Crymlyn A Shop Techniques. GWR 1340 Trojan (Avonside).

[davey4270]

Work on Trojan sees the cylinder wrappers soldered on and cleaned up. A Slater’s suspension unit on the front axle has an added benefit of allowing the wheel set to be dropped out without disassembly. The cylinders have been bolted in place inline with the driven (rear) axle and the next job will be the slide bar supports. The excess of the crank pins will need to be removed before the front wheel set can rotate but, hopefully, there will be sufficient clearance between the crank pins and the cross heads. The pictures don’t show this clearly due to lens distortion. Extra clearance will be gained by reversing the crank pin bearing, placing the retaining washer under the coupling rod to space it out to match the flange of the rear bearing and securing the reversed bearing with a spot of thread lock thus doing away with the nut.
The Beatles and Lenny Kravitz helped today.


The inverted frames illustrating that the leading wheel set is easily dropped out. This also shows the front plate in its correct position. Am I glad that I hadn't got round to soldering the riveted brackets in place!


The Left hand crank pin showing, hopefully, sufficient clearance. Must get that surface fust off the wheel, a wipe with WD40 usually suffices.


And the right hand wheel, didn't get the camera angle right this time.


An overall view of the inverted chassis, must straighten those brake push (in this case) rods.


Here he/she/it is, just placed together for the camera.

 

[davey4270]

I have a conundrum with the slide bar support bracket. The slide bars are parallel with the frames, checked with my micrometer, and correctly aligned to the rear axle. The slide bar support bracket is in its correct position but doesn’t “fit” the slide bars. With hindsight, I could have used them as a template to modify and cut a new pair. My thoughts at the moment are to cut some scrap pieces to infill the space above (and a smaller space below) then solder a piece of “L” section brass to represent the bracket. Then file some of the vertical inside of the bracket to clear the cross head.
Any suggestions are welcome.

 

[simond]

Looks like the motion brackets are wrong. The conrod clearance seems too big, and the shoulder looks a bit low.

Compare with your prototype pic on page 1, which unfortunately has the crosshead at BDC, so it obscures the bracket a bit.

 

[daifly]

Does this photo help?
Dave

 

[simond]

Thx Dave, yes, it does, I think.

It shows the shoulder is tight up under the hanging bar, and there are some kind of trunnion blocks with a couple of fixings each, supporting the ends of the bars where they meet the motion bracket plate. The lower one of Davey’s kit looks “do-able” but the upper bar has nothing to attach to!

Fretsaw time…

 

[daifly]

And another

Dave

 

[davey4270]

Baldrick’s cunning plan has been successful so far. The top spaces either side have been filled with scrap material and when a small slice of “L” section material is added to represent the bracket should prove reasonable sturdy. I won’t clean up any excess yet which might weaken it.

 

[davey4270]

Thx Dave, yes, it does, I think.

It shows the shoulder is tight up under the hanging bar, and there are some kind of trunnion blocks with a couple of fixings each, supporting the ends of the bars where they meet the motion bracket plate. The lower one of Davey’s kit looks “do-able” but the upper bar has nothing to attach to!

Fretsaw time…

Thanks Simon’s, I’ve answered in a post below.

 

[davey4270]

I hope to a use some "L" section brass to represent the attachment fitting for the slide bars to the support bracket. These should overlap the insert in the support bracket and strengthen it somewhat. There'll be a slight pause in the proceedings here until I obtain some suitable brass section. I was sure I had some here somewhere.........



Meanwhile, I've made a start on the tank. Inspection showed that the previous owner of the kit had made an attempt at it. My earlier discovery that the smoke box and tank wrappers were inside out showed, on further inspection, some traces of solder from an obviously unsuccessful attempt at the kit. Anyway, this was cleaned off and the wrapper shaped to match the formers. You all know the procedure here where careful alignment of the centre marks and tack soldering should form the tank correctly. When you are satisfied with the alignment, fill in the gaps with solder. Use plenty of solder here as the sides of the tank tend to spring out until the bottom in folded in and soldered in place. I've paused here as I'll be soldering the handrail knobs from the inside in my next session.


The rear of the tank. I pack a piece of paper under the rear former when soldering which places it a fraction in from the tear of the wrapper. I find this makes a better butt joint with the cab front as the former can be a fraction proud leaving a slight gap.


The tank front. I have not soldered the tank bottoms in place to give me easier access to solder the inside of the hand rail knobs.

 

[daifly]

Meanwhile, I've made a start on the tank. Inspection showed that the previous owner of the kit had made an attempt at it. My earlier discovery that the smoke box and tank wrappers were inside out showed, on further inspection, some traces of solder from an obviously unsuccessful attempt at the kit.

David

If this is the kit that I sold you in 2018 then it would have been the owner before me! I did nothing to the kit other than give it a good home for a while!

Dave

 

[davey4270]

David

If this is the kit that I sold you in 2018 then it would have been the owner before me! I did nothing to the kit other than give it a good home for a while!

Dave

I think alzheimer’s is setting in, can’t remember where it came from.

 

[daifly]

I certainly sold you an Agenoria Trojan and an Ystradgynlais wagon kit in October 2018. Unless you have two of them….!

 

[davey4270]

I certainly sold you an Agenoria Trojan and an Ystradgynlais wagon kit in October 2018. Unless you have two of them….!

