I think its Steam time!

[Guest]

Further progress to report, and its getting good now!

First off the roof - I took the advice and covered it with tarpaulin and it looks much better!!!!

You can't see the sing marks anymore! Proper job!

In addition, I tried an experiment to get the yellow linings on the wheel spokes. This involved cutting up a rubber into a flat "brush" which I dabbed into thinned yellow paint and then lightly touched to the raised lines. It sort of worked but has given a bit of a ragged line as you can see here:

(except of course the bloody flash has caused too much glare and you can't see most of it! sigh)

Then finally there has been some major assembly of the subcomponents so it now looks like this:

and there is a great deal of detail in the pistons and crankshaft:

In thery the crankshaft and pistons do work but the joints in the crankshaft are really not strong enough to move the various components very much. There is too much flex in the plastic. Funnily enough I had a very similar problem in the Meccano Showman's Engine - because the crankshaft was built up from several components as opposed to being one complete casting, the joints have to sustains a considerable amount of stress and sadly are not strong enough. Never mind, this isn't supposed to be a fully working model!

I've added some wear on the steering wheel and seat, using the hairspray technique of metallic grey undercoat with hairspray over the top and then a top coat of red which was then chipped/worn. Also adding washes and dirt as I go along, although I need to find a good way to represent grease in scale - anyone got any suggestions?

I decided to go with the model and put the water tank on rather than go with the real thing and leave it off. I added a spiral to the steering gear as suggested, made from a strip of solder, CA glued to the cylinder. Don't have a photo of it though...

Next is to work on the various gears and the differential on the left side and then the controls in the cabin... tooot tooot!

[Guest]

Is coming very nice mate!

[Guest]

Some significant progress the last few days... in fact the wheels are on!!!

and from the other side:

The cab has been detailed:

and from another angle:

I'm still missing coal from the coal bunker. It comes with a moulded piece with coal in but it looks very unconvincing so I need to visit the railway modelling shop and get some scale coal - although it will be too small scale for this as this is 1:16 so I may need to scratch up some raefr pieces of "coal".

Sadly the weak joint in the crankshaft has broken and there is no way I can see of fixing it as that area is now pretty inaccessible. When I build the Traction Engine I just bought of eBay (I must be a fool!) I'll make sure I replace this joint with a brass tube and fix it more firmly so that the whole mechanism can work robustly. The break does mean the flywheel has a bit of a wobble to it, but since it will now not be moving, I can live with that. I've used a variety of metallic colours, from the glossy gold of the pre-painted parts, to painted gold, two types of silver Tamiya Chrome silver and titanium silver, metallic grey, gunmetal, copper and bronze. I've alos varied the red and black, using matt colours as well as gloss to give a different texture to well used, dirty and polished parts. I did the hairspray technique on the rear break wheel as well as on the footsteps leading up into the cab which were weathered to show the underlying metal and a dirt wash added.

The pipes leading from the water tank to the boiler were originally moulded onto the plastic parts but this looked awful, so that was sanded off and replaced with wire painted gold.

Still a bit more touching up to do and a bit more assembly - the chains for the steering, the whistle and bell and then the roof goes on. At that point I'll do some more weathering of the wheels, soot on the canopy dirt in the appropriate places. Won't be long now!

[papa 695]

Some great work there Andrew your realy going at full steam now. OK i'll get my coat OH about the oil i think Tiking had a tip about it in one of his truck builds

[Guest]

thats looking great. well done

[Guest]

This is looking brilliant Andrew, there's some lovely paintwork going into this and it looks the part already to be honest.

I meant to reply to your last post about making up grease ....... a simple effective mix i use is PVA glue, dark brown acrylic gloss paint and plain flour, turn them into a gloop and plaster where you need it, you can make it glossier when dried with varnish or decanted hairspray etc

[Guest]

Thats an interesting recipe Colin, thanks!

[Guest]

Okay I'm going to call this finished now although it still has a couple of things I want to do with it, eg add a better representation of the coal and perhaps dirty it up a bit more.

[Ian M]

That is just lovely! I really do like that. It is very different to the normal things we see on here.

Five well deserved stars as well.

A great piece to be proud of.

Ian M

[Gern]

That would improve the look of any display shelf! *****

Gern

[Guest]

that my friend is the mutts nuts... the doggies danglie bits.....the canine cahoonahs .... the poochies privates etc etc etc

ahhh ya get the idea

[papa 695]

Hi Andrew well like the rest have said what a wounderful build my hat goe's off to you and 5 stars heading your way from me

[Guest]

Fantastic work!!

Well deserved 5 stars!!

Cheers

[Guest]

Thanks guys - this was a really fun build and a very pretty addition to the shelf

[Guest]

WOW!!! Thats an eye popper for sure,very nicely done Andrew. 5 very well earned stars