Dan Vadas

There's only 1840 rivets in these two assemblies. There are a LOT more in the boilers, cab, coal bunker etc  . Around 4,000 in the whole loco.
 
Thanks for the insights Cap'n Mac and Ken  .
 
I've discovered a new way to roll long pipes. I usually use a long piece of tubing to do the whole pipe in one go, but the tubing I have isn't the right inside diameter (missed out by about 0.3mm  ). So I cut a short piece of the slightly undersize brass tube, cut a slot in it lengthwise to open it up and cleaned it up with a fine diamond-coated file. Then I used a long piece of tubing to support the inside and used the outer one like a clamp to squeeze the card tube together while I glued about 15mm in one go. Once it dried sufficiently I slid the tubing along and repeated the process - it took about 10 minutes to do a 100mm pipe and it turned out perfectly  :


The ends of some pipes had bends in them :


Also flanges :

The water piping down the left side of the loco - the right side doesn't have any, instead there is a "balance pipe" between the two tanks that keep the left side one full :

I'm guessing this is the water pump ? It needs a little re-aligning which I can do when all the glue has dried :


Danny

There was a mistake with the kit much earlier in the build, which means that the cab/boiler/bunker won't go on properly. The section below is 1.5mm too deep (I cut it right  ) so I had to remove it using a combination of scalpel and Isocol and fixed the problem :


It took me a couple of days to fit the sand pipes, all 24 of them. I still need to do the very bottoms of them, which I'll do a bit later in the build :

I made up some brackets to anchor the pipes above the wheels and keep them in position :

A couple more views of the pipes :


The last major sub-assemblies are the two water tanks alongside the boilers. Here's one of them during assembly of the framework :

After skinning the water tanks there came the job of gluing on the rivets - all 1,840 of them. I've had problems with the rivets coming off on the cab and coal bunker due to the clear coat on the kit, but I think I found the solution after a bit of experimenting. Isopropyl Alcohol removes the clear coat without harming the printed finish  :



Some lifting lugs. I'm going to re-do the four I did earlier on the coal bunker to match these as the others look too thin (0.3mm as compared to 0.5mm wire and a different shade of red as well) :


One of the tanks sitting in place. More work needs doing to it before I can do the final fitting :



Danny

The roof is lined on the inside as well. I pre-formed it before gluing it on. There are 8 air vents in the top section :




The coal bunker has now been fitted to the cab, and the cab roof as well. It sounds easy when you say it quickly  :


 

Next job will be to fit the entire boiler/cab/coal bunker unit to the chassis.
 
Danny

Thanks for the comments guys, and also to all those who "Liked" my posts  .
 
I've done all the cab detailing that I'm going to do. A few of these parts will be a bit difficult to see when the cab is completed, but the pics are proof that they are in there  .
 
This triple valve is made from brass tubing and styrene rod. The handwheels are laser-cut paper :





Two scratchbuilt switch panels :


Now I could fit the sides. The fit was perfect  :



Some final pics of the cab interior before things get harder to see :

 



Danny

The coal bunker has also been made. I'll fit this to the cab after I've done a bit more detailing to the controls :




The ladders and lights :




The completed coal bunker :



Danny

More plumbing fitted :


I've also fitted the cab to the boilers and added a temporary support under the front of the boiler while work continues :



Danny
 

No, I won't be ripping anything out  . I have used those pics and the website they came from to enhance my model a bit, so thanks for posting them  . I'm leaving the lubrication pipes where they are as they don't interfere with anything else. I won't be going to the extent that the other guy did - he's used some 3D printed fittings which I can't get for a few weeks (but I ordered some). Most of the difference with our models is that he's painted his, which I won't be doing.
 
I've made the two sides of the cab. Here's my procedure for glazing the windows :






And the completed sides :



Danny

All good now, I fixed it. Just a slip of the pen originally  .
 
"what did they supply for the plumbing.........your use of the metal rod is a better alternative"
They don't supply anything for plumbing, but metal rod or wire is specified in the instructions. Most of these have a diagram you can follow, plus the size of wire.
 
Thanks everyone else for the comments. This is a most enjoyable model to build from a good publisher. The kit has a few small problems, but which kit doesn't? Nothing I haven't been able to work around.
 
Danny

I've just spent about 4 hours cutting and fitting four windows. I've sandwiched some 0.25mm clear acrylic between the outer frame and the wall by cutting the hole in the lamination piece 0.5mm larger than the skin piece. They turned out perfect :




Danny

Thanks Caroline  .
 
