Finney7 - 4200G Group Std Tender Build - Scale7

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  • Just the off piste deviations from the instructions

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adrian

Flying Squad
So onto the next page of the instructions - the body. (High Front Body 1 page 10).

As usual I went off script slightly, :rolleyes:. The instructions correctly make the observation that rounding off the beading can improve the appearance. Looking at the prototype photos some beading appears D shaped and some beading half round, suffice to say subtle difference but not flat. So I tried rounding off the etched beading. Having the extra etches meant I could experiment on the low side tender etches but I couldn't get it rounded off easily on the inside of the beading.

4200g-body - 1.jpeg

I decided to replace them with a bit of 10' sheet so that I could fit my own half round beading. So instead of marking out the replacement I soldered one of the etches to a double thickness of n/s.

4200g-body - 2.jpeg

This was then cut out and filed to size to give me 2 new sides.

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Then followed the instructions soldering them to the main tender side panels followed by the half round brass beading. I left a little overhang at the rear so it could be filed to shape when the rear plate is soldered in.

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The positioning is determined by lining up with the riveted strapping on the inside.

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The rear plate also need a plain n/s strip making up as that had some half etched beading on as well. A couple of steps cut out on soldered on, cab door hinges soldered on and the handrails are fitted at this stage.
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adrian

Flying Squad
I then moved onto the coal hopper, with going for a high front tender it meant cutting out a little at the front bore pressing out all the half etched rivets.
4200g-body-assembly - 1.jpeg

The main body is then assembled on a glass plate to keep it flat and a square to make sure of the correct angles are maintained. As this stage I just tack the sides in place as I usually like to assemble the body and then leave it. Come back to it later with a fresh pair of eyes, just make sure nothing is in the wrong place and nothing has been missed.
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The slots needed cleaning out slightly to enable the sides to fit down squarely otherwise it all went together nicely just following the instructions.

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The half round beading applied to the rear plate and filed to length, finally then the top handrail above the steps is folded over.

4200g-body-assembly - 6.jpeg

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adrian

Flying Squad
That's really nice work Adrian...it's almost as though you've done this before. Look forward to the next posting.
I might have done the odd one or two in the dim and distant past - although they were all scratch built affairs. Which is probably why I'm probably a bit more cavalier at times just modifying kits as I just use them as a starting point. Although in this case when everything just fits then it makes life a lot simpler. Any modifications are purely down to my personal preferences rather than any short comings of the kit.

So trying to keep the drum beat going on this I found it difficult to distill down a set of photos to show what I've been up to. I started with about 100 photo's but you'll be glad to hear I've whittled it down to a few key ones.

Whilst the body sides were tacked in position until I was happy with their position I started on the internals and the hopper. Lots of half etched rivets to press out and then fold out.

On the left is the front plate with a half etched overlay.


4200g-body-hopper - 1.jpeg
The main front plate has small tabs to locate in the hopper and the top is folded back and the curved support brackets folded down.
4200g-body-hopper - 6.jpeg

The later tenders apparently had a solid coal plate rather than just the grill. This is supplied in the kit but to get it to sit flush it did require the half etched rivets on the layer below to be filed flush. I suspect that on the real thing then I should have cut away the old door however this would leave the two sides disconnected. So I retained the old door underneath for structural strength and figured that once painted it wouldn't be noticeable anyway.
4200g-body-hopper - 7.jpeg

When trying to fit this front plate into the hopper slots it appeared that a little more needed to be filed out of the hopper to get it to fit. Hopefully the photo below makes this clear.

Also note - the little half etched slot that needs opening up. As marked I forgot this step. :headbang: Not the end of the world but just made it difficult later on as will be seen in a later post.

4200g-body-hopper - 9.jpeg

and from the other side a view of the recess required.

4200g-body-hopper - 8.jpeg

That recess allows the front plate to sit fully down. It clips into the slots so in this photo there is no solder this is just clipped into place.

4200g-body-hopper - 10.jpeg

I then moved back to the tender body. Happy with the positioning I fully soldered in the sides and rear. Then the next task was the rear top plate, again a solid piece with a half etched overlay to be sweated together. I did this first and then dressed the sides with a file after soldering together.

4200g-body-hopper - 14.jpeg

The fit was excellent - in fact there is a slot formed between the main tender side and the horizontal row of rivets so it just slid into place. I was that happy with the fit that I haven't even bather to solder along the seam. There is just a small tack of solder in each corner to stop it moving and hold the sides in place. Saves cleaning any solder from around all those rivets!!

