch build a loco, how long’s it likely to take to assemble a meter long ship model? 🙂

Finished! (Almost)

Well I got the 20 wired up and running tonight and these are the first photos of it after running all of 50cm back and forth on part of Morpeth. The good people of Morpeth have waited an awfully long time for a 20 class to arrive in town.

The headlight on the rear of the loco was working when I first placed it on the track but it suddenly decided to cark it so I’ll have to look into that…later.

I managed to get the loco and body reassembled for their little flight to Sydney over the weekend. Not without a couple more dramas. The rear headlight decided that it wasn’t going to cooperate after working when I first placed it on the track. Probably a loose wire but I don’t really have time to go in and investigate so it will have to wait upon my return home next week. I also ran out of time and couldn’t install the front marker lights so these are still empty shells. However the sound is glorious and bloody loud so I’m happy with my earlier decision to follow John’s advice and cram in the large speaker. It almost parts my hair when I sound the whistle 🙂

This photo makes the 20 look a little high in the rear end. I’ve used a slightly stronger spring over the bogie since I felt the lighter spring I used the last time I assembled it wasn’t holding the loco level. This might be causing some rise in the rear but I can investigate that later too.

Crewing Up

With the Aus7 Forum coming up next weekend, and with the Easter long weekend available for a little modelling, I thought it was time to set to and get the 20 operating. My friend Bruce probably thinks I’m playing some cagey game with our wager over who gets their model operating first. However I can assure anyone who reads this blog that the real reason I’ve made no posts is not to keep my progress secret but because there hasn’t been a great deal of progress to report.

This photo shows the test I ran for the positioning of the crew. The position of the fireman is not ideal but there isn’t a great deal of room and there are limited places to drill through the wooden floor so the figures can be secured.

I’ve reached the stage where a crew needs to be installed and that means two tasks need to be carried out:

1. A crew needs to be selected and painted.
2. A way of securing the figures needs to be settled upon.

I love the white metal figures available from various sources in 1:43.5 that can be used in these modelling situations: the quality of the figures is one of the reasons I model in this scale. However I’ve never been very happy with the methods I’ve employed to secure them in place in the past. I always drill a hole in the base of the feet of my figures and insert a length of .7mm brass or NS wire which I use to hold the figure during painting. This wire is then inserted in a hole I drill into the floor of the cab of the loco I’m working on to allow a modicum of mechanical connection between the loco and the figure. I then glue this arrangement in place with the most appropriate adhesive. In most instances two-part expoy.

However just recently I’ve had a couple of figures come adrift even though I’ve used fairly aggressive glue and the wire is there suposedly to hold things in place and I decided with this loco that something more was needed. I was installing a wooden floor into the cab of the 20 (as per the prototype) and I was far from convinced that a white metal foot would want to stay put on a real wooden floor, no matter what glue I used. Soldering wasn’t an option without stripping off some paint so I decided that a different approach was needed.

This morning I chose the two crew figures I was going to use from among about 6 I had on hand. I drilled a #54 hole in the base of the foot of both and tapped a 10BA thread into these holes. I dipped the tip of two long 10BA brass bolts into some super glue and screwed these into the tapped hole in the base of the figures’ feet and then snipped the heads of these bolts off. After installing what was now threaded rod into my figures I scraped and cleaned the figures by going over them with a blade and files and giving them a good scrub with some Jif cream cleanser and an old tooth-brush.

This afternoon I drilled two #50 holes through the wooden cab floor I’d installed. These holes went right through the floor and through the NS base of the cab so that when the crew was positioned I could use two 10BA nuts to secure the figures firmly in place. This had the added advantage that it ill help retain the wooden cab floor which is only held in position with a bit of glue.

The two bolts shown from below securing the crew into position.

In spite of the size of O-scale locomotives it is quite deceptive to think that it’s easy to install everything you need into a loco like this.The DCC install for this loco has a lot of components and wire to fit into a very confined space. Just like the phenomenon where the cost of your lifestyle has a tendency to rise to meet your income, the size of the DCC components used in an O-scale loco tend to grow to fill the available space. If you look at the top photo you can see the multi coloured strap wire I’ve used to connect the lights in the rear of the loco to the decoder, which will be housed in the boiler casting. One end is connected to the circuit board (designed and made for me by my friend John Parker) to allow the lights to operate in the rear end of the loco and the other end will plug into the decoder. Concealing the run of this strap wire from the rear tank to the boiler successfully has taken a fair bit of planning and extra work but the payoff will be that it allows a neat wiring job and the operation of two dual coloured maker lights, a rear headlight (if that isn’t a contradiction in terms) and a small cab light.

Running this wire under the wooden floor was logical but this then restricted where I could drill through the floor to place the crew. If you look at the lower of the two photos you can see the multicoloured strap wire emerging near the motor on the right but the nuts and bolts are well away from and above the wire run. A better place to position the fireman’s foot would have been right where the wire was running but I didn’t have this option.