That must be it then. I acquired a few s/h kits around that time and am unsure which source is which.
Finally getting around to making them. I’m hoping to spray 704’s boiler along with Trojan’s chassis.

 

[davey4270]

A couple of hours work on Trojan has seen the buffer planks and coupling pockets opened up to take a pair of more beefy Premier Components 3 link couplings and hooks which I found in my spares box. The buffer plank had a narrow etched slot which required the supplied etched hook to be soldered in place. I'm not happy with this set up and although the hooks won't be sprung, they will be removable for painting. The motor (a Mashima), gears and mount supplied with the kit were assembled and an axle with an old wheel bearing temporarily used for packing to keep the gear centrally in line with the worm. It was run for a while with Autosol to polish the contact areas before cleaning this off and then lubricated with Molybdenum grease. The tank has been assembled with the boiler/firebox and soldered to the smoke box. A small amount needed to be sanded off the tank rear to allow it to sit neatly on the footplate. The smoke box will be held in position with two 12BA screws through the footplate along with a similar set up at the tank rear with screws passing through the cab front into the tank rear. This makes the tank assembly removable to help painting. More on this next time.


The new coupling hook fitted for the picture.


A cruel enlargement of the gears showing the tatty old bearing used as a spacer to hold the gear wheel central to the worm.


Placed together for the picture.

 

[simond]

Davey,

not sure if it will help, but I often cut down coupling hooks (which must be blackened, never brass!) and drill a new hole in the stem. I nip off a 3mm length of silicone hose, and use that in place of the spring. It doesn’t deform much, but will provide some protection against any sudden shocks. (And it’s shorter than the spring)

best
Simon

 

[davey4270]

Davey,

not sure if it will help, but I often cut down coupling hooks (which must be blackened, never brass!) and drill a new hole in the stem. I nip off a 3mm length of silicone hose, and use that in place of the spring. It doesn’t deform much, but will provide some protection against any sudden shocks. (And it’s shorter than the spring)

best
Simon

Hi Simon. Trojan won’t shunt more than a couple or three wagons so I’m not too concerned about any shock but will try to work this in to the build. The chemical blacking doesn’t seem to work too well on cast brass so it will probably have a lick of black paint when the time comes.

 

[simond]

Well, I guess the easy alternative is “wot they did on the real one”, file the shank round, run a die down it, and stick a nut on!

re chemical black, I find a soaking in a really aggressive solvent helps. Real MEK or acetone.

Rather than paint, black spirit felt tip pen doesn’t clog up the works!

atb
Simon

 

[davey4270]

Well, I guess the easy alternative is “wot they did on the real one”, file the shank round, run a die down it, and stick a nut on!

re chemical black, I find a soaking in a really aggressive solvent helps. Real MEK or acetone.

Rather than paint, black spirit felt tip pen doesn’t clog up the works!

atb
Simon

I guess there’s traces of the casting or machining process left that a fibreglass pen doesn’t shift so a good tip that. Interestingly, I have several pictures of the prototype before preservation and not one has a coupling on the front. Screw couplings are fitted to the preserved engine at Didcot for passenger usage but I think I’ll go with 3 link for shunting on Graig wen.

 

[davey4270]

An hour's work this afternoon saw a couple of outstanding jobs tackled. The chassis fixing screws tend to bend the frame spacers when tightened so I solder a small piece of material across the spacers here to prevent flexing. These are then filed flush or fractionally lower with the top of the frames. This will prevent the spacer being distorted when tightened. The small piece of shaped footplate behind the buffer plank was also shaped and soldered in place. Blutac was my friend here.


The small piece of scrap etch soldered across the frame spacers.


The small insert in the footplate behind the buffer plank. It is actually level with the top of the buffer plank, there appears to be a bit of a shadow making it look uneven.

 

[davey4270]

Today's work on Trojan has involved making the tank/boiler assembly removable to aid construction and painting. Clearance holes for 12BA screws (1.3mm) have been drilled through the cab spectacle plate and the footplate beneath the smokebox. Holes were also drilled through the rear tank former before attaching the boiler/firebox assembly and two nuts soldered on the inside of this former. Similarly, a "L" shaped bracket was tack soldered to the front of the inside of the smokebox and holes also drilled through this. The thread end of a pair of 12BA brass screws were chemically blackened which will prevent any solder from permanently attaching them to the nuts. After the bracket was removed, lock nuts were tightened beneath this bracket holding the nuts to be soldered firmly in place above the bracket and then the top nuts were soldered in place. The bracket was then resoldered back in place leaving the screws and lock nuts in place in case the top nuts moved. A similar method being used at the tank rear. I utilised this method many years ago when building a GWR Kitson 1338, the one with the interesting valve gear above the footplate. This was necessary to reassemble the valve gear after painting and made the whole task a lot easier. I have used it on every model build since. I held the tank assembly in place with rubber bands drilling through both surfaces with a pilot drill before dismantling and opening up to the required size.


The two screws passing through the cab front ready to screw into the captive nuts inside the rear tank former.


The two nuts just visible inside the rear tank former (top right and left of picture). I should have taken a picture before attaching the boiler/firebox assembly. This is the view from beneath.


The two holes through the footplate and the bracket beneath the smoke box with the screws still in position after resoldering in place.