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Also note the front fall plate has been fitted for the high front version.

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The hopper is then slid into place to check lengths and alignment.

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So a little more detailing on the hopper with a couple of lifting lugs.

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These are riveted, folded up and bent into shape.

4200g-body-hopper - 12.jpeg

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That's all for this episode!
 

adrian

Flying Squad
I'm glad BR standard tenders are largely welded.
I know what you mean - I keep contemplating another scratch build at some point and sort of toying with either LNWR or L&Y and at the moment the L&Y is edging it purely due to the fewer number of rivets visible!!
 

Ian@StEnochs

Western Thunderer
I know what you mean - I keep contemplating another scratch build at some point and sort of toying with either LNWR or L&Y and at the moment the L&Y is edging it purely due to the fewer number of rivets visible!!

I don’t like making tenders! On my preferred prototype railway nearly every locomotive has a tender. There is a bright side, nearly every rivet is countersunk?

Ian.
 

adrian

Flying Squad
A quick update as a little more progress has been made.

The lower part of the front plate has been detailed with small hinge plates soldered on the tool box doors, a small shroud soldered over the tops of the doors and the bracket for the brake and water scoop stanchion folded down.

4200g-body-assembly-hopper - 1.jpeg

This is a half etched overlay intended to be the detailing outer skin for the plate soldered into body. I think in the instructions it suggests soldering it to the backing plate prior to fitting to the body. However that led to a small problem, the easiest way to fit the hopper seemed to be to slide it in from the front of the tender. There is a little slot below all the riveted straps which just lets it slide in perfectly.

4200g-body-assembly-hopper - 2.jpeg

The problem is that if this front etched detail overlay is fitted first then the brackets for the stanchions interfere with sliding in the hopper.

Hence my cunning plan to slide the hopper in and then clip in the detailing front overlay afterwards.

4200g-body-assembly-hopper - 3.jpeg

Again the fit is spot on the following photo is everything just slotted in - no soldering in place yet.

4200g-body-assembly-hopper - 4.jpeg

With the fit this good again I didn't solder all along the seams. On the hopper from the inside I just soldered a couple of tack joints at the front and rear of the hopper, mainly just to hold the sides in place tight against the hopper.

Although it worked fairly well it did have one last wrinkle to cause me problems. At the front of the coal hopper the floor has a small half etch slot as it has to be bent down by 90 degrees. I didn't do this prior to fitting because once done it would have stopped me clipping in the front half etched overlay. I thought I could do it afterwards - this was a mistake. I managed it but it wasn't the easiest of tasks!

I think if I were to do another one (for example a good B1 kit :rolleyes: ) then I think I would put the end fold in the hopper prior to fitting but then slide in the hopper with the half etched overlay all in one go.

4200g-body-assembly-hopper - 5.jpeg

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Onto the upper fall plate next.
 

adrian

Flying Squad
Next progress report - if I can remember why I took half of these photos.

It's onto the top half of the front fall plate. Two half etched plates and some detailing for the door.

4200g-front-top - 1.jpeg

As I was fitting the solid door I cut out the slotted door as it had a full thickness surround which stopped the solid door sitting flat - then the half etched rivets under the hinges needed to be removed to get it to sit flat.
4200g-front-top - 2.jpeg


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The rear half etch plate has strip to bend and fit. This fits in to the slots nicely and can be soldered from the other side to minimise clogging any rivets with excess solder.

4200g-front-top - 4.jpeg

The first trial fit in place flagged up a small problem. I'm still not quite sure what I did wrong but I was either over zealous filing off etch cusps or cut slightly too much out of the hopper on one side but it has left a small gap between the front plate and the hopper. Not too big and possible to fill with a good bead of solder but I wasn't happy with myself on this. However it looks worse in the photo than it actually is thankfully.

4200g-front-top - 5.jpeg

The other side fitted fine. The front side of the fall plate fitted perfectly.

4200g-front-top - 6.jpeg

Again the fit was so good I was comfortable just tack soldering it at the front edge above the toolbox doors so that I could file the edge down to a flush finish.
4200g-front-top - 7.jpeg

I must point out at this stage I hadn't actually sweated the two half etched sides together and in dry fitting them I had a moment of inspiration for fixing the gap. There was just enough play to push the rear plate flush against the hopper, I could then solder the front plate in and sweat together the 2 sides together along the top curve.

