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.