The thing that most caught my eye at Peterborough yesterday was a Williams Models G3 Tar Tank kit (assuming we ignore the coal fired Garrett of
ELR Engineering). I remember watching Mike gradually adding all the rivets to the brass tank master last year and thinking that'll be alright when its done. It has turned out lovely so after a couple of 'nearly moments' I bought one with a view to just building it straight out of the box.
All the bits laid out
The cast name plates are excellent (choose a pair)
The tank (210mm long) is covered in lots of rivets. I can only find one rivet which hasn't come out properly which I think is excellent given the number of the things present.
Prototype wise, the best photo I have found so far of them in
BR days is this one, they do look nice running as a pair, especially with a couple of subtle differences.
I started by cleaning up the underframe, a one piece resin casting. This is a Flexi-kit from Mike which I have not built before, all the other kits I have built have been one piece body / underframe units so this is a new approach for me.
Its a fair bit messier when you get going, especially when it comes to just tidying up the lower edge of the tank on a sheet of emery cloth.
I guess I spent a couple of hours removing flash, squaring edges and rubbing over the solebar and ends with a fibreglass brush to smooth out the odd surface blemish. Everything was also washed using soapy water and a toothbrush.
I worked my way through the metal parts next, cleaning off the nib left from laser cutting on the W irons and otherwise just removing flash from the cast components. The wheels and buffers (quick sand to remove turning marks) were rubbed over with scotchbrite whilst spinning on the lathe, then chemically blackened. The holes in the axleboxes needed drilling out requiring some convoluted mounting on a set of parallels, on top of a vice, mounted on a milling table. There was just enough of the axlebox rear face to be able to clamp in this position without damaging any of the detail.
All four were drilled down to the same depth, then a pair of W irons were clamped into the chassis. Axleboxes were put onto one of the axles and it was lowered into place. With one axlebox correctly mounted, I could measure the distance between the W iron and the slot of the other axlebox, divide that by two and increase the depth of each drilling in the axleboxes by that amount. After another quick check and an extra 0.5mm added for clearance, they dropped in nicely (sitting just above the solebars to get the most accurate reading as nothing is properly mounted yet).
A quick photo of all the metal bits done for the chassis, I'll leave the etched brass bits for the tank for another time.
Time to start putting it together
Steve