Atlantic's works: Portable layout - Ground Signals Again

[Mercator II]

guessing up the A16 from me, although not much fish these days more cars!!

vegas is dead now winter is here, not good for those of us in the hotel trade, but we had a cracking summer, 4 more weeks then it's the winter break, that's when I will make my W1

Brian
CME Castle Abbeydale

[Atlantic 3279]

My original welcome message to you as "Bro Sewell" now looks a bit strange. Did you change your username or did I fail to pay proper attention the first time around? Up the A16 indeed, to the place where it meets the A180.

I'll be interested to see how your W1 turns out. The only painted Dean Sidings W1s that I have seen have left me wondering whether the mouldings had awful flow marks all over their surfaces, or had the paiting been done with well thickened paint and a tar brush? The boiler bands looked decidedly heavy too. You will be able to show us what they are really like, and what, if necessary, can be done to improve them.

A Bugatti nosed P2 from bits sounds interesting, and a real challenge. This has been partly discussed before. As the A2/3 conversion has shown, the cylinders on a Bachmann A2 chassis can be moved back and the valve gear can be changed to make the Gresley P2 / Thompson A2 type. Throw away the bogie and substitute a pony truck and the basics of the front and middle of a P2 chasis are there. Adding a fourth coupled axle at the rear could be done in a similar way to the A4 based 4-8-2 conversion that I did (or using a method that fellow contributor "St. Johnstoun" can describe) but there would be more of the metal casting to saw off or grind away before you begin. The rear two-thirds of the A2 running plate might be of use too. The chassis dimensions would have to be fiddled slightly, as the Bachmann A2 coupled wheelbase is longer than true scale. Presumably the plan for the streamlined nose is to exploit a chunk of A4 body, and you could get most of the cab from the same source. Depending on the intended "standard" of the model, the A4 nose could be mixed blessing. If a good general shape is the limit of the aims, then the A4 nose may be fine. If the aim is to make a model that stands up to rigorous comparison with drawings and photos, then all of the panel joint lines will be wrong unless changed, and the position of the chimney plus the length and shapes of the slopes ahead of and behind the chimney are possibly not right. A suitable boiler barrel is tricky to source. Unless you get say a Nu-Cast genuine Bugatti nosed P2 boiler casting, or the etched sheet for the Cock o' the North boiler from Wessex Pro-Scale (which would then need a new nose), I don't see how you can use a single donor barrel. The bottom half of the boiler needs to be like that of a convetional Gresley pacific, but with a long firegrate like the A2, the top half has to have a casing raised up to chimney/dome/cab top level, like the A4, so that the boiler is egg-shaped in cross section. You could try to cut-and-shut sections of the boilers that I've mentioned, but there's no guarantee that they would fit together unless the different manufacturers have acieved remarkable mutual accuracy. Even if the shapes all fit together there would, I imagine, be a whole new set of boiler bands and firebox plugs to apply. If it can all be done, to a convinicing standard, and better still cheaply too, I'll be thoroughly impressed by the builder's skills and ingenuity.

[Horsetan]

NOTE: None of the above conversion methods or ideas are covered in the recent SLP publications entitled "Model Locomotive Building On The Cheap"

[S.A.C. Martin]

Why - RE the P2 - would you cut the rear, Graeme? Wouldn't it be better to extend forwards, leaving the rear Cartazzi in place? I.e. a front frames extension rather than a rear one?

[Mercator II]

thx for the welcome, and yes I have changed names, found I can on this forum, Mercator II is what I use over on other sites so seams easier to keep one online id

I will start a thread on my W1 in the new year once I have time to really focus on it, but it does need some work to it. You are correct about the banding been crude at best, the piting doesn't seam to be evident but am sure any will show up when I undercoat it in grey primer. The year I am going for is early '48 in BR garter blue, no valances but with the tender she was given in june 48, Yealdons book on A4s/W1 made very interesting reading, but will keep my other addition quiet until I 'unveil' her

I have made a B17/5 from DS with a few mods, namely the chassis from a Bachmann B1 instead of the hornby b17 as i wanted loco drive, will dig some pics out if you like

Will pass you ideas to my brother, he has a partial assembled white metal kit which was given to him, but is badly put together

many thanks again,

Brian

[Atlantic 3279]

The DS W1 bodies that I saw, rather than having pitted surfaces, had numerous ripples, almost as if they were moulded from compressed spaghetti.

Simon has a point about adding the extra coupled axle at the front of the Bachmann chassis rather than the rear. I didn't go into this last night, as it does involve other complications and my brain was too tired to handle them at the time, but there may be a way. If you add the extra wheelset at the front you then have the coupled wheels with the heavy balance weights on the third coupled axle, rather than were they ought to be on the second. Bear in mind that only this pair of wheels has the crankpins that are long enough to accommodate the conrods asa well as the coupling rods, and which have ends suitable for carrying the return cranks. It may however be possible to pull the two pairs of wheels off their axles and swap them, restoring the quartering carefully in the process. You can't just swap the complete wheelsets of course, as the original midddle set has the drive gear on its axle. You will then also have to see whether the rods still fit the crankipns in the original order, or do they have to be swapped around to suit any differences in crankpin diameters and lenghths. New mounting points, different to those that I used for the A2/3, will then have to be found for the cylinders and the motion bracket, but I suspect it will be a simple case of building somethin up where required rather than having to cut into solide chassis, as the front of the chassis is lower than the mid section.
No matter how you change the chassis to eight coupled, bear in mind that you either need new Bachmann A2 wheels to match the other three sets, or that you have to otherwise find a match - unless you go to the expense of swapping the lot for say Markits wheels and 3mm axles (they even do a knurled on to suit a Bachmann gear fitting, with side-offset if required), but does about £80 for coupled wheels, axles, crankpins etc sound like a good deal? None of the Bachmann rods will fit the Markits pins either! Also, if you plan to use Bachmann rods throughout, and want to get a balanced wheel-spacing throughout the coupled unit, remember to match the Bachmann wheelbase when adding the fourth axle, don't just assume that the scale dimension will work.

