Prepared by Tommy Day Originator M. Sandell

Although this loco is only one step down from the A6 in the LNER locomotive classification I suspect that the kit, and certainly my construction of it, will be several steps down from Nick Dunhill A6. so bearing that in mind here goes:-

The kit has milled sideframes and 4 machined spacers to screw in to form the chassis, so that was a quick and easy start. The bogie is similar and the central bolster has a machined slot to take the pivot pin which is attached to one of the front spacers with an 8 ba screw. So the bearing were inserted in the frames followed by the wheels, the bogie added and placed on the bench.

A bit high at the front perhaps, so taking the spring out gave a better look.

As can be seen the spacer that the bogie is attached to is rather low.

And the lower end of the pivot ends up rather low as well.

I am pretty sure that I assembled it ok with the pivot pin through the slot and the spring between the central bolster and the spacer but the result was not ok. Also the rigid bogie rocked on the bench so needed some modification.

To complete this first post this is the chassis with wheels removed showing the distance between spacers compared to using etched frames.

That also shows the rear pony truck sitting through the frames without any mechanism for a pivot or for narrower frames. (also shows spacers not screwed up properly!) Most of these problems have I think been overcome but it took a little while.

Buckley10339 - Feb 28, 2018 at 6:42 PM
Micheal,I have built two of these kits when they were done by MSC.I seem to remember having to lift the spacer for the front bogie.The big problems are firstly its effectivly a 4-8-0 with the rear pony flopping around like that the solution is to plate over the rear chassis make a pony truck up out of a bit of big tube with bearings soldered in and a thick brass bar soldered to the tube and a plate across the chassis with a 6ba bolt soldered to it for a pivot.once the bar is correct and the wheels are the correct distance apart draw round the wheel and cut away the rear chassis the loco will then go round curves - it doesnt if you leave it ! The bigger problem that may have been addressed by the new owners is that the boiler formers are too big and i had to cut 1mm off all round to get the boiler to fit between the tanks.
I will get mine out of the loft and take photos to show the mods and what the beast looks like - its a great loco and i like them a lot but does need some care.The cab is as far as i could tell not quite correct either.
Pat.

Sandell10466 - Feb 28, 2018 at 9:31 PM
Gentlemen
Thanks for all the comments, I must admit that the posting and the photos are lagging behind the actual construction by a couple of weeks. Some of your suggestions have already been carried out, but I am trying to get away with the rear pony as the kit intends at the moment, time will tell. (probably at the LOGOG test track on 10th March if I make sufficient progress with pickups.)
Mike S

MartinShaw - Feb 28, 2018 at 9:32 PM
Michael
Pat has pointed out the significant issue with the chassis, it is long. I have put below a couple of photos of my chassis which I got from JPL. As you can see the frames have an inward joggle behind the rear drivers and the pony axleboxes have the ability to rise and fall in the frames, the U shaped retainer is for that purpose alone. It is neither a pony truck or a radial axle, but I think it will work just fine. I do need to sort some springing though and there may yet be some issues re frame clearance and the bogie wheels.
Regards
Martin
P.S. Sorry about the flash bounce

Buckley10339 - Feb 28, 2018 at 9:55 PM
Martin there will be definite issues with the frames like that - trust me i found out the hard way.Photos of mine will come on here tomorrow
Pat.

MartinShaw - Feb 28, 2018 at 10:01 PM
Thanks Pat, I think I know where your coming from, but I will be interested to see your pictures. Thus far it's only run up and down a straight test track.
Martin

Buckley10339 - Mar 1, 2018 at 3:02 PM
As promised photos of the A5,bear in mind this is the old MSC kit and that the new owners may have made alterations - particularly with the boiler formers to make the boiler smaller to fit between the tanks.I said the cab didnt look correct to me -the inside that is and what is on mine may not be correct either as i had not much access to research material at the time.Note that the bogie pivot plate is much higher and the rear frames are cut away with a pony truck installed with a piece of .8mm spring steel wire in the u shaped hoop to keep it all square.The motor by the way is one of the ones from Powermaster its a 7 pole ball raced gauge 1 motor i got two for both the A5s i have done - it will pull anything including tree stumps !
Pat.

MartinShaw - Mar 1, 2018 at 9:35 PM
Pat
Many thanks for taking the trouble and posting pics of your engine. I can see what you mean regarding the pony truck, I think I'll carry on with mine as it is until I can prove that it does or doesn't work. I have attached a pic of mine, I don't know its origins but it appears scratchbuilt, I acquired it as a bequest from a late friend as a coarse standard outside 3rd 3 rail model, but with a set of fine standard 2 rail wheels included, so all I'm doing is putting a new chassis in and making it run, as a remembrance of my friend.
Regards
Martin

(There is a lot of correspondence on the forum at this stage on liveries, class history and other A5 models).

Sandell10466 - Mar 11, 2018 at 6:37 PM
Wow, I didn't know that the A5 s would be so popular a subject.
About time I added a little more to the thread.
I took the the rocking front bogie along to my local club at Birtley to convert it to be compensated by drilling holes in the side frames and central bolster. Peter tapped the bolster 8ba so at present it runs ok, but the frames needs a bit of tidying up. The spacer for the bogie pivot has been raised as per Pat's photo at #10. In my previous photos the wheel bearing were loose in the frames and Peter was kind enough to lend me his jig for lining up chassis properly using the coupling rods to space the wheel bearings. This showed a little bit of fetling of the frame holes was required to produce a free running chassis. Much easier than my previous efforts with short jury axles.