Now I could fit the two forward sections of the boilers together. The join is behind one of the black "real" joining strips. They lined up perfectly  :



The next step will be the start of the cabin.
 
Danny

Thanks for dropping in again guys  .
 
"It might be possible with a bit of trickery to make the model work on air."
Michael, none of my models are "powered" by anything more than my hand or fingers. I'm not about to start now   . Electric (battery) power would be the only option I would consider, but I'm way past the stage of installing anything like that.
 
The sandboxes and safety valves on top of the boilers. These have domed tops which came out well thanks in part to the preparation work I did. The rounded part of the extra card infill was first cut almost to shape with a scalpel (right) before final sanding with a sanding stick (left) :

At a quick glance the ends of the tabs on the skins looked straight - they weren't  :

The boxes fitted to the two boiler sections :


This next piece - the compressor - took me two full days to make. There are 28 separate sections in the fins alone :

A jig made alignment a little easier :

The glued fin section before any final finishing :

Some of the fins were very slightly larger or smaller than others (I'm talking 0.2mm at worst) but the differences were noticeable so I cut and filed them all to the same size :

It still needed a bit of cleaning up with a tapered piece of wood :


The finished compressor :



The start of thousands of 0.8mm rivets :

 
Danny

Hopefully I can remember how to take one on my old camera - it's been about 10 years since I last did  .
 
The firebox. There were laser-cut support frames for this and the boilers. I added some extra 10mm wide strips that just touch inside the sides to prevent any crushing, and also to stabilise the whole unit :


The cabin end has a rolled edge. I filled in the rounded part to give me something to work to :

Filling in that edge really helped a lot to make a nice even roll without any "wobbles". The lighting makes it look a bit uneven in the pics - in reality it's turned out close to perfect  . I glued each tab one at a time to give me time to push it into place properly :

The slots between four of the tabs wasn't drawn correctly, and I finished up with gaps in them when I glued it up. I filled the gaps with some scrap paper. They are nearly impossible to pick with the naked eye :



The skin was a beautiful fit, no adjustment necessary :


The ash box was a rather fiddly thing to glue up, but I'm more than happy with the result :

I glued some tapered card around the inside of the edges to stop any bowing while gluing the ash box to the fire box :

The result was pretty good  :

Danny

Getting the crank mechanisms to actually work took some thought, as the kit makes no provision for this - it's simply all glued together.
 
I made every joint moveable (too many actually - the valve control mechanism is separate from the drive cranks and didn't really need doing) by punching and pinning every one. Most joints are held together with paper "nuts" which are the only parts of the joints that are glued. Here is the slide for the upper shaft which also needs to pivot :



Some close-ups of all the right-hand side crank mechanisms :




With everything now in place the crank movement has really improved. It will get close to perfect once the drive wheels actually touch down - at the moment they are in mid-air as they don't have a flange like the other wheels.
 
I've started making the boilers. More progress updates will follow as I have something to show.
 
Cheers, Danny

Welcome to my build Gary. Paper modelling has it's own challenges, the solutions to some of which I've been fortunate to pick up from other MSW members and others from European Paper modellers. The medium is huge over there, probably as big as wood or plastic modelling  .
 
In the words of Bachmann Turner Overdrive - "You ain't seen nuthin' yet"  .
 
The crank pins are dealt with in similar fashion to the axles, using 2.0mm brass tubing and 1.6mm styrene rod which I heated with a small soldering iron to mushroom the end. It was then cleaned up and filed as flat as possible with a diamond-coated needle file :



Once the axles were all installed I made some "hubcaps" from scrap paper. In my opinion they look better than the bare axle, which is actually the "correct" way on the original :

The crank pins are also covered, I punched out some 0.5mm paper and glued them to the back of the printed parts to give them enough clearance :

Danny
 
 

Thank you all for the Likes and comments. These are one thing that is keeping me going with this build - another is that I'm thoroughly enjoying it  .
 
The two compressed air tanks. The ends are slightly domed. I cut some scrap paper roughly to shape to prevent any crushing later. The skin is only glued along it's edge :



I've fitted all the main wheels and finished the brake mechanism for them. The brake shoes needed a little sanding to bed them in properly :



To hold the wheels into the tube axles I mushroomed the ends of some tight fitting styrene rod with a small soldering iron and filed them as flat as possible :


The drive axle needs to be a solid fit as the two wheels have to turn in synchronisation. The crank pins are offset by 90 degrees from each other so that one wheel is vertical while the other is horizontal. This keeps the drive going without any stopping. To make sure they don't slip on the axle I made a keyway for each and also used CA glue to hold them to the axle :


Danny

Ken - fire up a paper model ????? I don't think that will end well  .
 
