4mm Highland Locos From DJH Kits

Rob Pulham

Western Thunderer
Earlier this year whilst doing a demo, a gent asked Chris if I built whitemetal kits (I was having some lunch at the time). She told him I did and he contacted me after the show.

It turned out that what he was looking for was someone to build some very early 4mm scale DJH Loco kit's of Highland locos - Specifically a Barney and a Jones Goods. I agreed that I would build them and rather innocently told him that I would endeavour to have them finished by the end of the year. At that point I had no idea how much time Chris's exhibition would take up so here we are almost at the end of the year so I thought I would at least try to keep my promise.

I started with the tender and I didn't really like the idea of putting axles into the whitemetal axle boxes without bearings so I cut down some 7mm wagon top hat bearings which fitted the Markits axles perfectly.

As soon as I looked at the brake standard it broke but luckily while looking in my spares box for bit's to scratch build a replacement I found a rather nice cast one left from my 4mm days so I used that.

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There were some rather nice turned sprung buffers in the kit but sadly the frames got in the way for the tails/nuts so I agreed with the client to cut them of and make them unsprung. The vac pipe is scratched from various thickness of rod/wire and some thin walled tube.
 

D6356

Western Thunderer
Hi Having got this kit and the Barney It has to be said while they look the part getting the tender to work I used a false floor and an inner frame screwed in. The axle holes are certainly not square on my examples of the castings.
Robert
 

Rob Pulham

Western Thunderer
Hi Having got this kit and the Barney It has to be said while they look the part getting the tender to work I used a false floor and an inner frame screwed in. The axle holes are certainly not square on my examples of the castings.
Robert

Hi Robert,

I must have been lucky in that respect because the castings are virtually flash free and the tender has built up very square - I assembled it on a sheet of toughened glass. My biggest problem initially was how small everything is..... I am getting used to it now though.
 

D6356

Western Thunderer
Hi lucky you - I tried building on a glass mirror tile as a flat surface. loco body built well for the Barney but worth looking out for brass chimney for the Jones - cannot now recall from whom but I think the HR soc website might help.
Robert
 

Rob Pulham

Western Thunderer
A further session at the bench saw much of the loco complete.

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Just the steps, hand rails plus quite a bit of hacking underneath to get the coupling rods to clear the footplate and it's done. Then from wiring up and testing but I think that I will get both locos to the same state before doing that bit.
 

D6356

Western Thunderer
These are so much better than my efforts of 10 years ago - might be more I think I will revisit the boxes and perhaps start again.
regards Robert
HNY!
 

Rob Pulham

Western Thunderer
Hi Robert,

I have opened the box for the Jones Goods and found a note from DJH dated 1981 when they were based in Oxon.... that makes the kit almost 40 years old.
 

Rob Pulham

Western Thunderer
Yesterday I pretty much finished the construction of the Barney. It still needs hand rails and the motor fitting sadly despite much grinding away underneath which allowed the motion to move freely as soon as I added the brakes to the chassis they created more clearance problems.

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I made up another vac pipe for the front.
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And finally one of the quite prominent things on this particular loco are the injector(?) pipes that go into the top of the firebox either side of the whistle which were conspicuously absent from the kit.
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I did my usual trick of filing up thin walled tube tube to make the unions and added them to .8mm rod to make a representation of the pipe work.
 

D6356

Western Thunderer
I was just looking at Brassmaster 4F rod etches and wondering - will have to check books and see if a set of finer looking rods possible - I had imagined a bit of chopping and splicing. The etched rods in the pictures look to need some work- some thing to muse on this week when I dig out the ones I built - I will look in boxes as well for any date clues , all I know is time flies by ..... lovely work thanks.
Robert
 

Overseer

Western Thunderer
Rob
Good to see sone Highland locos on your workbench. You could have saved yourself a little time making the front vacuum pipe as the Barneys had the stand pipe coming out of a hole in the footplate about 6 inches behind the buffer beam, just to the left of the coupling hook (when looking forward). This was a characteristic of Peter Drummond's locos on the Highland, the buffer beam was kept clear for the loco number in Highland days.

Not sure which loco or which period you are building for, the 12 locos in the class were usually all different with a number of different boiler types, different domes, safety valve locations etc. The kit has a 6 wheel tender from a Small Ben, recognisable by the short tank with tool box on the rear, which HR numbers 134, 135, 136 and 137 received between 1902 and 1913 in exchange for their original 8 wheel tenders. The other 6 wheel tenders were from Big Bens, or built for later Barneys, and had a full length tank. The loco appears to represent one of the six (134 - 139) built in 1900 (without water tube boilers) in original condition apart from the wheel on the smoke box door which was a later LMS change from the original straight locking handle. For an LMS period loco the type of boiler which looked most similar to the kit was the N38 boiler of which a few of remained in use on several locos (boiler changes seem to have taken place every 4 years or so). Probably the closest match for a late LMS period loco would be 17695 (ex 136) between 1944 and 1948 - right boiler, right tender, and wheel on smokebox door handle but a replacement straight sided Caledonian chimney instead of the tapered Drummond one.
 