The machine vice is only there to compress the front bogie spring
Despite all the good advice received above the rear pony is simply running through the holes in the frames. To gain extra side ways movement I found some top hat bearing with thinner 'brims' . A couple of bits of phospher bronze wire will I hope keep the wheels on the track.

In this configuration it ran along a short section of 1700mm ( 5' 7'') curved track So fingers crossed it will be ok.
Then stripped it all down to add support for simple wire pick up rubbing on the top of the driving wheels.

This also show the motor support, an inverted U of scrap etch topped off with a double sided sticky foam pad from my wife's collection of crafting bits and pieces. It also shows a front brake hanger as supplied on the kit. After a frustrating period of trial and error these are in the process of being severely modified so the hanger is about vertical and the brake block is lower on the hanger.
As I referred to the LOGOG test track earlier I can say that the chassis ran ok as a 0-6-0, but I did not have enough weight in the bits of body to compress the bogie and pony truck wheels. One of the members of LOGOG brought along his completed A5 as well.
Body next.
Mike S

Nick Dunhill - Mar 12, 2018 at 8:58 PM\

Hello Mike. Can I make a suggestion if not too bold. Perhaps you should pop a 2-3 mm length of tubing over your phosphor bronze wire resting on the top hat bearing, and then solder the tube to the bearing. This will allow the bearing to move up and down in the slot and stop it rotating. Nick

Sandell10466 - Mar 12, 2018 at 9:43 PM
Nick
All advice gratefully received, I will have a go at doing as you have suggested.
Martin
I did wonder if narrower frames would be requires as per your post #7. It would be difficult to bend the milled brass frames to achieve this, so I am happy with the current arrangement, so far.
Cheers
Mike S

Sandell10466 - Mar 13, 2018 at 8:55 PM
Just some photos of some of the things described above.

Running as an 0-6-0 on the LOGOG test track on 10 March.

Home again on the 1.7m radius curve which if the layout was up would connect the station to the fiddle yard. Large lumps of lead to keep the show on the road.

And again with the body, well parts thereof, on the same radius.
Mike S

Sandell10466 - Mar 18, 2018 at 11:44 AM
Some earlier shots of the body:-

The cab floor is supplied as an H shape, but the rear section did not fill the door way gap between the side tanks and the bunker sides hence the obvious joint across the floor. Also a bit more cut out to clear the wheels, just to be sure.

No my soldering is not that neat, the bits are just on a dry run. One odd thing that does not really affect the kit construction is the positioning of the reverser support on the left hand side of the cab as per the instructions. This is ok for the Hawthorn Leslie built engines for service in the NER area but not for the GCR and LNER builds. The HL engines also had different shape of cab front windows.

The instruction suggest starting the body by fixing the smoke box front and the boiler saddle in the slots, and then moving on to the side tanks, bunker etc. Thought these would get in the way so left them till later (still not done).

Just a close up of the doorway and the piece of scrap etch which the instruction require to support the rear of the floor. Part 29 which has sneaked into the photo is the reverser support.

The driver seems a bit eager.

The boiler just posed and not soldered.
Mike S

Sandell10466 - Mar 26, 2018 at 10:04 PM
A few more photos showing that progress is being made, albeit slowly.

Cab rear and side windows added, plus a few other bits and pieces such as handrails and window surrounds. The latter were added to the sides and back before the cab was assembled, thought it would be easier to clean up my messy soldering.

From the front, showing that I removed the smoke box saddle as I could not get the boiler to sit down satisfactorily.
Also that I must have started with the footplate upside down, so there is an attempt to fill in some spare location slots with solder!

And from the side. When I was doing trial fits of the cab back, which I thought needed notches cut out where the handrail knobs were in the bunker front, I also just tried the roof on or size. It fell between the cab back and front!
Then looked more closely at instructions and photos to find this is correct for GCR built locos. Those built by Hawthorn Leslie have the more usual arrangement of the roof slightly overhanging the front and back. Also fitting the cab rear behind the returns at front of the bunker sides, as the instructions implied, produced a rebate at the rear of the cab. So the bottom part of thee cab rear was reducer in width to fit in line with the returns. No idea if that is right or wrong but it looked better to me.

The boiler with the saddle attached and the smoke box wrapper fixed. The wrapper in the kit was too short to reach round to the dummy frame sides that abut the sides of the smoke box front and the saddle. Also it seemed too short in the direction along the boiler to fit outside the smokebox front and to also reach the saddle. A new wrapper was cut from 10 thou (0.25mm) brass sheet and soldered in place using the supplied wrapper as a spacer off the boiler.

A boiler shop view.

Then I thought I would see how the prebent Belpaire fire box top and the cast shoulder fitted - not well. But after a bit of tweaking the corners and cutting about 1.8 mm off the sides a better result was obtained.

Still needs more work obviously, but I thought it was time to take some photos of progress. Think this photo may have been taken before the sides were cut down.
Mike S

Buckley10339 - Mar 27, 2018 at 8:46 AM
Mike,after you have fitted the castings to the firebox front some 100° or even 70° low melt solder will take care off the indifferent castings.And yes the cab roof fooled me a bit as well.However when i did mine there was no internet and i didnt have anything much in the way of reference books only a few photos. Its coming allong nicely.
Pat.

End of thread.