I'm going backwards in the following posts to show some of the construction involved in the earlier post of my progress.
 
Quite a bit of work in building the two steam cylinders. I had a few re-does with these, as I didn't understand the basic principles of how they actually worked. Thanks to a couple of other build logs, Stephan and Lothar on German Paper Modelling sites, I eventually got them together the right way up and also WORKING  . In these next pics I've cut apart one of my early failures. I actually managed to save every part and rebuilt the little section :

The shaft should have gone right through the piece. I had added a paper roll to glue the legs to - wrong :

Sometimes a single-edged razor blade works better than a scalpel for cutting parts off as it's about half the thickness :


Some of the parts for the end plates etc :

How I keep multiple pieces aligned on an otherwise difficult part :


These two little pieces were very difficult to roll due to the cutouts in the middle. They turned out quite well  :


Some finished sub-sections :


Lots of laser-cut bolt heads and how I cut them off the sheet :

These name plaques turned out really well. They are laser-engraved, the gold colour was applied with a Pitt Pen :

The finished cylinders. I'll put the name plaques on near the end of the build :

Danny

I'll post an answer to that in my next one later today Phil, I'm in a bit of a hurry at the moment and wanted to show an update on my loco.
 
Here's where I'm up to at the moment, details of how I got there will follow a bit later :





Danny

I've fitted the axles to the frame. At this stage they are all a tight fit except the Driving wheel one which can turn freely. The wheels will be glued to this axle so that both sides will turn together, and the others will freewheel on the axles - at least that's the plan so far, we'll see how things work out :
I've also fitted the crank pins to the wheels and filed out the centres with a small diamond-coated round file. These things work really well on paper :

I'm leaving the wheels aside for the time being - I've ordered some 2.5mm styrene rod which I'll use to "rivet" the wheels to the axles. Meanwhile I fitted all the brake suspension using the springs I made earlier. I had a drama with the swing-arm brackets, the clear coating on all of them let go when I started working on them so they needed a re-do which consisted of scraping off the coating and re-gluing them - much better :


The springs and swing-arms fitted :





Finally for this stage I made up the two main cranks :




Danny

Now I fitted the crank pins to all the larger wheels. I've glued them in with PVA, so I cut a groove in the pin with a Xacto knife. This stops the brass pin from slipping :


I fitted the six axles. They are all a nice tight "push-in" fit and shouldn't move again. However I filed out the hole for the Driving wheel axle so it COULD turn - once the cranks are installed both sides will then turn in unison :

Now it's on to the main brakes, quite a big job. Here are the parts for one of the 12 brake shoes. I've glued the inner pads on, but I may have to remove them again later (easily done with a single-edge razor blade) if there isn't enough clearance to the wheel flange. I had to do this on the bogie's brakes, and Stephan also found out that it was necessary on his model. We'll see :

I used a 1mm wire to keep everything aligned while gluing the pieces together :

All done. The contact surfaces will be cleaned up as I fit each assembly, they will need to be sanded to get clearance to the wheel rim :

On to the brake control arms. All the parts are prepared ready for fitting together :



Once again a simple jig made accurate assembly easier :
 

 


That's it for now. I'll move on to fitting the brake assemblies to the main frame next.
 
Cheers, Danny

Hi all, thanks to all those who have commented and "liked" my build so far. My eyesight has been deteriorating lately, hopefully it's just a result of the chemotherapy I've been on and it will return to "normal" after it's over. I can still see well enough with my 8x Optivisor so the build can continue.
 
The wheels. These took me a week to make. Some time ago I bought one of these Circle Cutters, but never had any success with it at the time I tried it. I decided to give it another go and see if I could work out how to actually use it, because there are a LOT of circles to cut - something like 8 or 10 for each of the 12 wheels 

I worked out the technique to make not only a success of it but to cut circles that were better than I could do by hand in MUCH less time. I'll put up a topic in "Tips and Tricks" a bit later to explain my method. Here's the result, and a pic of most of the parts needed :


To assemble a wheel I made this simple jig. It's probably THE most useful jig I've ever made, turning out excellent results consistently :


There are three different types of the main wheels - two Driving wheels (top), two middle wheels without flanges (left) and 8 of the rest (right) :

I'm using the laser cut reinforcements as you can see. These are a bit different to the two wheels I made earlier, so I decided to scrap them and start over. The rim is 1mm narrower than the centre, and the spokes need to be sloped for them to fit properly. I achieved this by carefully cutting the rim off one disc and shaving the spokes down to zero thickness at the outer end. The wheel in the pic is one of the smaller ones which I made last. The large wheels have 12 spokes on most of them :




