7mm Connoisseur Models LNER N10 Tank Engine

[Lawrence Boul]

Thanks Lawrence,

Sadly although I do some 3D designing, I don't have a printer (or room to host one). Although I have a friend who does printing for me, he's not nearby, so it's not convenient as he needs to post things out to me. To make matters worse, we have just received notification from Royal Mail, that they are only going to deliver our 2nd class mail every 3 days going forward.

Prompted by this idea I had a go at printing an arbour with an M14 x 1thread to suit the Unimat3. It worked rather well and was true to the eyeball, though I don't have a DTI. The immediate thought here is a convenient holder to turn crankpins on cast wheels. I can handle a bit of tolerance on position as long as they are all the same.

 

[Ian@StEnochs]

Hi Ian,

I confess that I hadn't thought of turning between centres, something to consider if I need to make any bigger rings in the future. I am quite lucky in that many of the locos that I intend to make have the same boiler or smaller so my mandrel will work for all of them. The smaller ones will just need the ring tightening which I can do by hand. The N10 and no doubt most of the other tank engines only have half a boiler at the cab end so turning between centres isn't and option.

You must be much better or patient with a file than I am, my use of a mandrel was to get away from having to file (not very accurately in my case) the remaining quarter of the ring. But as ever when we start to discuss things I have just remembered that in some of my more vintage versions of kits that now reside with Gladiator there are some solid brass plain and machined tubes. While I may struggle to use these on the loco when I get to building them I realise that they would be ideal for use as mandrels

View attachment 267639

Not very clear in the photos being all brass the two that are turned actually have very nicely turned transition ring which would alleviate the need for DIY assuming of course that you can manage to attach all the boiler fittings to the heavy heat sink of a tube without melting them.

View attachment 267640

For anyone who is remotely interested, they are from the following 'kits' (left to right):

George Norton J21

07 Models N8/9 - 07 was the forerunner of some of the George Norton Range, so real ancient history.

London Road Models G5

Rob,

No lathe. A big file, 10" 2nd cut, for the bulk of the material then finished by rubbing on coarse emery cloth.

Lathe. Boiler barrel held in chuck with end supported by tailstock centre. A few light cuts with a knife tool.

If the firebox is part of the boiler then I screw a ring onto the cab end of the former and hold that in the chuck.

As most of my builds are from scratch it is easy to arrange the boilet and firebox to be seperate assemblies.

Ian.

 

[Rob Pulham]

In between messing about with the smokebox rings, I also detailed up a few of the other parts using either additions from the spares box or those that I made up from scratch.

Starting with the roof, I added the outer skin, fitted whistles from the spares box and the roof vent. The latter I attached to a strip of etch that I bent to allow the vent to be open but so that I wasn’t relying on a solder joint purely on the edge of the vent.



Then I rolled a strip of brass angle to cover the firebox to cab joint.



Then I prepared a few of the cab fittings starting with the cupboard at the back of the cab I made up a couple of door knobs





Plus a third knob for the coal space shutter.



I also fitted a brake standard from my spares box.



This is as much as can be added to the cab floor before fitting or it won’t fit past the beading in the cab openings.

Sticking with the cab I fitted the reverser and made up a mounting/fixing for it.

 

[RichardG]

Then I rolled a strip of brass angle to cover the firebox to cab joint.

So simple!
Please Rob, did you do this by soldering two angles together to make a Tee before rolling; or maybe another method?

 

[Rob Pulham]

So simple!
Please Rob, did you do this by soldering two angles together to make a Tee before rolling; or maybe another method?

Hi Richard,

Yes, that's exactly how I did it. The strip that you see is actually the spare, which I made a bit longer than the piece that I needed for the N10. Just in case the boiler it gets used for, has a bigger diameter. It now in the bag with the spare joint rings and the mandrel.

 

[Rob Pulham]

After wrongly starting to fit a representation of single slide bar inside motion to the N10 I, resorted to drawing it up in Fusion.

Courtesy of a friend, I received the prints today and they look superb.



I couldn't resist priming a set





Then I tried test fitting it in the chassis as I expected there was a bit of rubbing down to do to ease it in but it fits perfectly.







It's not fully authentic, but it fills a gap between the frames.

 

[Rob Pulham]

Not having much time yesterday, I decided to put a top coat on a couple of the inside motion sets to see what looked like. When priming I had done the first set in light grey but the detail could barely be seen so I switched to red oxide.

With the top coats, I sprayed the grey primer with Vallejo Oily Steel (I initially tried brush painting it but that wasn’t going to work) let down with screen wash and the red primer with Vallejo Model Air Silver with a small blob of Vallejo German ‘Cammo’ Black-Brown mixed in. Both were then washed after drying with a wash of Vallejo Charred Brown.

Grey Primer





Red Primer





In fairness, the ‘Oily Steel’ coat didn’t really need much in the way of further weathering from the wash. But the Vallejo Model Air Silver was much easier to spray.

I’m going to try some further tests using a black primer.

 

[lankytank]

let down with screen wash

Screen wash........??? Sorry, did I miss that lesson at air brush school.......?

 

[Rob Pulham]

Screen wash........??? Sorry, did I miss that lesson at air brush school.......?

It would seem so. I read somewhere that it worked for letting down acrylic paints so I tried it. It does work with Vallejo paints or at least the stuff supplied by Mercedes does (they fill my washer bottle when I have it serviced and any that left over they leave in the car). My washer bottle seems to last a year or so in between services/fills so I have a number of part bottles.

Edited to add that there was a warning about not breathing the atomised fumes, so do wear a mask if you try it.