Gladiator B16/1 A North Eastern Workhorse

[Robpulham]

Another session last night brought the tender a little nearer to completion.

I managed to get all the whitemetal castings soldered on. I still haven't decided whether to fit the small steps at either side of the coal chute or not the jury is still out.

I haven't soldered the coal space/tender front in yet because I want to be able to get at the hand rails, lamp irons etc from the back before I do, then the last job [s]will[/s] should be making the corners for the flares.

[Robpulham]

Due to having a lot on at work I haven't been able to get back to the B16 until Sunday afternoon and yesterday.

Still good progress has been made since then with most of the tender detailing cracked. I found that the rear tender flare overlay wasn't on straight to that had to come off and be straightened.

The coal space is still loose until I get the brake/water scoop standards in place - I figure it will be easier to drill the floor if it lifts out.



Note the longer hand rail at the front of the tender. This seems to have been a feature of a few of the B16 tenders and thankfully you can make it out on the one photo of 61450 that I have found to date.



The small steps were a bit of a fiddle but worth the effort I think.

[Robpulham]

A slight diversion from work on the chassis has had me looking at the oil boxes that are quite prominent on the sides of the frames above the footplate.

Although I have some castings they are too long and wouldn't cut down very well so I decided to have a bash at making some from scratch.

I measured the length of three together and marked it off on a length of square bar and then marked a line 1mm from the top, along what will be the front edge. Next I filed the marked section down to the line at the front while maintaining the full height at the back. - To give me a sloping top.

A strip of scrap etch to form a lid and another length with two rivets punched in either end forms the mounting bracket.

Before cutting each individual oil box off the bar I drilled holes for the pipes in the bottom and then added some 08mm OD tube and length of fine brass beading wire to represent the oil pipes. Three down three more to make for the other side but at least two of them don't need the tube/pipes fitted because they sit on the splasher top.

[Robpulham]

After an exciting weekend doing other things I got back to the B16 last night and cracked on with fitting the brakes.

I wound a few layers of masking tape around the wheels to both space the brake shoes away from the wheels and to help reduce the risk of rusting from soldering with the wheels in place.



I was forewarned by a gent on RMweb who has recently built a 4mm version of this kit that the length of the yokes that fit to the brake spreaders is a bit long and so it was with the 7mm version. I used a diamond disk in the Dremel to cut a slot in the brake spreader to allow the fork in the yoke to slip back and effectively shorten the rod. - see photo above.


I also need to shorten the rod that connects to brake the the link below the ab too. The plan is to solder a piece of scrap to the end with the boss on and file a second boss which will allow me to create a forked joint once I shorten the rod.

[Atso]

That's looking great Rob. However, please stop posting these wonderful updates, you're are giving me a desire to model O gauge and I have neither the space nor money to have a go at the ECML in that scale!

[Robpulham]

Thanks Steve,

It is a slippery slope, once I was bitten I couldn't go back to 4mm let alone 2mm.

I think that 7mm is more about the journey than the arrival, or that's what I keep telling myself.

[Robpulham]

I also need to shorten the rod that connects to brake the the link below the ab too. The plan is to solder a piece of scrap to the end with the boss on and file a second boss which will allow me to create a forked joint once I shorten the rod.

Which I duly did on Wednesday night. In fact I was feeling pretty pleased with myself until this morning when by chance I found a photo which showed me exactly how the brake gear should fit at the cab end.

It will be good news to David (Hill) that in fact you don't need to shorten the rod to the cab rear at all, you just need to connect it to the right lever from the cross shaft.

All being well I should have it corrected on Monday evening and I will post before and after photos to show how I got it wrong initially. In the hope that it will prevent someone else from making the same mistake. I have say that the instructions are lacking in this area being of the 'fit parts X,Y,Z,' styke and an email to Steve Barnfield although it elicited a response didn't help because he couldn't remember how it fitted.

To give Steve due credit he did offer to assist in person if I was in his area but I am a long way from him.

[Robpulham]

As described in the last post I made an error in the assembly of the brakes this was due to a combination of things that may not necessarily affect other builders of the kit - somewhat basic instructions, combined with my lack of knowledge of the prototype and struggling to find a photo of a B16/1 that shows how they fit. And finally because the kit had been started lots of the etches had been cut up and finding some of the bits has been a bit challenging - The second lever that I needed to connect the brake pull rod to was attached to a small scrap of etch that I found by chance in the bottom of the box.

Hopefully this will assist anyone when they get to this point in their kit.

NB my subscription to PhotoBucket seems to be retaining my images at present so I will continue to use it. If it goes pear shaped all the images are available on Flickr and I do have back ups so I can re-instate them on this thread at least.

This is where I had got to in my ignorance last week.





This is what it should have looked like - this is a crop from a photo of an NER V Class, which is referred to in the instructions as having the same backhead details as the B16 it was only after spending sometime studying the backhead that I realised that it also showed how the brake gear fits at the cab end.



Then this is the result of last night's efforts - I had to add a representation of a slack adjuster to make up for my shortening the shaft previously







Finally not the best shot in the world but it does look more like the realthing now

[Robpulham]

It seems like a while since I updated this thread so it must have been a good holiday.

Time has been spent since getting back on the little things that take time and don't seem to evidence much progress but all add to the overall picture.

I have started looking at the upperworks starting with the cab fittings. A lot of the detail is cast on to the backhead and there are some castings supplied. Sadly a lot of the detail is a bit low relief so I suspect that I will remove and remake most of it.