D6356

Western Thunderer
That is a lot gen to take in but thanks, I will have to plough through the books and articles to hand and complete it. I wonder if a T9 tender would make a good starting point for the 8 wheel version - more book worming..
cheers
Robert
 

Rob Pulham

Western Thunderer
Thanks Fraser,

It is to be built as running in LMS days as per a couple of scanned photos that the owner provided with the kit. I must confess I hadn't looked to see if the chimney was correct but the tender is. I am a bit limited as to what I can do to make it more accurate primarily because it has to be able to run on 1st radius curves and the compromises needed to achieve that may well negate accuracy.
 

D6356

Western Thunderer
Hi ,
Well I dug out my Barney and bits have fallen off so back to rebuilding. Jones goods - well not sure where I got idea of having built it like I did - but no , I think I got confused with an S&D 7F done long ago. The castings on mine and small Ben are fine and both in the raw in the boxes. So time to watch how you get on - I did find two sets of Alan Gibson "universal" rods so I must have considered how to beef up the very flat etch in the kit.
It would be great to see progress made if you have time ?
thanks
Robert
 

Rob Pulham

Western Thunderer
Hi Robert,

I took a little break from the Highland Loco's to build something for me. I should be back at them later this week.
 

Martin Shaw

Western Thunderer
Hi Rob
The two pipes that come out of the top of the boiler by the whistle are indeed for the injectors, in fact there were two valves on the boiler top with operating rods projecting backwards through the cab front and handwheels in the cab above the backhead. To all intents and purposes the CR Jumbos were the same locomotive and the CR before grouping stared to fit backhead injectors so these pipes disappeared. I can only find one picture of a Barney taken in 1949 which doesn't have these feed pipes which suggests the LMS modified the pretty small class so the it could take the CR boiler. I can't give any dates when this happened but I suspect reasonably early in LMS days.
Regards
Martin
 

Rob Pulham

Western Thunderer
Thanks Martin,

What I am struggling with at the minute is a photo that shows the injector below the footplate so I can attempt to continue the pipe work downwards but so far I haven't found anything that is remotely clear enough to work from.
 

Overseer

Western Thunderer
Highland Railway Locomotives Book 2 by Cormack and Stevenson has a couple of good photos of two types of flooding injectors on Barneys. Amazing how many photos were taken with the coupling rods down, completely obscuring the injector. Page 30 has this one, on one of the four Barneys in the second batch fitted with fire box water tubes.
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And on p38 there is a later type. Taken in 1948.
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Rob Pulham

Western Thunderer
Although I haven't tackled the injectors yet, over on RMweb Mark Tatlow mentioned the clack valves on the side of the boiler on the Barney and made me realise that the misshapen blob was supposed to represent them

This is the blob that I refer to:
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Having had it pointed out I had to do something about it. Mark had pointed me at some castings by Alan Gibson but I figured that they couldn't be too difficult to make a pair and although a little fiddly they were fairly easy to do.

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They comprise, a couple of brass track rivets, two etched washers and 0.7+0.8mm brass rod.

First I drilled through the rivets to take the .8mm rod and then with the thick end of the rivet held in a pin vice I used the Proxxon pillar drill to spot drill and then drill through one side of the narrower section. I then soldered a length of .8mm rod through the centre with a stub sticking out of the narrow end. Then I soldered a length of 0.7mm through the hole in the side threaded on the washer and soldered that.

I scraped the misshapen lumps away with a scalpel and then drilled the boiler side finally bending the 0.8mm rod to shape and using a tiny piece of 100 degree I wafted the microflame over the clack until the solder melted and it was in place.
 

Rob Pulham

Western Thunderer
Another session last night had the tender for the Jones Goods put together and a standard made for the the brake column. This is where the instructions differ from the drawing that was supplied with the kit although I suspect it was added by the customer rather than DJH as the paper looks newer than the instructions. The instructions would have you add a misshapen whitemetal column to the left hand side of the tender looking forwards, whereas the drawing has the ships wheel attached to a column at the right hand side. The instructions vaguely point to the ships wheel being somehow attached to the inside of th tender door.

A piece of tube, a couple of different sized washers and some rod made up the column.

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Lastly a really cruel close up which makes it look like there is a lake of solder around the base....
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