4200g-front-top - 8.jpeg

and the other side a perfect fit with the etch.

4200g-front-top - 9.jpeg

From the front - again a good fit. Although I've not fully soldered in in yet from this photo as the horizontal plate is still overhanging slightly.

4200g-front-top - 10.jpeg



4200g-front-top - 11.jpeg

Now I have soldered in the front plate and filed the front edge to be flush with the lower fall plate. The door and the angled supports either side of the door fitted. The rectangular etch in front is a horizontal drop plate to fill the gap between the upper and lower doors.

4200g-front-top - 12.jpeg

The drop plate is fitted and there is then a riser to fold up for the front footplate. I'll cover that and the detailing in the next post.

4200g-front-top - 13.jpeg
 

adrian

Flying Squad
Now onto a few more details on the front. A couple of small brass castings for the water valve handles are drilled out and soldered to some 0.7mm wire.
4200g-front-detail - 1.jpeg

These and another little brass casting are soldered in place. This is where it would have been very useful if I'd remembered to cut the half etched slot in the hopper mentioned in one of the previous posts. It would have given me a hole to poke the wire through but instead I had to file it exactly to length and it was a little bit more involved to make sure they were lined up vertically.

4200g-front-detail - 2.jpeg

Then from left to right there are the brake and water scoop stanchions, a water scoop indicator (0.45mm wire) and then a small bracket and a length of 0.8 wire for the water gauge.

The water scoop indicator in the instructions says to use a length of 0.45 wire but to simulate to holding bracket I added a short length of tube (circled in the photo)
4200g-front-detail - 3.jpeg

For the water gauge there is a small handle on the side, this is indicated in the drawing in the instructions but no comment in the written instructions. I've seen something similar on the corridor tenders, I presume it's a gauge that needs to be rotated and this is the handle used to turn the rod. As it was to be soldered to the tender side I decided to silver-solder a bit of 0.4mm wire on the side of the 0.8mm wire so that it wouldn't fall apart when soldering in later.

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So the details fitted to the tender.

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and on the other side with the details soldered in.

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Also a new toy to play with as I treated myself recently to a new lens for my camera. More aimed at being used for my 2mmFS models amongst other things, it's a macro lens. So a really really cruel close up - not one I think I will be doing too often - just interested to see what it was capable of.

4200g-front-detail - 7.jpeg

Moving back from the front fall plate the next bit of detailing are some support brackets to the tender sides and the fire iron support. The kit obviously supplies a small etch for this but looking at the photos it seemed to be made from bar stock. Rather than trying to file this into a circular shape I thought it would be easier to bend one up from some 0.8mm wire using the etched one as a template.

4200g-front-detail - 5.jpeg

and fitted with a couple of brackets.

4200g-front-detail - 8.jpeg
 

adrian

Flying Squad
Moving on towards the rear a few more details are added. Trying to work out the tender variations from the photos has been pretty tricky but I've finally decided on the variant to model. So it includes the high rear plate and extended sloping plate in the coal hopper. So these are the supplied etches.

4200g-middle-detail - 1.jpeg

Once again the stanchions could be soldered from the rear which left minimal clean up afterwards.

4200g-middle-detail - 2.jpeg

Again the fit is superb - this is just dry fitted in place - no soldering at this stage.

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Likewise for the sloping plate, a tiny bit of fettling with a needle file in the bottom corners was required but all the steps and indents fitted the existing structure like a glove.

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and all soldered in.

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So next item was the water scoop dome and the filler cap. The water scoop dome cleaned up quite nicely with a bit of wet and dry but the water filler casting had a noticable casting step which stopped it sitting flat on the rear plate of the tender.

I did try filing it flat but it just didn't work, it just always ended up bowed in one direction. So I decided I needed to turn the base flat in the lathe but the top lid being a larger diameter caused problems holding it in the lathe chuck. So my solution was to cut a short length of copper tube and then cut a slit in it.

4200g-middle-detail - 8.jpeg

This allowed me to hold the water filler casting in the lathe tightly enough so that I could skim the base without damaging the top lid.

4200g-middle-detail - 6.jpeg

I then cleaned up the lid to remove the casting marks. The water scoop dome and the filler casting could be low melt soldered in place from inside the tender space using the spigots on the castings.