The loco will still run even though the fireman has to swing round the driver to shovel coal 🙂

Details, Details…

I’ve managed to get back to doing some modelling over the last few days and this has meant I’ve been applying details to the major body components of my Z20 scratchbuilt locomotive. I’ve always felt that a major milestone is the application of the Westinghouse pump (if the subject locomotive has one of course): this step seems to indicate that the project is nearing completion. Today I fitted the Westinghouse pump casting to the side tank of the locomotive.

To show I’m working to a reasonable standard of accuracy I thought I’d include a photo of the real thing just as a way of keeping myself honest. This photo is the pump on 2029 which is preserved at Thirlmere.

I spent some time today adding a couple of detail items to the interior off the cab; a screw reverser, crew seats and some castings of other items that sit on the rear of the tanks. I’ll move onto the backhead of the firebox next. Before moving onto the backhead I wanted to complete the detailing of the tanks inside and so once the interior detail was applied I moved onto the last two items on the exterior; the water filler hatches and the Westinghouse pump.

This is a photo of the pump supplied to me as an alternative to the 19 class casting. As can be seen through a comparison with the previous prototype photo, this is a good match for the original.

I have a couple of the castings from the Z19 class kit by Model O Kits and had decided that this casting was a poor match to the pump on the Z20. It had detail that didn’t seem to be present on the photos of the Z20, its components were arranged differently and it seemed to be a lot bigger than the plans I had indictaed the real thing was. A few months ago an acquiantance of mine offered to provide me with some castings from  different class of locomotive he had produced which he felt might be useful for the Z20 and the casting of the Westinghouse pump he sent me was indeed a much better match than the one I had on hand from the Z19. It came as a set of cast parts and I assembled these today before drilling out the holes where pipes will enter and exit. I made up a small metal backing plate to match what I could see in the photos and soldered this to the rear of the pump. I then soldered this assembly to the front of the tank. I also ran a piece of .7mm NS wire to the small “cup” tank that sits on the footplate and soldered this into place. I still have a few pipe runs to make but the side tanks are now essentially complete and I can move onto the backhead detailing.

Time For DCC

For those of you who have followed this blog for a while you’ll perhaps be aware that all my locos are fitted with DCC decoders and that I use an NCE system to drive my trains. I have sound and lights in all my locos and wouldn’t have it any other way. In fact DCC sound was one of the prompts that pushed me to switch scales many years ago. I wanted to fit sound to all my locos at the time I was contemplating the scale switch and figured that getting a nice big speaker into an O-scale loco would be a lot easier than into an HO equivalent. I had decoders in all my HO locos but none were sound equipped and if I was going to have to start from scratch I figured I may as well do this in my new scale rather than go back and retrofit them into my existing HO fleet.

As I’ve worked on the 20 I’ve been planning and cogitating on the way I was going to install the decoders (I need two to get enough function outputs) and just as importantly the speaker. I’d been back and forth about where to put the speaker but I hadn’t contemplated the fitting on my standard choice (a small Jaycar speaker that is not longer available) of which I have a small supply salted away. This was mainly because I hadn’t considered there was sufficient room for this speaker in this model, that was until I was persuaded otherwise by my DCC adviser John. He convinced me to try fitting this relatively large speaker between the tanks and lo and behold the following is the result.

I’ve labelled this photo to allow John to see how much space is available after the speaker enclosure is taken into account.

After I decided to go with John’s suggestion of fitting the larger speaker into the space between the tanks I had to mill a large slot out of the boiler. The speaker is enclosed in a thin styrene box the edges of which have two screw holes drilled through to allow the assembly to be secured to the bottom of the boiler. The decoder of choice is an ESU V4 but not the XL version. A decoder with a lower power rating will be more than adequate in this application. This will be supplemented by a TCS function decoder which, when added to the function outputs on the ESU decoder, will allow me to install the functions for two dual coloured marker lights front and back, a head light front and back, a glowing firebox and a cab light. I picked up the TCS decoder for less than $US20 by buying a five pack from Litchfield Station.

John has kindly offered to work out a wiring diagram for the loco which will probably look remarkably similar to those he produces regularly for articles appearing in 7th Heaven. You can get an idea of what this looks like at the Aus7 Blog. Most of his wiring articles are available as back issues and can be easily adapted to other locos with similar needs. All that really needs to be adjusted is the size of the vero board circuits. One of the things John tends to recommend is the use of multi coloured strap wiring in combination to the mini pin strips. I have a stock of these components too.