Once all the discs were glued together I sanded the edge flat using a sanding stick with 150 grit paper :

Then I glued the main edging on, followed by the rear flange on those that had one. There was no edging for the thinner flange, so I printed up some matching grey colour, cut it into 1.5mm strips and glued them on. It looks better than just painting them :


All the large wheels completed :


I modified my jig for the smaller wheels, as they only had a centre hole :

Last job was to clean up the centre hole so that they turned freely on the axles. I used a small diamond coated round file :

All the wheels. Most of them still need a spacer and wire for the crank :

Danny

I've glued up the complete main frames. Very little trimming or adjusting was necessary, and I'm more than happy with the results. Especially considering all the dramas I had to get to this point  .
 
Now to make 16 more wheels, see you all again in a week or so  :





Danny

The laser-cut parts arrived just after I put up the previous post, so after sorting and filing the 10 sheets into my A3 folder I  took a look at them. The laser cutting is about the best I've seen so far - the edges on even the 1mm thick card pieces are perfectly square and the cut itself is VERY fine. All but the larger pieces needed no little "tags" to hold them in the sheets, so that saves a lot of cleaning up  .  Here are a couple of examples in the 0.5mm thick sheet of some diamond mesh cut precisely half-way through - there aren't even any burn marks on the back side :


Now that I have them I immediately got started on the right-side frame. I glued all the previously cut coloured pieces to the card and started gluing the sections together :


That's when I discovered I'd made a terrible mistake. In my haste to get on with it I'd actually glued BOTH left and right sides to each piece, making them all 1mm too thick  . This would have resulted in the side being 6mm thick instead of 3mm like the left side frame. What to do? I decided to toss the middle section altogether and trim the inner pieces down to 1mm thick. This took me about 3 hours to accomplish :

All good now, the right side is done. A check with my digital vernier shows that the completed side finished up within 0.05mm tolerance - I'll live with that  :

Danny

Actually Ken, until I glued the arm to the cylinder clevis it DID all work  .
 
Still no laser-cut stuff, so I made up the main brake cylinder assembly :

I needed a few more red bolt heads, so I used this method to paint some primed (formerly black) laser-cut ones :

Danny

There's only 1840 rivets in these two assemblies. There are a LOT more in the boilers, cab, coal bunker etc  . Around 4,000 in the whole loco.
 
Thanks for the insights Cap'n Mac and Ken  .
 
I've discovered a new way to roll long pipes. I usually use a long piece of tubing to do the whole pipe in one go, but the tubing I have isn't the right inside diameter (missed out by about 0.3mm  ). So I cut a short piece of the slightly undersize brass tube, cut a slot in it lengthwise to open it up and cleaned it up with a fine diamond-coated file. Then I used a long piece of tubing to support the inside and used the outer one like a clamp to squeeze the card tube together while I glued about 15mm in one go. Once it dried sufficiently I slid the tubing along and repeated the process - it took about 10 minutes to do a 100mm pipe and it turned out perfectly  :


The ends of some pipes had bends in them :


Also flanges :

The water piping down the left side of the loco - the right side doesn't have any, instead there is a "balance pipe" between the two tanks that keep the left side one full :

I'm guessing this is the water pump ? It needs a little re-aligning which I can do when all the glue has dried :


Danny

There's only 1840 rivets in these two assemblies. There are a LOT more in the boilers, cab, coal bunker etc  . Around 4,000 in the whole loco.
 
Thanks for the insights Cap'n Mac and Ken  .
 
I've discovered a new way to roll long pipes. I usually use a long piece of tubing to do the whole pipe in one go, but the tubing I have isn't the right inside diameter (missed out by about 0.3mm  ). So I cut a short piece of the slightly undersize brass tube, cut a slot in it lengthwise to open it up and cleaned it up with a fine diamond-coated file. Then I used a long piece of tubing to support the inside and used the outer one like a clamp to squeeze the card tube together while I glued about 15mm in one go. Once it dried sufficiently I slid the tubing along and repeated the process - it took about 10 minutes to do a 100mm pipe and it turned out perfectly  :


The ends of some pipes had bends in them :


Also flanges :

The water piping down the left side of the loco - the right side doesn't have any, instead there is a "balance pipe" between the two tanks that keep the left side one full :

I'm guessing this is the water pump ? It needs a little re-aligning which I can do when all the glue has dried :


Danny