7mm Mickoo's Commercial Workbench

3 LINK

Western Thunderer
Good morning Mick, I thought you might have replaced those steam pipes as the original offerings were rather abysmal . I’ll drop you a pm later, cheers.

Martyn.
 

LarryG

Western Thunderer
I seem to remember there were variants of steam pipes on the Stars, depending on whether they got a new cylinder block or not. Lawrence Waters book on the GWR Star class is pretty handy.
 

mickoo

Western Thunderer
End of build for the JLTRT Star, some bits to add on strip down and some when back from paint; steam pipes are loose to allow easier for painting of boiler front and will be secured after paint.

Some photos show a lozenge shaped patch on the RH boiler side so just checking it if needs that for the clients date line. Also speedometer bracket to fit when I can find one as not in the kit

IMG_8771.jpg

IMG_8769.jpg

IMG_8770.jpg
 
Last edited:

simond

Western Thunderer
Its these kind of additions that add character and help bring a model to life.

It's easy to forget that the full sized engine was a working machine with fire and steam conspiring to bring wear and tear to components.

Mike
And blokes with spanners, shovels and hammers who were perhaps less concerned with appearance than getting the job done and the loco in service so the train could run on time.
 

Genghis

Western Thunderer
The boiler patch reminds me of a visit to Thai Railways (SRT) steam depot when I lived there. SRT had built new boilers for two of the locos and there they were on shed - one of the two had an ugly patch on the nearly brand new clothing, presumably where the shed fitters had cut away for attention. Unfortunately most of the photos were lost in a computer disc failure.
 

mickoo

Western Thunderer
So this week we're back to the JLTRT King and working on the upper works, I've been here before so the odd niggle is easily worked out and progress is swift, three days basically for the footplate and cab to be virtually complete, valances, cab side sheet steps, lamp irons are outstanding.

The sanding levers will go on after paint and I'll box the top of the fire iron tunnel once the firebox is in place.

Sadly the blue lump is not suitable for our purposes, don't get me wrong it's lovely and as can be seen with no work it fits almost perfectly. However it's not heavy enough and even digging out the balsa wood core won't give enough capacity; but that aside the biggest problem is the slot for the ABC motor gearbox combo isn't going to cut it.

So it's out with the crayons, scissors and string to measure and make a new one front to back, to be honest the most time consuming aspect is punching all the rivets out on the smoke box wrapper and the rest will just drop into place. I could 3D the smoke box but by the time you've drawn it in CAD and then post processed it it's very much quicker to cut a new one from brass sheet and roll.

So let's see where we're at Friday evening....:bowdown:

IMG_8774.jpg


IMG_8775.jpg


IMG_8776.jpg
 
Top