Derek

Many thanks. Really appreciate your support and comments

Alan

Much appreciate. Keeps the enthusiasm live knowing that it is of interest - many thanks

Al

Mant thanks for looking in.

They are quite delicate parts that would love to fall or break off at any moment

SUNDAY 16th April – The Adler Locomotive Build & Tender

A very good afternoon to everyone. I hope that everyone has had a good week whatever you may have been up to.

As in previous weeks I thought I would start this week’s update by way of a little “On this Day” entry.

On This Day 16th April

1912 American Harriet Quimby became the first woman to fly an airplane across the English Channel. She took off from Dover, on route to Calais, France and made the flight in 59 minutes, landing about 25 miles from Calais, on a beach. Although Quimby died at the age of thirty-seven (in an airplane accident), she had a major influence upon the role of women in aviation.

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This week’s build has concentrated on the whole with further additions to the tender. It’s quite an involved part of the overall build.

PICTURES 1 & 2

Here we make up the tender wheel units.

With these parts removed we have now used all of the laser cut components from the 2 wood frets that we started with.

The axles that will be used on these 2 units will be made from the wood dowel supplied in the kit which differs from the turned brass axles we get for the engine itself.

This may have something to do with the fact you can motorise this model and if so the motor unit fits under the tender in place of these two axle supports that we are making at present.

PICTURE 3

Now that the tender has seen all of the various component parts fitted in place it’s time to put down a layer of primer ready for another layer of red paint

PICTURE 4

The deck of the tender has 2 anti-skid plates applied on the left and right with the centre section that will hold the “coal” being planked over.

PICTURE 5

“PROCEED WITH CARE”

Here we can see one of the pre-cut sections that will form one of the anti-skid plates. Again we find fit problems here with the part having been cut smaller than required causing a gap on one side as well as the front.

PICTURES 6 & 7

To resolve this issue, I have taken some scrap 0.5mm thick strip and glued this along one long edge and the front of each piece.

Makes little difference what it looks like at this stage as it will be trimmed later. It’s easier to do it with the wood oversize at this stage as it makes the gluing and handling easier to manage.

PICTURE 8

Once trimmed and rubbed down we end up with an almost perfect fit into the required location on the tender top.

PICTURE 9

We can then start to plank the exposed surface of the tender.

I think I mentioned in an earlier post that my kit was short on the required wood for this section so again I had to resort to raiding the scraps box for some offcuts that could be used here.

For the first time ever in any build I have done I used the soft pencil technique along the edges of the planks to give the impression of plank separation.

Must admit to being quite pleased with how it looks.

PICTURE 10

Once the area is planked and the glue allowed to dry properly I gave the planks a light rub over with some fine sand paper then used a matt varnish to seal the surface. Using a clear varnish does not alter the plank greatly but in this picture you can see the difference between the varnished and un-varnished area.

PICTURE 11

We now need to get the kit supplied mesh onto these 2 tread plates. As with the footplate on the engine I can say that glue is not an option as it fills the little spaces in the mesh.

So as before I have used some very strong double sided tape.

PICTURE 12

Having put the 2 wood pieces onto the tape I gave them a quick run over with a hard rubber roller just to ensure that the tape is fully affixed to the wood parts.

PICTURE 13

A nice sharp knife blade is then needed to trim away the excess tape from these 2 parts.

PICTURE 14

We then line up the plastic mess trying to keep some symmetry and press this into place on the tape. Again a quick run over with a roller or other heave object will ensure its properly held in place on the tape surface.

PICTURE 15

And the final part of the build for this evening was to give both parts a quick spray pf primer ready for the black top coat once the primer is properly dry.

Andy

Many thanks.

Getting there with it and despite some slight issues its not too bad a kit at all.

Alan

very much appreciated

Really nice progress Tony, I'm enjoying following your build

Also a very well presented build diary

Great update Tony i do like how you explain everything so clearly in your text really does make it easy to follow and how you work out and solve things that are wrong with the kit etc brilliant regards Phil

It a great build, and you're overcoming all the problems as they crop up, doing a top notch job as well i might add.

SUNDAY 23rd April – The Adler Locomotive Build & Tender

HAPPY ST GEORGE’S DAY - The National Day of England and the Feast Day of St. George

A very good afternoon to everyone. I hope that everyone has had a good week whatever you may have been up to.

As in previous weeks I thought I would start this week’s update by way of a little “On this Day” entry.

On This Day 23rd April

1348 The founding of the Order of the Garter by King Edward III. It is the highest order of chivalry, or knighthood, existing in England. The order is dedicated to the image and arms of St. George as England's patron saint. Membership to the order is limited to the Sovereign, the Prince of Wales, and no more than twenty-four 'members, or companions.'

