Holiday in the workshop

Before the current batch of Wrens can be built, the parts have to be gathered in, the castings and the etchings. Whilst waiting for my suppliers, I have been busy doing a little model-making for myself and making new masters for a Wren part.

Wrightscale 16mm Wren with the original version cylinders fitted

This task was to make masters for the Wren cylinders. Since 1988, Wrightscale Wrens and Tattoos have been fitted with models of cylinders that were similar to those fitted to the early versions of both classes ie the locomotives with inside Stephensons valve gear. See previous blog. Finally, the Hackworth valve geared locomotives will have the correct cylinders.

The new masters with the valve centre line off-set outboard of the cylinder centre line. Kerr Stuart Wren and Tattoo in 16mm scale. Wrightscale

The defect was really only noticeable on the Corris No 4 loco model in that the valve chest was too close to the smoke box. Another advantage is that the valve drive rod will no longer require a 'set' in it since all is now in line.
 I have had a month or so in the workshop to pursue my own interests.  Returning north, recently, we stopped to visit an old friend. He very sensibly has decided to thin out his large collection of 16mm scale steam engines.
There is one in particular that he has owned for many years that had long taken my fancy. This 4-6-0 tender locomotive was constructed in 1909 by Kerr, Stuart in Stoke-on-Trent for the Gwalior Light Railway - no 16. Maharaja Madhav Roa II decided that the development of his province was hindered by the lack of good transport. Being an Anglophile he had followed with interest the development of the rail system in India and so naturally he chose British engineers and the Kerr, Stuart Co in particular to supply him with a system. At its peak, the system had well over 300 km track. To make construction cheap and speedy, it followed the trend of the 1890s for such railways to be built to narrow gauge. The gauge chosen was 2' but the length of the railway demanded large tender locomotives. The construction, therefore of the line plus all the rolling stock must have been an interesting challenge for the Kerr, Stuart designers. Their solution, in GLR no 16, is a very elegant and purposeful-looking engine.

Kerr Stuart Gwalior Light Railway 4-6-0 No 16 Copyright J. Hawkesworth

The model of the locomotive was built by Cyril Clarke and Peter Brookbank, in the late 1980s. They always built two locomotives at a time, (one each) and sometimes three. They were unusual models for the time, being good scale models with quite a high level of detail. Some years ago, Mr Clarke decided to give up his garden railway and sell his models off. My friend purchased no 16.
The model is largely as built. Both my friend and I suspect that at some point it had full working valve gear and an axle-driven water pump. Some day I might replace these but it works well, has a very large gas tank under the cab floor and the boiler is refillable using an Enots coupling. The tender is used to house R/C with one server on the locomotive operating the regulator. The large sandbox houses a very effective mechanical lubricator.

GLR no 16 built by Cyril Clarke and Peter Brookbank 16mm scale

Once the model was in the workshop, I decided to tidy it up a bit, repainting the cab roof which slides on and off and repairing some of the worst of the chips and scratches in the paintwork.
 I decided next to build a train for it to pull and ordered kits for some Darjeeling 6-wheel passenger stock from IP Engineering. I have never built a laser-cut kit before. What a revelation! Everything fitted perfectly. With the aid of set-squares and heavy weights and a bottle of super-glue, they went together really well.

Starting the build, checking everything is square

I don't know whether these coaches actually existed on the DHR since there seems to be little if any photographic evidence, as IP admit in their excellent instructions. Certainly the DHR had  Cleminson  coaches for a very short time.

Adding the prepainted overlays

Due to the designer's error, the prototype coaches spent most of the time derailed. Although the Cleminson system did steer the axles through a curve, because the centre axle could not move from side to side, and 's' shaped bend of sharp radius, all too common on the DHR, would cause one end of the coach to be turning the centre axle left while the axle at the far end of the coach would try to turn it right. The models do not suffer from this defect since the centre axle has the necessary side-to-side movement.
In my opinion, the only problem in building these laser cut kits is to achieve a high quality surface finish on the plywood from which they are cut.

The finished 16mm DHR coach before footboards and kick-plates below the doors

I read what is available on the web about how to do this but in the end, went my own way. I gave the sheets of ply several coats of grey Halfords primer, rubbing down between coats with a proper sanding block. After three coats, and rubbing down with increasingly fine grit, the ply sheets looked quite good. The inside of the coach was going to be varnished wood. This has all been stained and Halfords clear lacquer was used to seal the grain and allow the wood surface to be brought to a high finish. The parts were then taken from the sheets and assembled. The detail overlay parts were left on the sheet until they had been completely finished. The last was to glaze the coaches.

The rather attractive luggage, guard?? 3rd class coach. I haven't built this to the instructions.

It is so much simpler with these kits since the glazing accurately fits into the window apertures and is retained with canopy glue, piped into the aperture using a syringe with a fine needle. The roofs, made from ply rather than the material supplied, were applied to the bodies using rapid epoxy and an IP-supplied roof-fitting jig. To finish the coaches, I made a simple bending jig and set up the lathe to produce (96!) small thick rounded edge washers. Using another jig, these were assembled on to the hand-rails to give reasonably detailed grab-rails and door pulls. (The doors in these coaches probably slid to save space in the small compartments.) I also fitted contiunuous foot-steps to the coaches since they seemed a bit odd without. Waste laser-cut from the windows provided a simple representation of the under-step supports.

The almost finished 16mm DHR-style train for the GLR loco to pull

Encouraged by the coaches, a van kit was built. On  this, the engraved padlock and hasp were replaced by working metal details. (IP say that their 6-wheel stock works best if the end vehicle is pulling a four-wheel wagon.)
Back to the engine. Encouraged by the look of the train, I decided over Christmas to give the locomotive  a voice! Accordingly, on day one, a whistle was produced which provided some interesting machining challenges, but, produced a nice clear very shrill note on compressed air. Then, after some thought, a lever-operated whistle valve was made. Then finally, there had to be a dummy whistle that would release a plume of steam when the real below-the-footplate whistle squealed.

The dummy working whistle installed. The working whistle is under this footplate and is 70mm long.

The whole shebang had to be worked by a new micro-servo. It all looked so simple on paper! In fact it took five days and about 30 hours to make and fit. If anybody wants to follow suit, I have since discovered that for the very reasonable sum of £90,  DJB Engineering produces all the bits ready to mount on your loco. (A nice chime-whistle on its own - without control valves and piping - 70mm long and 17mm in diameter with ME pipe fittings can be purchased from ebay for £21, delivered.) So, when this arrives, if it is any good, I'll fit that to another one of my engines.