10HP Baguley: Step 7 (and Inadvertently Step 8)

So in theory we are now getting very close to the end of the instructions. As you can tell though given the gap since the last post in this sequence, not only have I been very busy with work, but things didn't entirely go to plan. Anyway here is the text of step 7 from the instruction sheet.

Fix the bonnet into place – in order for the front of the bonnet to sit flush with the front buffer beam, some material may have to be removed from the back of the tank where it fixes against the cab and the locating ‘pips’ into the running plate at the front of the bonnet may also need adjustment. Once the adhesive has cured/solder cooled, file back the locating pegs flush. Fix the sandboxes into place.

The bonnet is a whitemetal casting and usually I find these really annoying as by the time I've bought a kit the moulds are old and the parts need a lot of cleaning up. Of course with this being a new kit this isn't the case and the quality of the castings is superb. Just look at the detail and how square and clean the edges are... and yes this is before I did anything to the casting.

I didn't have to do much to the casting at all. The only thing I found was that the locating pins were a little big for the holes in the etched parts, but this was easily solved by opening up the holes ever so slightly and then the bonnet just dropped in and fitted perfectly.

As with the whitemetal casting used as part of the cab floor I choose to superglue it into place rahter than risk damaging it by trying to solder it. As you can see I couldn't resist fitting the chassis to check how the whole model was looking.

The next step was to fir the sandboxes which are also nice whitemetal castings. As with the bonnet I just had to open up the holes in the etch ever so slightly for them to just drop right into place.

Unfortunately after gluing them to the footplate I spotted one small problem. They overhang the hole in the footplate which means that the chassis no longer fits. I can't see that I did anything wrong fitting these so I'm not quite sure how this happened.

Either way a little bit of careful filing and I'd reduced their depth enough for the chassis to fit back inside the body.

By making sure the chassis fits it turns out that I'd also inadvertently completed step 8 as well as that reads

Gently offer up the chassis into the body, there is limited clearance and this will be a touch fiddly making sure the motor leads do not get trapped by the running plate. It must be noted that the 'live' side frames will be in close proximity to the body which could potentially cause a short. However, painting the body to form a good insulation should eliminate the issue.

Given how tight a fit everything is I'm absolutely certain that the body will be shorting out the chassis at this point so I have not tried running it yet, and won't until it's painted to avoid doing any damage.

In theory the next step should be adding a little filler and cleaning up all the joints before painting. Oh if life were only that simple!

Mix and Match

As you may remember from a previous post, my son quite likes his Duplo and even uses it to build locomotives and carriages. What I don't think I've mentioned before is the large collection of wooden railway stuff he's also built up.

It all started when he was given this starter set as a present on his first birthday. There are quite a few different brands of wooden railway, most of which all use the same standards and so can be used together. That means the collection has expended rapidly with sets and pieces from Bigjigs, BRIO, John Lewis (although their range seems to have been discontinued), and a few of the wooden Thomas locomotives; after all we definitely needed a Toby the Tram engine!

As you can see with all these bits the layouts he can build (or he gets us to build) can get quite large and complex. One problem, that occurs more frequently that you might expect, is that you end up with an almost perfect layout but where you end up trying to join either two male or two female ends together. We do have some short pieces that do this, but because of the standard lengths of the track pieces often they won't fit. When you have two male ends to fit together there is no alternative to a piece of track with two female ends, but when you want to join two female ends there is another solution. You could just have a very short pin with two male ends without the need for it to actually have any track, and hence it will have no length when fitted but will hold the two track pieces together.

Given that it must be a fairly common problem for everyone rather than designing something myself I had a quick look on Thingiverse to see if anyone else had already done the hard work for me. It turned out they had so I just downloaded the model and printed a bunch out on my resin printer.

As you can see the connector pieces weren't the only thing I printed. While hunting for the connector I came across an even more interesting piece that allows you to use Duplo to lift up the track meaning we could build longer raised sections than before, which Toby thought was a brilliant idea.

Whilst I love being able to experiment with new models quickly on the resin printer it is exceptionally great for parts like this. I'm sure if they were available commercially they would cost a lot more than the cost of the resin I used. Plus rather than waiting for them to be delivered I'd printed all of those within about three hours of starting (I did two print runs as not all of that would fit in the printer in one go). They were all printed flat on the build plate as well so the only clean up was washing off the excess resin.

10HP Baguley: Step 6

Moving on to step 6 and we continue building up the cab area

Fix the cab floor to the white metal plinth making sure the planking detail is uppermost, carefully making sure the two parts are aligned properly as you may have issues getting into the cab a little later! Drill out the holes for the brake column and gearbox controls, the brake column is formed with a piece of 0.3mm wire and wheel, gearbox controls are formed from 2 lengths of 0.3mm. Now fix this sub assembly into place in the cab.

Gluing the two parts together was easy enough; there is no way I'm going to risk soldering white metal parts given the tools and skills I have. I then drilled out the holes (using a 0.4mm drill as I couldn't find my 0.3mm drill bits).

I did, however, solder the brake wheel to the 0.3mm diameter wire as I tend to find that soldering wheels to wire gives a much longer lasting join than using glue.

I trimmed the wire to length having test fitted the floor into the cab. I've deviated from the instructions (again) as I'm not permanently fitting the brake column or gearbox levers at this point as they'll by a nightmare to paint in situ.

Once I was happy that the floor fitted level inside the cab and that I could fit the brake column into the hole, I then glued the floor in place.

And with that done there are just two steps of the instructions left, excluding painting of course.

10HP Baguley: Step 5

Step 5 of the instructions is so short I almost didn't give it its own post but here it is...

