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Soon I had put all the subassemblies together to see what it looked like and here are a couple of photos of the loosely assembled model, in front of my depot. These photos were taken after the modifications I have done and described below.
The first thing to do was to find my PDF's for Chapter 2, these were done 4 years ago, and I had mislaid them! Luckily they are still on the masterclass pages for download, the last ones of the set are what you need, and of course Dave Fletchers invaluable writing, that gowes with them. I mainly worked from that, and modified a few bits, as mine was a new chassis and slightly different to the one that was the prototype.
First some observations on my chassis - This is a very nicely engineered chassis and equally a complicated bogie tender truck. It has confirmed my thoughts ages ago, that it was worth buying an assembled unit. Yes it needs a lot of 'fettling' that is in part due I think to the fact that Barry does not have a ‘being assembled chassis’ for himself and all the body bits involved to verify it all - so we, the buyers, do it. That DOES NOT reduce my opinion of it I think it is good, provides a very good base for builders to work with. I am very shy of chassis building as you will gather: they worry me.
This one has caused (by the delay in making them, it was a case of hopin', hopin', that they will come – well they have started, mine is one of the first and I think it is a good one - this is a heck of a large loco when complete! I still want an even larger one - the 2 8 6 and I have had for ages had an order with Barry, that stays. My chassis came with the wheels from Rich Schiffmann - they look magnificent - thanks Rich! One, the center one is maybe a bit tight- its 1/2mm different but I believe it will be OK, that was found out when I was getting the spring units fitted. I saw Dave Fletcher’s laser cut chassis and it is superb, but I decided to stay for Barry’s and am happy with it, this decision was helped by my concerns over the tender truck.
Thank you Barry: it has taken a very long while due to some quite horrendous circumstances; I hope you can now set the production line going.
The tender deck fits between the two sections of the chassis; fit it in position drilling the holes for the 4 front fixing screws; I will add 2 more fixings at the rear - there are holes there that will do I think.
It is imperative that the rear deck is at a height from rail level to the top surface of the rear deck of 54mm. My chassis was well below that, and resulted in the modifications below.
First check with the drawing you are using for the position of the fixing bolt, for the tender truck and drill a new one if required. (different bunkers = different lengths! A new hole if required; to raise my deck I made the short fixing bolt in the top of the aluminium block (in the centre of the tender truck) a captive screw; ensure the hole you made is large enough for your screwdriver to fit through; then add 2 x 2mm thick pieces underneath; the upper one has a hole the diameter of the bolts panhead; the lower one has a hole the diameter if the bolts screwthread + a bit to allow it to turn. Glue the pieces together, and glue in position; NOT forgetting the bolt - when dry that bolt is now captive, and will be below the tender deck.
The very nice and weighty tender truck, has vertical slots for the axles, to allow it to sit correctly. Paint your truck now. The centre of it has a hole for a supplied short (too short it needs at least 1/8" adding really) bolt that fits into a tapped centre aluminium rod. This also accepts the captive screw in the other end. That make two loose ends -not good at all! I super glued the bottom bolt in allowing for a small amount if free play so the entire truck will pivot here. Undo from the top of the truck the 4 bolts that hole the centre piece into the inner cross beams, then you can get at the centre bolt and glue it; then put it back carefully moving the power feed wires out of the way. I appear to be a couple of bolts short in the fixings for the bottom of the cross beams; I don’t think that will matter. I am in the UK, so do not have access to American threads which are different to metric or BA systems, and the holes for the missing bolts are threaded.
To the underside of the tender deck I added a couple of packing pieces (2 x 2mm), and an extra cross piece from the drawing; then a 1mm thick ring (which came from an old telex paper tube), this will leave some space, and is thinner than the drawings, to allow for our non prototypical gradients etc! Half of the pivot casing is provided in the supplied truck, so it does not need much. The extra pieces can be seen in the photo -
All this will require the firebox rear frame unit to be reduced; first find it from where you 'put it away' to! Then make the firebox, fit into the centre of the rear aluminium beam. In addition I also cut a groove on the engineers side to allow the pickup wires through into the firebox for onward routing.
My work to raise the back of the tender, I made the ends of the centre frame (the black ones not the coloured outer ones) shorter than they were from the drawing; cut them off to suit, and check fit them.
I filled the space between Barry's frame and the inner edges of the tender plate from some scrap sheet, it needs slots cut out to fit in to the coloured braces; the black braces are cut short. Make sure the firebox seats down properly, but do NOT fit it till almost at the end - there is not much clearance, and the front bogie needs the space as it goes on backwards. I have added an internal plate for some lead sheet - way back this is I think also a location for a speaker.
Check the tender height (54mm don't forget), and then move onto the front chassis; the hole that the motor sits in needed some extra grinding out; it is not circular, it needs some extra space for the metal around the terminals; don’t forget that the front portion goes on the wrong way round so this extra is at the front- there is also an extra cutout is for clearance for the terminals also on the front.
Dave Fletcher moved on re the PVC clips - the bottom one is discarded - follow his instructions re the extra plates. The rear plate I fixed differently - the screws that Barry has used are shorter than those in the pictures. Mine fits across the 3.2mm square (as the plate in front of the motor), I added some extra (2 sets of 2 pieces) 3.2SHS glued into the gap between the plate and the top of the chassis to give it more stiffness. You will need a central cutout to allow the power wires through the back edge of this plate - see the photo.
This meant that the pieces that make the spacers between glide plate & chassis are different - work to a total height from the chassis of 19.2mm incl. the top of the glide plate. Then paint the glide plate except the top it is easier now. The top of the glide plate may be left without any paint; it will be very hard to see, though the motor casing will need to be painted as it is easily seen. Glue it up, and check the height - everything in position should have the tender deck level - if not go back and fix the wrong bit.
The top clip will still be used to keep the motor and chassis in the boiler eventually, I am nowhere near that yet!
The power feed wires are grouped together (black & white a pair on the chassis ,and another set on the tender truck; in addition there are a set of black wires that are off the small (approx 1/8" size) magnets on the rear of the flangeless center pair of driving wheels.
The wires are not fixed - they are spending thier time being taken on & off at the moment! A pair of crimp connectors are supplied for them in due course - these fit the terminals on the Pittman motor.
Preliminary work is still continuing, prior to working on the laser cut, stainless steel valve gear.
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