extreme Jintybashing

[tedp]

No. It's a flaw. I still have trouble fitting the body squarely on to the chassis. Part of the trouble is that the Jinty shells are rather warped with age, so I think I won't be able to straighten it completely. It can be improved though. Probably when I paint the rest of the buffer beam red it won't be too apparent.

[MickT]

That's what I thought may be a solution. Didn't want to mention it on ngrm-online in case it generated mass hysteria and panic!

I've sent a possible lining suggestion by email

Mick

[tedp]

 ;D

I just lined the loco black, with a thin red stripe along the footplate. Photos soon.

So the lining has been done, apart from a few things that need to be touched up and me forgetting the boiler bands!





Now for the final detailing, adding a whistle, blower pipe, handrails, windows, bars over the rear portholes to keep the coal away etc.

And I have to fix the wires to the LED or devise some contact springs instead. A wire has broken due to repeatedly taking the body off the chassis, and we cannot have that, can we...?

[tedp]

Here are some photos of the power transmission to the LED which I rebuilt tonight.

First an unkind close-up of the chassis. The black thing in front of the ballast block is the cut down cylinder block extension which carried the lamp that shone through a plastic light guide in the Arnold model. I modified the springs for the lamp socket and fitted phosphor bronze springs. The lower one sticks out of the hole in the former lamp socket. This is soldered to the thick brass lamp contact screwed to the chassis and is connected to the left hand rail (i.e. negative in NEM standards). The upper one is superglued inside the cut down top of the block. A tiny wire can just be seen coming out of a hole in the side. This goes to the pick-up spring assembly bearing on the right hand wheels.



Next the interior of the smokebox. The legs of the LED were cut down. The negative leg of the LED carries a 1K resistor, the other leg of which has a contact pad soldered to it. This bears down on the short spring connected to the left-hand rail seen in the photo above.

The small contact pad in the depth of the smokebox bears on to the vertical spring in the photo above and therefore is the positive. So if the loco travels forward, the LED is lit.



Fitting this and setting the springs correctly took me some time, but it now seems to work and I can take the loco apart and reassemble it without contact being lost. Phew!

[Tigger]

A superb piece of work Ted -the colour's about right and she's looking quite a brute!  As you say, delightfully colonial.

[tedp]

Then perhaps you like the latest photos!

Details

I managed to do some detail work over the past days. Not all has been completed, but it makes quite a difference.

1. The boiler bands have been put on, just strips of paper cut from a scrap that had been painted black. These are fixed using satin varnish, but for the sharper curves around the Belpaire firebox edges I had to use Mick's method of PVA glue. After drying I varnished the boiler top and all traces of the white paper edge disappeared.

2. As you may have seen, the Nine Lines vacuum pipes were glued on previously, the front one stuck inside a hole drilled in the buffer beam.

3. The next thing to do was fit a blower pipe to the right hand side of the boiler and smokebox. Contrary to usual practice (they are normally painted) this is polished brass as it helps relieve the sombre livery. I bent it to shape and fixed the end into a hole drilled in the smokebox.

4. The handrails around the cab are on the outside, not on the inside of the doorway as in the real 'King'. The reason is twofold: the doorway is too narrow, and the handrails can be put on more neatly on the outside. I bent them to shape and melted them into the plastic sides using a soldering iron. Around the boiler and smokebox I fitted a handrail on brass knobs which obscures the moulded handrail and (I think what is) the push-pull motor fittings of the Jinty. This works better than cutting them off first due to the risk of damage. All handrails are brass. They might have been steel, but I decided on brass as it looks better on the loco.

5. A small whitemetal lamp was fitted on the bunker. In addition I lined out the bunker rear which hadn't yet been done. A brass whistle was glued to a piece of aluminium pipe and a short length of wire that was fitted behind the safety valves. The latter incidentally are behind each other, not side by side as in the real 'King'.

6. The windows were glazed. Rims were not fitted as the prototype doesn not have them either. Finally, but this isn't apparent from the photos, I added some detail in the cab. There is a brake stand against the bunker on the left. I fitted a piece of firebox cover from a discarded Jinty shell to the cab front, added a regulator handle, two N scale buffers above it for injector valves, and a slice of brass tube to represent a pressure gauge.

7. Some etched brass bars were fitted over the rear windows, and some real coal glued in the bunker.

I had to clean up the tank sides with some white spirit as the varnish had become dull through handling the model, then re-varnished them. I'll leave the loco as it is for a few days before continuing the detail work. Here are some photos.







This top view shows some more detail.

[tedp]

Saturday an envelope from Narrow Planet came in the mailbox containing this:



As can be seen I immediately painted the background to the lettering. The plates are beautiful, very clearly etched.

It took me till a few moments ago to fit these to both the Jintybashes.





At a distance they look well enough. However, when I examined a close-up of Brutus, I found there was a lot of dust clinging to the side I had photographed. Worse, it had attached itself into the varnish surface. This will therefore have to be rubbed down lightly, and re-varnished. Warts 'n all, they say! Just to show you something occasionally goes wrong in Rae Bridge works....



'William Wallace', as I baptised the 0-6-4T, looks better at close quarters. It isn't perfect but I think it will do:



Why William Wallace? Well, since the other big Jintybash is named 'Robert the Bruce', I thought this a fitting companion!

Merry Christmas, you all - I'm going down now to chat to my sons who are arriving one by one!