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This week’s build has concentrated with further additions to the tender. It’s quite an involved part of the overall build.

PICTURE 1

The lower part of the tender has now received its coat of Red paint.

Humbrol no 19 - Gloss Red is the choice here. To put a little more detail into this area I have again used a Sharpie Marker to touch in a few rivet heads.

PICTURE 2

As we are nearing completion of the tender it’s time to make up the wheels for this unit. This consists of another 8 wheel halves that require the infills between the spokes to be very carefully removed and any rough edges to be tidied up with a small file.

“PROCEED WITH CARE”

These wheels are much smaller than on the loco itself and some of the spokes show minor damage as indicated by the arrow. When gluing these parts together the damaged section will be put to the rear so as to disguise this area as much as is possible.

PICTURES 3 & 4

Having glued the wheel halves together we are then told to glue in place the remaining 4 washers in the kit to give the impression of a wheel hub.

For the metal to wood joint I have again used Evostick Timebond.

PICTURE 5

Here we can see the wheels after two coats of red paint. The wheel rims at this stage have not been fitted in place but I have added these just so you can see what the finished result will look like.

PICTURE 6

Having planked the tender deck area last week, we can now add the 2 anti-skid surfaces that again were made up last week.
Also in this picture you can see at the front of the tender the two brackets that form the tender to Loco coupling.

PICTURE 7

One of the areas that has really filled me with trepidation is the banding strips that have to be fitted to the tender sides.
The instructions would have you use the small brass strips that are included in the kit but I resisted using these parts for the following reasons:

1. The brass strips are not very long and as a result this will mean a large number of end to end joints to perfectly correct.
2. The brass strips have very rough ends which are not flat. A fair amount of work would be required to flatten the ends
3. There are some awkward areas to fold the brass around so on that basis I decided to make my own, longer strips from plastic card.

PICTURE 8

Having cut the strips to a width of 3mm I put 3mm double sided take in the backs and then painted the strips black.

PICTURES 9, 10, 11 & 12

Using the longer strips ensured less joints to have to worry about and once in place they look fairly good.

PICTURE 13

Still a number of cast parts to be added to the tender. This picture showing a selection of the parts that will be added.
Overall the cast parts are quite well made with just minor seams that need to be cleaned up.

PICTURE 14

Being cast parts its best to prime them first before top coating. In this picture we can see the coupling that fits the rear of the tender.

PICTURE 15

Some of the fittings are designed to be moveable and use brass rod as the fixing pins.

It’s important to look at the instructions to find out what size rod and what dimensions to use.

For the link pin required to fit the rear coupling the instructions show 1.5mm dia brass rod is required cut to 20mm long.

PICTURE 16

Within the instructions we get a template showing each of the brass rod shapes that you need to make.

PICTURE 17

“PROCEED WITH CARE”

And here we have one of those “I could kick myself moments”. The location for the link pin that holds the rear coupling is pre-drilled in the kit components.

Unfortunately, when they pre-drilled this area they did not centre the hole and having fitted the rear coupling you can see its placed too far to the right rather than being centred.

It’s not an easy one to rectify. We could fill the existing holes but a new hole would have to be drilled right next to the filled one and that in itself could cause more problems than it solves.

This coupling does flex left and right so when the carriages are in place (a future part of my build) it should all be ok.

PICTURE 18

Here we have the rear buffer castings. Unlike the ones supplied for the front of the loco they do not have any cast in locating pins.

Now these parts are quite heavy and my feelings are that if glued directly to the tender we will reach a stage that they end up falling off.

PICTURES 19 & 20

Here I am using a centring gauge to mark up the centres of the buffers so that they can be drilled ready to have a length of rod inserted before finally being glued in place. The rod will act as additional support for the parts.

PICTURES 21 & 22

We need to drill the tender to accept the rod pegs. To ensure we get these spot on I have loose fitted into the hole drilled in the buffer the end of a drawing pin.

We can then press the buffer into place leaving a nice little mark in the tender that we can then use as the centre mark to drill ensuring that when the buffer is finally glued in place it will be perfectly aligned.

PICTURE 23

The final part of this week’s build update moves us onto the 3 covers that will be fitted to the tender top. The parts supplied with the kit I am using are at the top of this picture and as you can see each part has 2 holes pre-drilled to accept a brass handle you have to make.

With the parts supplied in this kit the holes were drilled incorrectly and pierce the edge of the panel.

Luckily I still have parts from the original version of this kit so I was able to exchange the parts from the old kit parts.

These are shown in the lower part of the picture and as you can see these have been correctly pre-drilled at the factory so its these 3 parts I will work on next.

Well that’s it for this week.

I hope that you all have a pleasant week whatever you might be doing and I am sure we will all catch up again very soon.