One of the challenges of this project will be to get these strap wiring run from the rear tank to the decoders in the boiler but happily a solution suggested itself today. There will be a need for 7 wires (or this may possibly be five) to run from the tank to the decoders and normally this would pose a challenge because the cab is in the way and there isn’t a great deal of room below the footplate to allow the wires to pass unobtrusively between the two. However the damage I inflicted on the rivet strip the other day left a small oblong shaped section exposed inside the cab that was just about the right width for the amount of wring that will need to pass along the loco. Upon examining prototype photos I discovered that there is a wooden inset floor in the cab that sits above this damaged area giving me a perfect mask for the wiring run that can easily pass under this wooden floor and will mask the wiring all the way from the tank to the boiler.

I’ve placed the required width of multi coloured strap wire over the section of the tank I plan to cut a slot into (the part shaded in black). The red line represents the level of the wooden floor within the cab.

So the rear headlight and both marker lights will be hooked up to a vero board circuit as designed by John and the connection to the decoders will be made via a 7 line run of multi strand cable that will run unobtrusively under the wooden floor I’ll install in the loco at some point down the track.

This photo may not make a lot of sense but it shows the coal bunker door inside the cab of a 20 open with the wooden floor apparent in the front portion of the photo. I’ve represented this in my model but the bunker door is closed.

I won’t be installing any DCC decoders or other wiring for quite a while but I am close to installing the light castings to the rear of the water tank and I also need to cut the slot in the bottom of the tank to allow the multi strand wires to run under the floor. Now is the time to do this, I don’t want to have to come back and chop up a painted loco later.

Decisions Decisions

I approached my modelling bench this morning with a bit of trepidation knowing that my stuff up was there waiting for me. I had revetted up the panels for the overlays on my tanks and with the new machine these then need to be trimmed to size with the small metal shear I have in my garage. The problem arose because at times the cutting blade on this small piece of equipment will move out from the cutting surface and simply bend the workpiece rather than cutting it cleanly. You get one try at this and with two hours invested in rivetting up the overlay I was reluctant to do the whole piece over and then have the same thing happen again. Anyway I’m lazy.

I found a small reject panel of rivets in my leftovers ice cream container this morning so I took it out and tried to trim it to size and the same thing happened. Conclusion? There was something wrong with the machine. One of the machine screws holding the cutting bed against the blade had come loose but there was a need for some other adjustments too, so I carried these out and a couple of test cuts proved the work. Back to the rivet press.

The workpiece I’d produced yesterday was perfect except along one edge of the bottom row of rivets on one side of the tank. What I should have done is chucked it, adjusted the shear, redone the whole piece and then trimmed it up and soldered it into position. What I’d actually done was to “test” the damaged piece against the tank blank and before I knew it I was soldering it in place. Just as a test you understand 🙂 This was a stupid thing to do because getting it off the tank former would have been a major hassle and I knew when I started that by soldering it I was going to have to live with the missing row of rivets. I hate having to put up with prominent mistakes like this and I knew when I woke up this morning I was going to have to do something about it.

This photo shows the repair I applied to the tank overlay. The bottom row of rivets is a separate strip of material I’ve cut into the main overlay.

Now I made a series of decisions about this job. The first of course was to be bloody minded and solder into place the damaged overlay instead of starting again. The second decision was that I couldn’t live with a half sheared off row of rivets and the third decision was to do something about it before I moved onto applying some detail in other areas of the loco. Of course the ideal would have been to re-do the whole thing but I’d gone past where I could do that so a repair was the only option.

I got the rivet press out and did a small 35mm long strip of rivets at the same time I was doing some strips of differently spaced rivets for the inside of the same tank. I had to cut away some of the original overlay with a Dremel tool and a slitting disk. I then built up the area with another piece of strip and then soldered the new strip of rivets into place. About an hours work in all and I was soldering strips of rivets onto another location anyway so the job was just an extension of something I was already doing.

I’m not claiming that the repair is perfect but the absence of the rivet line along the bottom edge would have been far more apparent than this cut and shut operation will be. Under a coat of paint, if it’s apparent at all, it will look like the tank was repaired. In the antiques world they call this sort of thing patina. I’ve spent this morning applying patina to my 20 class 🙂

Rivetted Panels

This is just a quick post to show I haven’t been completely idle over summer. The GW Models rivet press has proved it’s worth and I can say that the locomotive’s superstructure is now complete.

I’ve now riveted up the main exterior tank panels and these are in place. I had a small disaster on the rear tank at the bottom of the side you can’t see in this photo. In cutting the panels up I sheared off one of the lines of rivets and this wasn’t fixable but I decided to use it anyway. I can probably mask it with a pipe or a tool of some sort later in the build.

The rivet press works better than I could have hoped but my technique for applying the overlays onto the base tank still leaves a lot to be desired as I made a mistake in chopping up the overlay and sheared off one of the lines of rivets. I’ll disguise this minor problem with something later but for the moment I’m going to press ahead.

In the photo you can see, if you look carefully, that the loco has a distinct lean at the rear which is caused by the weight of all that NS in the cab and tank area with no compensating weight at the front. I’ll test some lead weights on the front to even this up a bit but again, for the moment I’m going to go ahead and start detailing the loco.