Add the grab rails to the cab using 0.3mm wire, cutting them flush with the top. Trim back any protruding beading on the rear cab sheet.

As I said short and simple and it results in this...

And yes, before anyone mentions it, I do know I need to clean up the inside of the rear cab sheet. Not quite sure how it got covered in so much unused solder cream.

10HP Baguley: Step 4

Right, let's have a look at step 4 of the instructions which read:

Take the front cab and bend the sides to 90°, attach to the footplate. Add the front making sure it lines up perfectly with the hole, followed by the sides.

Having read the instructions I decided to pretty much ignore them and go my own way. I decided that I'd probably find it easier to build up the front cab wall before attaching it to the footplate. I started by laminating the front overlay on to the cab before bending the part to shape.

No clever tools this time, just a cocktail stick and a scrap of wood to hold the two parts in alignment while I soldered them together. A little bit of cleanup where solder had leaked from the edges and the part looked perfect.

With the front overlay in place I carefully bent one side to 90° and then soldered on the overlay, before repeating the process for the second side overlay.

As you can probably guess the main issue with adding the side overlays was how to hold the parts while soldering. Folding just one side and the part is easy enough to tape to a piece of wood. With both sides folded this is more complex, but using an old wooden clothes peg worked really well. A little more cleanup and it slotted easily in to the footplate and could then be soldered into place to finish this step of the build

It may need a little filler on the corners but in real life it's less of an issue than in the cruel close up photo. Either way I'm happy with that and it didn't involve accidentally unsoldering anything from steps 1 to 3.

10HP Baguley: Steps 2 and 3

Okay, so I know I said I'd do a post per step in the instructions, but firstly step 3 is very short, and secondly it appears I didn't take any photos of the finished step 2 so they are a bit muddled together. So without further ado here are the instructions for step 2:

Attach inner cab back to footplate with the half etch detail facing inwards, followed by outer cab back with the upper beading facing outwards, followed by the other buffer beam. Add 2 lengths of 0.5 brass angle @ 14mm to the half etch recesses, bend the upper cab beading to form part of the grab rails to 90°

Quite a bit more to do in this step than step 1, with quite a bit of laminating parts together to form the rear cab wall. The rear of the chassis has three small tabs which go into slots on the inner cab wall and while the parts fitted together perfectly I wasn't sure how best to hold them so they were at right angles (so the wall ends up vertical) while I soldered them together. In the end I settled on using a present I received last Christmas.

Yes, I was given a set of 1-2-3 blocks for Christmas and this was the first time I'd used them. Their weight meant they didn't move and nicely held the wall part in place, while I could also use them to ensure the two parts were at right angles to one another. Okay, so being metal they acted as a heat sink meaning I needed longer with the iron to make joint, but it worked perfectly, and no burnt fingers!

With the inner wall in place I then laminated on the outer wall and buffer beam, again using a coupling hook to help with the alignment. With the rear wall built up I thought it wise to check that the chassis still fitted before going any further.

It was more difficult to fit than before, so I've eased the half round holes I filed a little further, but other than that there were no issues at all. Now while I'm yet to finish step 2 of the instructions here is what step 3 says.

Form the buffer beam irons to shape, using the profile jig in the etch. Trim the excess material to length, in line with the half etch notches, fit these formed irons to both front and rear buffer beams, using the alignment marks.

After the hassle of trying to solder the brass angle to the chassis to form the valences I opted to superglue them in place this time. I also superglued the buffer beam irons as I didn't want to risk disturbing the buffer beam overlays.

The buffer beam irons were quite awkward to fit as I'd only just left enough room behind the Greenwich couplings. In retrospect if I was building the kit again I'd do things a little differently. I'd probably fill in the slot in the buffer beam, and then either solder a small upright section to the middle of the buffer beam iron, or maybe make a single piece version from brass sheet. In fact if I had any of my experimental etched couplings they might be a good starting point. I should point out this isn't a criticism of the kit, as the current version allows you to easily produce a prototypicalyl accurate model while having a slot for the couplings. It's just that the nice buffer beam irons get lost behind the coupling which seems a shame. I'm now in two minds as to whether or not to alter the model to remove the Greenwich couplings, any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

10HP Baguley: Step 1

For want of any other way of dividing up the build of this kit into separate posts I thought I'd go with a post per step of the instructions; so hopefully you can look forward to a further seven posts after this one and that's before I paint it.

Okay technically what I had to do first comes before even step 1 as the instructions for swapping the motor point out that you'll need to slightly file away part of the footplate etch to allow it to clear the longer motor and it's wires.

You can just about see that in the photo as I've filed two small half round notches in the footplate to help the wires pass through. You might also notice that I've added a small 3D printed piece to the front of the chassis (it's a light grey colour) so it becomes the right length.

Having done that I could move on to step 1 of the instructions for building the body.

Take the front footplate and fold the buffer beam to 90°. From the 0.5mm angle supplied cut 2 lengths @ 31.5mm and fix into the half etch recesses to form the valances of the running plate, file back any protruding material. Drill (gently) through the 4 holes for the grab irons in the brass angle with a 0.3mm bit. Attach buffer beam aligning with the coupling slot.

It all sounds simple enough and mostly it was. I choose to solder the kit together rather than using glue, and I did find attaching the valances to be really quite fiddly, as they kept twisting as I tried to solder them in place. I deviated from the instructions slightly as I choose to fit couplings at the same time as attaching the buffer beam overlay as that helped with the alignment. I'm not sure if the slot didn't etch fully (happens frequently with small holes) but I found I had to thin down the shank of a Greenwich coupling quite a bit before it would fit, but fit it eventually did.