I add some fine brass wire to the gauges



I also made up some washout plug bases these are two layers of brass with a stub of square section brass inserted. The plan is that this will be soldered behind the holes in the firebox and then half etched surrounds soldered over them. A length of square section was included in the box but I am unsure as to whether this comes with the kit or it was provided by the owner.



I also soldered the elbow provided onto a length of tube for the vacuum ejector pipe.

[Robpulham]

Although other things have been taking a priority at this busy time of the year (for us), the B16 has been ticking along slowly. After consultation with the gent that I am building it for, the plan is only to replace the detail that is supplied as brass castings in the kit.

I have added the lockers/splasher tops inside the cab and cut the backhead to fit. I have also done most of what will be replaced with just one casting to fit tonight. - shown below the cab rear. This will fit to the left of the backhead below the hand wheel and where the ghost of the cast pipe can still be seen - must do a better job of smoothing it of before putting the new one in place. The pipe work for the water gauges is very fine and a bit flimsy so I knocked up a couple of pipe clips from scrap and soldered them in place. I suspect that I will need to do the same with the final pipe when I have it in place.

[Atso]

Wow, that's some incredible detail there Rob and my hat comes off to you sir. Neither my K3 or D49 have backheads and nobody has noticed so far and once I add crews, I doubt that anyone ever will! I doubt you could get away with that in 7mm though!

This looks like a longer term build, how many hours do you think you've invested in it so far?

[Robpulham]

Hi Steve,

Not as many as you might think because it was part built when I got it. That said I would rather that it hadn't been started because some bit's are not quite as well fitted as I might like and it would be a major effort to blowlamp it apart and start again. That said if it had been for me I may well have taken the plunge and done just that.

[Robpulham]

Moving on, the back head is now finished as far as it's planned and looking at the cab photo I have, there is quite a prominent dial on the rear of the left cabside. This was quickly replicated with a dial, a slice of brass tube and a strip of thickish brass bar (it's mounted on a thick wooden plinth). Sadly none of that invisible solder here. It is all pre clean up though.





Then came the cab roof which was another of those jobs that I had put off a couple of times for no logical reason. It went to get well and the design makes it fit the cab very nicely and it's much better than some I have done. I still need to add the ventilator and I think the whistle but I will check that. I also need to adjust the feed pipe to the gauge everso slightly as it's a bit high up on the cab side making the roof rock ever so slightly.



You can see where I had to make a cut out for the plinth to fit.

[Robpulham]

Although I haven't posted much on this having concentrated on the caoches I have been making steady progress on the B16.

The tender is now complete with it's missing Vacuum pipe and axleboxes and just needs a good scrub before I take any photos.

From the previous photos I have fitted the cab roof and working back from the cab I have also fitted the cab side hand rails

I also started work on the washout plugs, and for the upper part of the firebox in the timeframe of this model, the oval base plate had been replaced with a round one.






In the kit these are represented by a circular half etched overlay but those in the kit were a little over etched therefore a bit on the flimsy side. So I made some replacements from some nickel rod threaded 14ba to these I added some Markits Crankpin washers (my last so I need to get some more) and a 14BA nut to finish.



Last thing, I gave it a good clean up scraping off lots of the excess solder that had built up in various areas.

[Robpulham]

Washout Plugs, Proper

Not much modelling done this week due to not being at my best, but a bit of thinking in the lucid moments and looking at photographs of B16's. The conclusion that I reached is that washout plugs on B61/1's are a nightmare. Almost every photo you look at has different numbers in different positions - No Swindon standardisation here...

So I settled on the understanding that the loco that I am building '61450' had three on the right hand side and two on the left (looking forward from the cab). 61450, would also have to be one of these with the foremost washout plug on the front corner of the firebox. Working out how to do that took a bit of head scratching.

As I have said before, mostly those things that require most head scratching and trepidation prove to be simpler to just get on and do. So it was with this one. I marked off where each one would sit and drilled a small pilot hole. For the four that are sat square to the side I just kept using slightly bigger drill bits until I hit the size for the previously made backing plugs.

For the one at the corner of the firebox, I drilled a pilot quite close to the edge of the side of the firebox and again started to make it bigger. I stopped short two or three sizes smaller than I needed for the others and then using an oval diamond file, I filed the front of the firebox adjacent to the hole so that I had a 3/4 hole in either face of the firebox. I then used a round burr in my Dremel to ease it to final size.

Fitting the backing plugs and getting them in position was fun, it took at least three attempts on all but one of them. Once they were all soldered in place it was time to add the half etched overlays to the firebox sides around the holes. I tinned them all while still on the fret then cut them out and filed of the tag.

I decided to use the microflame to solder them in position because I reasoned that using the soldering iron (aside from the possibility of getting solder all over where I didn't want it), would possibly nudge them out of position too. This created the dilemma of heating the front face while making sure that the plug didn't drop off the inside of the firebox. to get around this I cut some short lengths of coffee stirrer and wedged them between the two washout plugs inside the firebox and away I went. - I did manage to set fire to one which gave Chris a bit of a moment....

On a couple I had to add the tiniest spec of extra solder to get them firm and the one folding around the front of the firebox took a few attempts to get it seated properly in both planes but I got there in the end. They still need cleaning up but not as much as they would have if I had attempted to use the iron to solder them on.







They are one of those details that will fade away once lost in the overall paintwork but which would be very noticeable if they weren't there. The plus point is that now that I have done them once doing them again on other locos will be quite straightforward.