7mm Mickoo's Commercial Workbench
- Thread starter mickoo
- Start date
mickoo
Western Thunderer
More JLTRT 4F, I've built three of these 4F's from three different kits, each has their strong points, each their faults, the ideal model would be the best of all three.
All my previous JLTRT builds with resin boilers also had the etch work for the metal one but missing any castings used on the resin moulding, the 4F broke that duck and this is about as far as it goes with the kit metal work once you take the resin boiler out.
The smokebox will be a 3D replacement with door and chimney as one unit for strength, the rest will be scratch built so out with the crayons and scissors tomorrow.
Other than the cab the rest of the etch work was just fine, just over a day (a long day admittedly) to do the rolling chassis, rods and footplate shell, the rest of today was on the cab.
The cab comes in three pieces, why I have no idea but the joint in the roof section isn't anywhere near any guttering (which by the way varies a lot over the class) so you end up with a butt joint and endless filling to smooth off. Luckily the material is quite thick (0.5mm) so there's plenty of meat there so you can attack it with big files.
Not with standing the three pieces the joint is close to the cant rail bend, which makes it awkward to grip/hold the roof section to form the bend. In the end I soldered two slabs of sheet metal on (show as a red overlay in one photo), one covering the opening in the side sheet to stop the small top rear extension distorting and one on the roof section to extend it as a hand hold for bending.
The cab floor also needs some work and the square boxes are a little long and stick out the back so need shortening. The floor has a piece missing where the drivers side box goes, the instructions do note this (thumbs up for noting and advising) so that's easy to add, but, there are no sides where the floor extends past the side sheets, those'll need adding from scrap etch.
Finally you can line the tender up and see that the floor is much too high, which is why I hadn't fitted it previously. This is quite common for tenders that are multi class, the floor section will be for the highest foot plated engine it was attached to, in this case I believe it was the Royal Scot class.
On the chassis I added the obligatory Lego sand boxes, hornguides/springs and ashpan. One thing none of the three kits model is the extended bracket for the leading sand boxes, this pushes the box out and wraps around the leading brake hangers.
All my previous JLTRT builds with resin boilers also had the etch work for the metal one but missing any castings used on the resin moulding, the 4F broke that duck and this is about as far as it goes with the kit metal work once you take the resin boiler out.
The smokebox will be a 3D replacement with door and chimney as one unit for strength, the rest will be scratch built so out with the crayons and scissors tomorrow.
Other than the cab the rest of the etch work was just fine, just over a day (a long day admittedly) to do the rolling chassis, rods and footplate shell, the rest of today was on the cab.
The cab comes in three pieces, why I have no idea but the joint in the roof section isn't anywhere near any guttering (which by the way varies a lot over the class) so you end up with a butt joint and endless filling to smooth off. Luckily the material is quite thick (0.5mm) so there's plenty of meat there so you can attack it with big files.
Not with standing the three pieces the joint is close to the cant rail bend, which makes it awkward to grip/hold the roof section to form the bend. In the end I soldered two slabs of sheet metal on (show as a red overlay in one photo), one covering the opening in the side sheet to stop the small top rear extension distorting and one on the roof section to extend it as a hand hold for bending.
The cab floor also needs some work and the square boxes are a little long and stick out the back so need shortening. The floor has a piece missing where the drivers side box goes, the instructions do note this (thumbs up for noting and advising) so that's easy to add, but, there are no sides where the floor extends past the side sheets, those'll need adding from scrap etch.
Finally you can line the tender up and see that the floor is much too high, which is why I hadn't fitted it previously. This is quite common for tenders that are multi class, the floor section will be for the highest foot plated engine it was attached to, in this case I believe it was the Royal Scot class.
On the chassis I added the obligatory Lego sand boxes, hornguides/springs and ashpan. One thing none of the three kits model is the extended bracket for the leading sand boxes, this pushes the box out and wraps around the leading brake hangers.
dibateg
Western Thunderer
Yes - I remember I had a job with that turn in at the top of the cab side. For a kit that was 'supposedly easy to build'! How a beginner would have coped I don't know. Nice work with the extra prints for the frames.
14 years ago, apologies for the poor photo quality:-
14 years ago, apologies for the poor photo quality:-
Yorkshire Dave
Western Thunderer
Although this is rather academic now, surely this appears to be a design flaw in the kit (or in kits) where wrap-over cab roofs are involved.
Using tony's photo as an illustration the logical solution would have been to have the first lower third of the cab roof as part of the cab side etch (red area) with central section as a separate etch (yellow area). This would allow the cabsides at roof level to be pre-formed using the cab front as a guide whilst all as separate parts before being soldered together. The green outlines are my interpretation of your description of the current kit parts.
mickoo
Western Thunderer
That's pretty much sums it up.
Three pieces, the sides and part of the roof and a central roof section, the problem is the small part of the roof that is attached top the side is too close to the bend to allow you to form it neatly and the joint between side and roof is not near a covering gutter.
In red the kit centre section, in green the kit side plus a small section of the roof (green arrow) shows the small area of roof you have to form the cant rail bend, it's 100% of naff all.
What they should have done, as you note, (if they persisted in having three pieces....why
) is extend the side pieces up to a new smaller (blue) centre roof section, this gives you more material (blue arrow) to aid forming the cant rail bend and with the added bonus that the joint is now covered (80%) by a gutter (yellow outline) that a majority of engines have on top.
I have no idea why it's three pieces, their math and artwork is spot on and all three pieces fitted perfectly with no gaps or edges to cut back, so it could easily have been one piece, it's not as though there are alternative roofs or sides to swap in and out. They've basically turned a 10 min fold and solder job into a 2 hr mess of solder, cutting back and dressing smooth.
There will still be a small witness mark once painted so it'll need further work in the paint shop sanding ultra smooth, if not you'll end up with a kink or witness mark in about the worst place possible (viewing angles), any imperfections in this area will show up like sore thumb as the light catches it.