Split Infinitive...

...because it takes me an infinitely long time to finish anything?

Anyway, here are a couple of photos to prove that 1. I can work on more than one kit at a time and 2. I can write more than one post per day.

I decided that I didn't like the idea of Lancashire being rear-heavy and having to weigh down the front to keep it on the track like most model 0-4-4Ts, so I'm having a go at actually carrying some of the weight one the rear bogie. I reckoned that if it was carry weight, it would hold the track well and could usefully pick up current, so the next two photos show my attempts to split-frame the trailing bogie to provide wiper-less pickup.

The bogie link arm has been split by soldering on a small strip of PCB, cutting the insulation slot and then filling everything with epoxy to avoid getting dirt in the insulating gap. The bogie is split similarly but there's a paxolin boss tapped 8BA in the centre - this will take a screw with a large head (not the one on the left) which will act as both an adjustable height bearing pad and the conductor for the insulated side of the bogie - the loco has uninsulated drivers on one side, so there are only two pickups and the frame is live. I'm sure it'll be clear when it's all put together...

The wheels are the originals with the centre replaced with brass and stub axles inserted. Yes, the little black thing is an axle muff and yes, that means there's one missing. I've lost is somewhere, but it is only 4mm long so I think I that's a reasonable excuse.

Up On The Roof

(Well, everyone else uses either awful puns or song titles for their post headings).

I have a little detailing job on the roof of the Ingersoll-Rand Oil Electric (Did I call it a "gas-electric" previously? Yes, I did, but I now realise that it says "Oil Electric" on the box). The cooling unit is a big lump featuring what is presumably a large fan with a radiator on either side. This has six water pipes running into the roof and these locate in little cast plugs - basically these are small bits of tube which form part of the main roof casting.

I've built the cooling unit to be removable for painting and it's held with an 8BA screw from inside the roof casting, and the plan was to fit the pipes to the unit and have the ends loose in the roof fittings. My rather heavy handed assembly and the natural softness of whitemetal means that several roof fittings have been mangled, so I've worked up some replacements which hopefully look a bit more elegant. Anyone else would have just bought some brass tube, but I couldn't be bothered. And the shops had closed.

The pipework is 0.9mm brass wire, so I produced a couple of lengths of 1.6mm brass rod with a 0.9mm hole (i.e. the bit of brass tube that I didn't buy). This was cut into six lengths and the ends faced off in the lathe to be nice and presentable. I've started to slice off the original fittings and replace them with tube as shown in the photo on the left. Hopefully these now look like pipe flanges fitted to the surface of the roof, and won't leave unsightly gaps when the paint goes on. You can see where I've broken one of the original fittings on the inboard side of the cooler in the photo.

This shows the flanges a little better on  the two front water pipes. I wanted to make the pipes as close a fit as possible to be able to paint and weather the the cooling unit separately before fitting it to the roof. I've tried to make the roof modular as it has a lot of surface details and lumpy or overdone painting would show up badly (sets standard to fail be in near future...). 

This shows the inside ends of the pipes ready to be cut flush with the bottom of the roof. The brass screw in the centre holds the colling unit in place and below and to the right of that are the original holes for the other four coolant pipes. 

Finally, this is a view of a bit more of the roof including the exhaust units - the centre panel holding these is also removable and fixed by a 10BA screw from underneath. The collection of brass tube in the foreground is the other four cooling pipe flanges waiting to be fitted.

Hopefully this may be of use to anyone else building a Backwoods Box Cab Oil Electric. I can tell you now that - with the exception of a couple which Pete McParlin built himself - this is actually the only built one I've ever seen. Now there's a challenge.