Detailing and final chores before painting

By the time a project is drawing to a close it is getting ever more important not to forget "something". Forgetting is made easy by the plethora of small jobs that remain and hide well in the drawings and description (if your kit, unlike this one, has one). So at some point I feel that the question "what's next" gets ever more difficult to answer and anxiety of forgetting things slows the project ever more down. At that stage I draw up a list of whatever work remains. I did so on 21 December 2018

From now I kept the remaining parts together in separate compartments in the box so the the quantity of parts signalled the work remaining.

Running board / cab

Two grab irons

Done 22-12-2-2018

Frames for the side windows panes

I actually limited myself to mimicking the rails along which the window where moved. These rails and windows where Dutch additions in the later life of the locomotives.

The windows themselves will be made and added after painting.

Injector & Injector tubing

Source: Wikipedia, Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0

The injector pumps are hidden behind a tapered metal plate and they are tangled in a mess of pipes (from top left CCW)

• fresh steam pipe which is controlled from the cab, the steam sucking the water up giving it speed and forcing it into the boiler against the pressure of the boiler;
• water suction pipe from the tender, providing fresh water;
• the short overflow pipe which dispenses which superfluous water when starting up and drains the pump after shutting down.
• the actual boiler feed pipe to the boiler

The original kit provided nothing else then the tapered metal plate. Admittedly the pump would need little detail as it would be largely hidden behind the tapered plate. Yet I could not resist making an elementary form of pump.

I turned 2 mm brass rod to the desired width. You can barely see it in my chuck!

Drilling four holes for the pipes, 0.8 mm in diameter.

After soldering.

Note that the pumps are NOT mirrored but identical and simply turned to fit. This means that the connection to the overflow pipe on the left hand side points rearward and at the right side forward. Consequently the overflow pipe are different in form.

When soldering I concluded that making all four pipes was simply too much. You would not see the other two pipes anyway so I left them out.

Disaster and disaster recovery

As always progress comes at a price. I was happily soldering the last of the tubes of the injector when I was suddenly staring at a gaping hole in the running board. Inadvertently I had left my soldering at 450C and it burned right through my running board!

That really was a moment to go down and drink a cuppa and read a book.

Reverser lever c.s. (17, 18)

Not much to say really, I had soldered it before but I had to retrace my steps when I found the large seam between the cab and the boiler. Now the reverser lever is in back in place.

Handle and lever of the blow-off cock (no. 20&21)

Two ladders front

I intended to use the ladders as provided and apply the bending method I used on the ladders of the tender. But at the first attempt the ladder fell completely apart without chance of survival. Now what?

Right the original part from the kit

Left the rough steps straight from the mill

Middle after filing to size

Two head lamps

Nothing special, only note that I glued them with epoxy in order not to disturb all the other precious soldering work.

One air hose & main train brake pipe to air hose

Boiler

Chimney extension

Teh Dutch crews complained about bad visibility because the down drafted smoke and steam. Several experiments were made, including 6300-style smoke deflectors, but eventually a simple chimeny extension was used.

Drilling a hole in the centre of the chimney.

With a drill stand  and the crosstable that is easy.

• Measure the chimney width.
• Set the crosstable approximately that the drill is in the middle of the chimney in the y-direction. Accuracy is not needed yet.
• Set the crosstable in the x-direction so the drill touches just on the rim, only just and eye-sighted on the centre line.
• Lift the drill up without changing the crosstable.
• Traverse the crosstable in the x-direction half the chimney width plus half the drill width. The drill is now exactly in the longitudinal middle.
• Traverse in y-direction, lower the drill and touch the outside of the rim again and repeat the previous procedure for the y-direction.
• The drill is now exactly in the middle, both longitudinal and lateral.

The hole is drilled and then widened with subsequently larger diameter drills to the desired diameter without moving the crosstable.

Safety valves

Not much to say, drill an appropriate hole, solder. End of story.

I considered turning two from brass which would make an better impression but I have no idea what dimensions they should have.

No. 16

Whistle

Tail lamp irons on smokebox

Holes for handrails

The handrails won't be added until after painting but I have drilled out the holes now with a 0.5 mm drill. This is drilled undersize for two reasons

• The WD handrail knobs are on order at Markits so I am not sure to what size the final holes need be, I only suspect it will be 0.8 mm (all other knobs are).
• During painting some spray will accumulate on the hole's edge. If it is exactly to size it may result in chipping if you insert the knob. By re-drilling the hole to a larger size the paint will not chip and you get a crisp edge on the hole allowing the knob to pass freely.

Vertical pipes water feed pipes to boiler top feed

The vertical pipes are the connecting sections between

• the water feed pipes (red arrow) that come from the injector as we have seen while making the injectors under the cab

and

• the boiler top feed (yellow arrow) where the water actually enters the boiler.

As you can see the vertical water feed pipe enters the boiler cladding under a very sharp angle. Drilling under such an angle in the boiler needs some consideration. First a shallow pilot hole is drilled perpendicular to the surface about one drill diameter below the spot where the pipe is to enter the boiler cladding. The hole should be about one to one-and-a-half drill diameter deep. Then turn the drill to the desired angle in this pilot hole and start drilling in the correct direction. Beware that the drill does not go so deep that it

will come out again at the top end of the boiler.

Fresh steam pipes

Dart and headlamp iron on smokebox door

Extra tube and valve

Repairs

Inevitably you will make errors or do damage to the white metal. I had to repair a few spots. I used Milliput white (grey would have been better). A pack goes an awful long way. Mix the two components in equal parts. I have a trick to approximate "equal parts". I cut off a bit from one component and roll it to small ball. Then with a clean knife (important as the component should never mix in the package) I cut of about as much from the other component and also roll it to a ball. I add or remove material until both balls are equally big. A simple method which works perfectly. You do not need much. For the repairs you see here I made two balls of about 5 mm in diameter. After works I threw away most of it.

Mix well and and apply it. Apply as little Milliput as you can but always more than you need. Apply too little and you are in for an second round, costing you another 24 hours setting time. Another trick to remember is that Milliput it can be smoothed by wetting your tools with water. Don't aim for perfect smoothness though. You are not a professional plasterer. After setting it can be sanded with grit 400.

I drilled a few holes too much. These needed to be closed before mounting the air pump.

Air pump and pipes

0.5 mm to take up the pipes

0.8 mm to attach to the boiler

Two last tasks

Connection between locomotive and tender

The manual does not even hint how to connect the tender to the locomotive. The only obvious part candidating for a coupling is a ring cum bar. The tender provides a slot at the front where it could pass, but there was nothing to attach the ring to. I should have given this a thought earlier. I separated the tender frame and the superstructure and drilled a hole in the bottom of the superstructure and soldered a nut in place. I turned a bush from brass so the connection would not be too sloppy around the M2 bolt.

I wanted to make a sprung connection so it would be able extend a bit in curves. The provided coupling was too short for that.... Sigh, nothing seems to go easy with this loco.

After some consideration I discarded the provided coupling. I bent one from 1.0 mm brass rod. Within minutes I had a working solution, sprung and all.

The video shows how it works.

Ring on stack

The stack extension had a small ring adorning the top. I filed 0,5 mm brass wire down to a D-shape and annealed the wire to soften it and then soldered it on the rim of the stack.

Literally the crown on the work.