Building manual chapter 07

The start

So far I have used 180 C solder. From here I used 145 C solder in order not disturb the joins I have made here.

The front tank follows the same principle as the rear tank: inner frame structure for strength with a thin outer skin for detail. Soldering was easy. Note however that there are a few recesses that are not intended as a bending seam (you can see one on the furthermost side in the middle. The manual does not explicitly mention NOT to fold the brass sheet there. These recesses are intended to take up another brass sheet. The door panel (right) is easily bent over a suitably sized drill bit in a vise.

The whole superstructure is squared before finalizing the joins.

Next phase was to prepare the skin of the tank.

As with the rear tank this skin is a little curled. By rolling it over it flattened. The skin is annealed, this is: heated to a considerable temperature so that is will loose much of its strength and hence will not be so springy anymore. I annealed it by simply heating it is a gas flame.

Origami once more.

After annealing the skin is positioned most accurately on the inner frame and tack soldered on two corners (as mentioned with 145 C solder from here on)

and secured on the loose side by two clamps (err laundry pins).

See to it that the skins is correctly positioned all the way. I was happy with the result (first attempt, mind you) and soldered all the seams.

and the rear.

The coloration of the skin is caused by the annealing.

For the rest the tank was basically the same as the rear tank. Photos below show the completed tank.

One final shot of the front tank mated to the front truck.

Note some subtle differences with the previous photo.

• The grab irons have been snipped off and filed down. I have photographed no 87 on the WHR this summer and I changed to this loco as a prototype. It didn't have grab irons in the summer of 2009. It wasn't until I had just snipped off the grab irons that I saw photo's from Boston Lodge, where the loco was being overhauled during the winter season, to find out it had received......yes !! grab irons!!
• I added a lamp iron
• I removed the large headlight support between the sandboxes as the no 87 didn't have it but maybe I'll soon find out.........
• A propos sandboxes. I had to remove them first before I could desolder the large headlight support between them. On resoldering I flooded the backside with low melt solder. Next I took a sharpened screwdriver and modeled the solder into a razor sharp edge, resulting in a very snug and straight fit to the tank