Lockdown - The First Six Months

I’ve worked on a number of modelling projects this past six months on average for maybe an hour a day, more or less. My main project continues to be the diorama and the egg-box ground cover is now almost ready for its paper and scrim. I will report on that separately.

On the loco front, I continued making progress with the Peckett, that is until I realised the kit was for the wrong variant. My loco is to be 1151 and this has entailed making a new scratch front end, including a laboriously hand-filed smoke box door. It’s strange I didn’t notice the discrepancy earlier.

Meanwhile, I’ve continued to work on the two separate chassis: the standard kit one and a split-frame chassis, now in P4 (see "Peckett progress, 6th March 2019"). Both frames are now assembled, but I decided to take a break when it came to shorting the wheels.

I then moved on to 5961 Toynbee Hall: having built the footplate and cab way back in 2009, I thought it was about time I tackled the boiler. After making the smokebox and firebox I ran out of 8 thou nickel. At this stage I also realised that I would need to make a new cab front. I made the current one similar to that on my Brassmasters Black Five, which had a cut-out allowing the resin boiler to fit just inside the cab. In the Hall, the firebox will bolt in the normal model fashion to the surface of the new cab front.

Along the way I also added further detail to the pannier 1649, which is still not quite finished.

And that’s the first six months of my lockdown.

Peckett Progress

My previous 4mm finescale layout, Kyle of Sutherland, was dismantled at the end of last year, so I’m re-posting a November 2019 progress report on the Peckett 0-4-0 from the Kyle of Sutherland blog to bring the story up to date here. Since last year’s Missenden Abbey Summer School, I continued with the Peckett as described below.

My track record with pick-ups is not brilliant, so I took the opportunity of building a split-frame chassis under the guidance of one of our local gurus (thanks, Frank). I already had a conventional P4 chassis underway for the Peckett (see "GWR 0-4-0ST 1151, 22 July 2018), so decided to experiment by way of making an alternative 00-gauge chassis to compare pick-up performance.

There are a number of potential shorts to resolve in a split-frame chassis, and here is one of them. The gaps in the split axles are off-centre, for example to avoid clashing with the gearbox. However, the gap entered the chassis top hat bearing, which had to be filed back to the frame. The space between the chassis and gearbox frames was padded out with fibre washers to maintain the central position of the gearbox. There are lots more gotchas still to come.