Lamp Brackets

With all the pipework now sorted I think I'm down to the last two details I need to finish before I can think about painting; lamp brackets and the smokebox door. The smokebox door will be covered in another post but today I've fabricated the lamp brackets and fitted the rear one.

The original cab moulding had empty lamp brackets at both the botom corners of the rear sheet, and a lamp in the middle just below the windows. I wasn't happy with any of these and so they were all removed quite early on. Having looked at old photos I've settled on a single lamp bracket on the rear of the cab, and as you can see have used a whitemetal casting for the lamp itself (this is actually a 3mm scale casting from 3mm Scale Model Railways). Of course the loco would usualy only carry a single lamp positioned at the front or rear depending on which way it was travelling, so I've made the lamp removable so in theory it can move between the rear and front lamp brackets.

Here you can see the fitted bracket, along with the lamp (modified with a locating loop), and the tool I made to form the brackets. The tool is simply a piece of brass with a slot in it, but it allows you to easily bend a strip of brass for the brackets. Not much to show I know but I think it's a nice feature. I might find I glue the lamp on because it's more hassle than it's worth but for now having the ability to remove it should be a nice touch.

Whistle While You Work

Unfortunately there hasn't been much time for modelling over the last couple of weeks, but yesterday I decided to find a few minutes to produce another of the small detailing parts for the Skarloey conversion, specifically the whistle. On the prototype the whistle is mounted on top of the dome, but the plastic moulding on the model is very coarse so I decided to replace it with something knocked up from styrene strip, phosphor bronze strip and a turned brass whistle (I already had this in stock, a purchase from 3mm Scale Model Railways when I fitted one to the Quarry Hunslet, so didn't feel the need to turn my own)

There isn't really anything complex or interesting in the modelling here, apart from the way I shaped the styrene strip to be a tight fit into the hole in the casting. I used some 0.8m by 1.5mm strip which is just a little too big in both dimensions for the slot in the casting. Instead of trying to file it down, I simply flooded the hole in the casting with plastic weld, and then gently pushed the strip against the top of the hole. The plastic weld essentially melts the styrene and so I was able to gently work it deeper and deeper into the hole adding a bit more solvent with a brush as needed. Once it was all the way in I left it alone so the plastic would harden then gently pulled it out and trimmed off the flash that had formed. After that it was just a case of fitting the bit of strip metal trimming everything to size and drilling a hole for the whistle to fit.

In the photo all the parts are simply resting in place, which explains the gap between the cab and the casting, this will disappear when everything is properly screwed together. I think the only thing remaining now is to decide if I need any pipework around the dome, otherwise I might be able to move on to painting.

Quarry Hunslet: Whistle While We Work

As I mentioned in a previous post the loco is essentially built apart from adding a few detailing parts. Last time I said this there were three parts left from the kit as well as some extras I wanted to add. There is now only the reversing lever left to add from the kit which I can't add until the cab is fixed in place. I've added the steps but they weren't really interesting enough to warrant a post of their own.

Just as no steam locomotive would be complete without a proper smoke box door it also wouldn't be complete without a steam whistle, yet the kit doesn't include one. This might be because on all but one photo of Dorothea I can find I can't see a whistle. The only hint of a whistle is in a photo on page 126 of Quarry Hunslets of North Wales by Cliff Thomas (Thanks to Paul for recommending this book). This seems to suggest that the whistle is somewhere towards the rear of the left side cab wall, or possibly sticking through the roof. As I've mentioned before I'm not intending to have an exact replica of Dorothea so not knowing where her whistle was isn't the end of the world. What I've done is look at photos of a number of similar locomotives and here we can see that usually the whistle is mounted on the front of the cab between the two windows, with the steam pipe feeding through the wall into the cab. The main problem I had was working out where to find a suitably sized whistle.

If you remember I discovered, after almost ruining the smokebox door, that detailing parts designed for 4mm scale are usually meant for use on full sized locomotives and not the smaller narrow gauge ones. Fortunately in the comments to that post Paul made a genius suggestion; use parts designed for 3mm scale modelling instead. I thought this ideas was brilliant as all the parts will be essentially 3/4 of the size of the equivalent 4mm scale part and much closer to the size needed for narrow gauge modelling.

A quick internet search led me to the website of 3mm Scale Model Railways who appear to sell almost anything the discerning 3mm scale modeller would need including a varied selection of locomotive detailing parts. Looking down the list we quickly come to part L159 "Loco Whistles, Turned Brass x 2". When the parts arrived yesterday quickly holding one up against the loco and they seemed the perfect size so I set about attaching one to the cab.

As you can see I fabricated a small right angled bracket to hold the whistle in place, which seems to be fairly prototypical. This was made using a piece of the waste from the sheet of etched brass parts. There wasn't much in the way of fancy measuring, and in fact it was filed down a little after folding to better fit. I bent the stem of the whistle by clamping the very end in the hold and fold to get a nice 90 degree bend. I then glued the bracket in place on the cab wall and left the glue to full set. The whistle can then be easily slid into the hole. Currently the whistle isn't glued in place (it's actually being stored in the box with the rest of the kit parts) as I'm only going to finally fit it after painting; given it should be brass it seems silly to paint it rather than leave it as it is.