HR 118 Progress

The chassis is separate from the superstructure, being held in place by a bolt, which engages with a nut hidden in the smokebox, a tongue and groove arrangement secures the rear. An ABC Gears Mini 7E with an M1824 motor and flywheel fits comfortably into the boiler which is cut away to accommodate the mechanism. Pick-ups are 0.5mm phosphor-bronze wires bearing on the back of the left-hand driving wheels, while those on the right are uninsulated. I'm working on a pick-up from the front carrying wheel too, which should further improve performance. There's a surprising amount of detail on this little engine and it won't be complete before its first trial outing on the the club layout in Carlisle early next month.   

The motor is supported on a cross bearing just behind the flywheel to keep it from resting on the axle.

Using an M1824 motor allows just enough clearance inside the cut-away boiler. A sand box will be mounted behind the motion plate.

Buffers are from Roxy Mouldings and are mounted high on the buffer beam, so the retaining nuts are too big to fit under the footplate and an alternative needs to be designed.

 

HR 118 Making a Start.

HR118 Chassis in progress 

My model of HR118 will illustrate the engine, as rebuilt by Sharp Stewart, towards the end of its service with the Highland Railway, when it had lost its former name, Gordon Castle, had its number plate removed and was working as a humble shunting engine. There's a photo of the engine at the end of its days, laid aside at Culloden Moor in 1923, in unlined olive green, which is a useful source for details of the engine; I won't make my model in quite as decrepit a state as this though. Only three photos of the engine are known to survive, along with a side elevation drawn by L Ward using the photos as reference. It's enough to build a model, though there are one or two details I don't understand to be resolved and I have no information at all on the cab interior.

There is no kit for this prototype in any scale so I'm scratch building it or, as I prefer to say, "modelling without the aid of a kit", though with reliance on the trade for suitable castings.  

Driving wheels are from Walsall Model Industries, these are cast iron, turned to size and drilled 12BA for the crank pins; they match the pattern of the prototype. The off-side drivers are insulated midway along the spokes. The frames are 0.7 n/s, set 26.6mm apart.

I made the coupling and connecting rods myself from 1.2 mm nickel silver sheet as I could find no trade source for this type of rod with marine big ends. The front crank pin seen here is a 10BA screw, the coupling rod runs in a brass bush and the connecting rod is held in place by a top hat bush threaded to match the screw. The slide-bars and cross-head are commercial castings of unknown provenance. A guard-plate will be fitted later behind the slide-bars, presumably this kept dirt away from the cross-head. The carrying wheels are held in place by a central keeper-rod, mounted on a transverse plate, which can be unscrewed to drop the wheels out of their slots.

The axle screw is inaccessible behind the slide-bars. The horizontal rod acts as a keeper for the carrying wheels which are easily removed from the frames. 

For detailed information on the prototype and its vicissitudes in service see...Cormack and Stevenson's Highland Railway Locomotives Bk.1, pubs. RCTS. 

LNWR Precedent...Merrie Carlisle

 

Renewed Precedent Class, Merrie Carlisle, LMS 5050 in 7mm scale 

The engine is built in nickle-silver, without the aid of a kit, though the tender is a Gladiator Models product, to which I made a few improvements. It is intended to finish the model in early LMS red, Merrie Carlisle being one of only four of this class to be turned out in full red passenger livery. When the engine first appeared in its new livery it carried number 5050 on a smokebox plate and retained its original socket lamp-irons. The Bill Finch Portfolio of Locomotive Details, published by the LNWR Society was an invaluable help in building the model. The only kit I know of for a Precedent is a Mercian Models product, which may no longer be in production.

Precedent chassis and mechanism revealed

Power is provided by an M1824 motor and ABC gearbox, mounted on the front driver and fitted with an MSC flywheel. I could have fitted a more powerful M1833, though there would not have been room for a flywheel. I prefer the smaller motor/flywheel set-up, which greatly enhances the engine's running qualities. Pick-ups are phosphor-bronze wire wipers on the left-hand wheels; the right-hand wheels are shorted by hidden wires. The front carrying wheels are from Slater's, who do not produce suitable Precedent driving wheels, those I used were supplied by JPL and may not be available now. 

Allan's straight link motion, simplified by the omission of the drop-links, fills the gap under the boiler. The valve rods pass through a gap in the motion plate. The sand boxes, which flank the motion plate, are filled with yellow Milliput.