4200g-middle-detail - 7.jpeg

Finally a little more detail on the water filler - the locking loop low melt soldered to the lid and a short length of 0.8mm n/s wire loctite'd in place.

4200g-middle-detail - 9.jpeg
 

adrian

Flying Squad
it's always the last few details that seem to take the longest but nearly there - certainly within sight of the finishing line.

I'll start with the tank on top. A nice white metal casting that didn't need much fettling and a couple of restraining straps.

4200g-last-details - 1.jpeg

bending the straps around a small drill and then fit a couple of lengths of n/s wire.

4200g-last-details - 4.jpeg

and then fitted to the tender. The length of n/s wire means that the tank can be held in place by holding the straps tight and soldering the wire from inside the tender water space.

4200g-last-details - 5.jpeg

One of the bars that the tank rests on needed a little bit of fettling to sit flat as it slightly overlapped the etched rivet details around the water scoop dome.

4200g-last-details - 6.jpeg

Finally the rear lamp irons, if you followed the instructions to the letter then these would have already been fitted. However the top lamp iron is made from a couple of etched components and I'm not a great fan of building up these shapes from etched bits, cast ones aren't much better in my opinion.

Fortunately silver soldering makes it so much easier - so I took one of the spare "narrow gauge" frame spacers and a bit of spare strip from the framing of the etched sheets. By bending this into a Z shape makes sure the centre section stays upright.

4200g-last-details - 2.jpeg

These 2 are then easily silver-soldered together. I tried the silver-solder paste this time but seemed to overestimated the amount needed so some rather generous fillets in some of the corners.

4200g-last-details - 3.jpeg

After cutting the sides off and cleaning up a bit I'm left with this.

4200g-last-details - 7.jpeg

It's then a simple matter to cut a slice off the end and file up to make the lamp iron. For me this is the best representation as the T-section on the real items are just some bit of flat strip welded together. The more observant may have noticed on the underside a small half-etched line, this is where on the frame spacer it would be bent to an angle to provide some stiffness. It's almost as if I planned it that way to provide a fold line for the lamp iron. :rolleyes:

4200g-last-details - 8.jpeg

So folded and fitted.

4200g-last-details - 9.jpeg

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So I think I can see the home straight now, I need check the buffers, couplings and a couple of extra details around the front and I thinks it's done.
 

adrian

Flying Squad
The joys of a wet bank holiday Monday meant that I finally managed to spend a little time at the workbench today. I've just realised it's a month since my last post - not a lost mojo but just other things of life getting in the way and not having time at the workbench. I need to be in a relaxed mood to enjoy my modelling, something that's been missing for the last few weeks.

Anyway back to the tender - looking at the various prototype photos it seems to me that there is an extra tool box at the front. Photos are extremely difficult, I found a couple where there are a couple of lamps at the front which appear to be sat on a shelf or box. Other photos do seem to indicate some sort of tool box. So using some of the scrap etches, spare hinges and spare lamp irons from the kit I sort of freelanced something I thought representative from the photos I could find. Sod's law now says someone will be able to provide a photo showing something completely different!

final_tender - 1.jpeg

final_tender - 2.jpeg

That was then attached to the front. I also rolled up the hinges on the doors and added the "locking bar" from some nickel-silver wire. Getting the shape right was a real pain - there are at least a half a dozen in the scrap bin.

final_tender - 3.jpeg

final_tender - 4.jpeg

The last few details were checking the fit of the buffers, there are etched coupling hooks in the kit but I splashed out on a cast set from CPL. As always the photos prove useful instantly showing I've forgotten to fit the tommy bar in the centre trunnion. The final detail a small length of twisted copper wire to hold up the steam heating pipe.

final_tender - 5.jpeg

final_tender - 6.jpeg

final_tender - 7.jpeg

So I think I'm at the stage where I can say it's finished. Now to strip it down for a final clean prior to a coat of etched primer.
 

mickoo

Western Thunderer
I picked up some of this as a trial to replace vac hoses.

Course Simulated Conduit 1.9mm Silver Colour (45cm) | Prime-Miniatures

Comes in two sizes, 1.9 and 1.0 mm, the larger might do a vac hose, the smaller will do speedo cables and AWS/ATC flexible conduits to the sensor head. Shame they don't do 2.5 mm as that'd be suitable for water hoses between engine and tender.

I do recommend adding an inner copper wire core as it can kink quite easily.
 
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