[S.A.C. Martin]

Graeme, I have a set of spare Bachmann A2 wheelsets. I simply emailed Bachmann and inquired if they were available. £15 for a set of drivers with connecting rods. I figured if I ever had the inclination to have a go at the 2-8-2 when my CADwork gets better, this would be the best place to start.

[Atlantic 3279]

Interesting to hear another report of improved spares supply from Bachmann, although I note from one of Horsetan's recent comments that he at least still believes that Bachmann spares supply is still sporadic, according to what they can salvage from reject locos. I'm still inclined to belive that too.

After a frantic weekend of work mainly on the "classic" car, and then a fraught session of preparation last night, I have this evening managed to fairly calmly pour the rubber for what I hope will be all of the necessary moulds for the A1/1 body parts. One of these has to be a two piece mould, so I won't know until I've seen the cured second half of it in at least 48 hours, whether it is a success. Fingers crossed.

Rather good news on the matter of the cylinders too. A little experimentation with a second set of A3 super-detail cylinders, which have not yet had a bath in solvent (the first ones had when I attached the modifying wrappers to turn them into A1/1 style), showed that the rears CAN be detached from the hollow wrapper + front portion. The rears are not merely plug-in, they are glued in a couple of spots, but they can be eased off with minimal damage (none of it external) - so Simon was near-enough correct with his comments, even if they were based on the Railroad style cylinders. Separation results in a main "open backed" cylinder portion (actually two together on the stretcher), and separate rear covers with inner faces that could easily be perfectly flat in any resin cast replicas. It should be no major challenge to produce just what's needed for the A1/1 complete with all of the right slots and holes, as a drop-on resin component. Lovely!

[S.A.C. Martin]

Wahey - I am good for something after all

That sounds excellent Graeme. Looking forward to seeing it all come together, fingers crossed for the curing!

[Atlantic 3279]

Two quick points before I dash off to work:

1. Further to the idea of extending the Bachmann A2 chassis to eight-coupled: Adding the extra coupled wheels at the front doesn't eliminate all need to saw and file the block of the chassis, as it is wider ahead of the existing leading set of coupled wheels. If anything you'll want it to be narrower behind a fourth set of wheels in order to allow maximum sideplay, although only as much as will still allow leading crankpins to clear backs of crossheads / con-rods. There probably isn't much cast metal to saw / file off, as the front of the chassis is a fairly thin flat structure, but I doubt you can dodge the problem entirely.

2. As soon as they were cured I tried out my "one-piece" moulds for the A1/1 castings last night. Not bad results for a first attempt - I don't normally find out all of the places where air bubbles like to lurk in the resin (or to somehow sneak back in) until I've used moulds two or three times, but with a little "applied anticipation" in this case I've produced a set of castings that are, in the main, capable of being used with just a little remedial work. If the two-piece mould is similarly satisfactory tonight, with luck I may have, save for the cylinders, the first "assembled proof" of an A1/1 using the resin parts in time for this weekend. I suspect that the pace of modelling activity will then have to slacken very considerably until the so called festivities are out of the way.

[Horsetan]

Two quick points before I dash off to work:

1. Further to the idea of extending the Bachmann A2 chassis to eight-coupled: Adding the extra coupled wheels at the front doesn't eliminate all need to saw and file the block of the chassis, as it is wider ahead of the existing leading set of coupled wheels. If anything you'll want it to be narrower behind a fourth set of wheels in order to allow maximum sideplay, although only as much as will still allow leading crankpins to clear backs of crossheads / con-rods. There probably isn't much cast metal to saw / file off, as the front of the chassis is a fairly thin flat structure, but I doubt you can dodge the problem entirely......

The other thing that occurs to me is that you must find a way of making sure that your additional "block" which carries the extra driving axle really is properly seated and secured as rigidly as you can make it - you don't want your extra pair of driving wheels moving fore-and-aft and causing the coupling rods to bind every so often.

[Atlantic 3279]

Absolutely vital.

[S.A.C. Martin]

That makes sense. I guess in that respect, it would be better to extend backwards then.

[Atlantic 3279]

Just befoe I dash off for the day, here are a few catch-up images, bringing things right up to date including the bits that had me cursing last night....

Firstly, those other A3 "super-detail" cylinders with a rear cover eased off. Note that there was some gluing and therefore slight damage on separation:

Here are the masters and moulds for the new extra parts for the A1/1, minus the cylinders so far:

First set of resin parts out of the moulds, quckly cleaned up and roughly painted (before I'd thoroughly trial fitted them - that was an obvious wrong way to do things, but I was cutting corners trying to reach the "presentable sample" stage by today):

The resin smokebox, now with lines of rivets around both ends. To my annoyance, I realised that those rivets are there in the photos, so I thought I'd better add them......

Thanks to excellent images kindly posted in another section of the forum a few weeks ago, I was also able to detail up the outer faces of the smoke deflectors:

[52D]

Your usual high standards are being kept. I think this is a wonderful creation.