The inside motion unit removed.

The tool box castings have been detailed and display how they were fastened to the tender top. 

Under the tender.

The water pick-up apparatus has not been included under the tender though the double brake pull-rods have been modelled fully. Note the tender buffers, which really work, being sprung behind the buffer beam. 

The Crew.

The loco crew are from my own sculpture and are cast in white metal in my workshop. Both figures are mounted on thin sheet metal bases and secured to the deck with double-sided tape. The fireman stands on the tender fall-plate, his base is made from scrap chequer-plate. The poses of the crew are designed so they relate to both the engine and to each other. They were designed as the model progressed and are an integral part of the model, by no means merely an afterthought.

The brakes are a tight fit.

A busy cab interior.

I built the cab interior with the help of castings from Laurie Griffin's range, most of which were modified in some way to suit a Precedent. I used Bill Finch's drawings for reference and don't think I left anything out. The roof, which is attached to the inner skin of the spectacle-plate, can be lifted off, which allows the back-head to be removed too. The spectacle-plate is double-skinned so the window glazing simply slips between the inner and outer skins. The prominent reversing wheel would have been better as a nickle-silver casting to approximate the steel original, but I could only get a brass one, I'm sure it'll look fine with the rim buffed up.

I heard recently that the "Master" himself, James Beeson, painted his reversing wheels red!

Some New Aids for 7mm Modellers.

New quality white metal castings from my own master patterns are now available for springs and axle-boxes to suit HR wagons. These can be ordered now price £5.50 per set (4 x springs & 4 x axle-boxes), illustrated below. Postage at cost £1.60 1st class or £1.15 2nd class.

The Jones wagon pictured is built from a set of of my own cast resin sides and ends. The availability of white metal springs and axle-boxes should make sourcing the castings and parts to complete these "aids to wagon building" easier. 

 Springs and grease type axle-box castings in white metal.
Note HR cast on the axle-box front plate

Jones open wagon, multi-media construction using Pete's resin sides and ends as a starting point.

Availability of "Aids to Wagon Building".

All sets of resin sides and ends are now available and are priced at £16.50 plus postage at cost £1.60 1st class or £1.15 2nd class. Buy 2 or more and post is free. Wagons built from these castings are featured in earlier posts on this blog.  

Drummond 8-ton 2-plank ballast wagon

Jones 15 foot 4-plank open wagon 

Drummond open fish truck with drop sides

7-ton swivel cradle wagon

Drummond 16-ton loco coal wagon

8-ton double-deck sheep van with planked sides 

Drummond 20-ton 6-wheel goods brake van (etched brass) £25

Also...HR wagon plate transfers 7mm scale £6

Contact...

armstrongps1@gmx.com

07342 637 813

 

Duke of Sutherland's 4-wheel saloon in 7mm scale.

Duke of Sutherland's small 4-wheel saloon.

The duke of Sutherland's small saloon was built in 1908 by the Highland Railway at their Lochgorm works. After many travels and tribulations the coach, along with duke's locomotive Dunrobin, were repatriated from exile in Canada to Beamish in 2011. This event coincided with the production of a model of the coach by Lochgorm Kits in both 4mm and 7mm scales. The coach, beautifully restored to original condition, though with modified seating, is in service at the open air museum, the loco is still under restoration.  

Detail of the step end of the coach with glazing in place, castings are all brass and from various sources. 

The kit is not designed with an interior other than a lavatory enclosure in mind. The coach, as I've modelled it, is not intended to be viewed without the roof, the simplified interior gives an impression when seen through the glazing that the interior is fitted out. In earlier days there were armchairs and a table in the saloon end.

The service end had built-in seating and the corner units hide the bolt heads that secure the chassis to the superstructure. The interior is simplified, the lavatory compartment in reality is a particularly fine Victorian survival, modelling this would have been a minor work of art in itself.

 

The coach was built in three modules, a departure from the design of the kit, these were the roof, the body and the underframe or chassis. The coach body has had a floor added and is fixed to the underframe with four hidden screws, the roof is a neat friction fit into the body. Above you can see some of the hidden detail beneath the coach. The cast brass springs and their "J" hangers were particularly challenging to construct, the hard castings proving particularly resistant to efforts to drill through them. The ride height of the coach was increased by 2mm to allow space for the springs and axleboxes. The rocking-axle compensation system works well and the coach glides smoothly, though I question whether the bother involved in making this is worth the effort.

...

58A in 7mm scale painted by Paul Moore

The etched lavatory window was quite a challenge which took three of us to make. I thought the solution was a photo of the real thing, so I asked Paul Jarman at Beamish to take some photos for me. He took some photos in the shed where 58A is housed for the winter though the cramped situation of the coach made it difficult and the pictures needed some work on Photoshop which my daughter Alice, who knows about these things, managed in no time at all and printed them to size for the model. Paul Moore did the rest, mounting the print behind acetate to achieve what I think you'll agree is a most realistic result. The colour scheme of the coach matches that of my model of the duke's engine Dunrobin, which is in a private collection where 58A will shortly join it.

The duke's coach from the other side.

HR d.9 Coach in 7mm scale.

 

HR 6-wheel 4-compartment Luggage First/Third composite coach.

My recently completed Jones d.9 33' 3" 6-wheel composite coach is built from a Lochgorm Kits etch with added refinements, the most noteworthy of which is the double-skin. This allows the glazing to slip into place between the inner and outer walls of the coach and adds to the realism of the model. The inner walls, along with the transverse partition walls are cut from 0.4mm brass sheet and add weight to the model so the coach tops 600g on the scales. The axles run in brass inside bearings, so there's more friction than would be the case with pin-point axles, obviously this is not a coach for a feeble engine.

 I intend to run a typical Highland Railway branch-line mixed train, consisting of two 6-wheel coaches (I only have two) along with a goods van and a 4-wheel passenger brake van, on my next visit to the club layout in Carlisle. Tests on my track in the studio suggest that my Passenger Tank is the engine for the job though all my branch-line engines proved up for it. 

The coach relies on a Cleminson system of suspension, which allows the leading and trailing axles to steer into or out of curves, which should ensure a smooth passage round tighter than prototype curves and wayward sections of trackwork. The Highland Railway in fact didn't employ this system on its 6-wheel coaches, relying instead on a small amount of side-play on the center axle, a system which would probably work well in model form if enough side play were employed.

The coach was painted using Revell SM 363 Dark Green with the addition of matt black to taste, transfers are from Fox, castings from LGM and Invertrain. 

Detail of the step end of the D.9. The coach is a First/Third class vehicle, Second Class having disappeared in Scotland the early 1890s.

The center axle employs a different type of spring suspension to the outer axles. Springs are brass castings from LGM. 

The double-skin of the coach can be seen in this view; only a modest amount of interior detail has been included. The figure is my own sculpture, available from Invertrain MR.

7mm scale Drummond 20-ton goods brake van in LMS livery.

Peter Drummond's 20-ton 6-wheel goods brake van entered Highland Railway service between 1909 and 1913, there were 16 of these 20 foot long vans, built with wooden under-frames. These original vans can be identified by the thickness of their wooden buffer beams, later 20-ton vans of this type were built with steel under-frames with characteristic "[" shaped buffer beams. Though the original design did not feature ramps to the roof lookout these were added to many of the vans quite early in their service by the HR so the guard did not bang his head when stepping up to the lookout. When the LMS took ownership they made few alterations other than fitting disc wheels and changing the livery. This involved moving the central lamp-iron upwards so the letter "M" would fit just under it, a subtlety that I noticed only after I'd painted the model and came to put the transfers on!  Photos of these vans in LMS days show that the continuous lower foot-board was cut away in front of the axle boxes, presumably to improve access, forming four separate foot boards each side, though my van has not as yet undergone this refinement.

The model is constructed from a nickle silver etch, one of my own "aids to wagon building". The ramped lookout seen here is a change I made following the drawing in Peter Tatlow's "HR Carriages and Wagons" and is quite different to the one the vans were originally provided with. 

Full construction details are to be found below in the March 2022 blog posting. I used Railmatch 611 freight grey as the base colour of this LMS version of the van, transfers are HMRS, couplings from CPL and  lamps from Slater's, with added brilliants.

I have a few etched sheets still in stock at £25.00 + postage if you'd like to add one of these vans to your collection, a great project for the modelling season ahead. 

 

7mm scale 20-ton 6-wheel goods brake van LMS d.12

Gauge 0 Drummond 20-ton 6-wheel goods brake van, LMS 294018