A4 Pacific Sir Nigel Gresley, O-scale

[Erik Zwaan]

Thank you Tim, Ab and Tramfan. Ab, it's worth to step outside the box so every now and then. My comfort zone consists of airplanes, birds and a bit of architecture. This steam locomotive is a new experience, and moreover, I learned a great deal about these machines along the way .

While I was trying to figure out the best way to make 84d/e fit, the solution came by itself. There's nothing wrong with the model at this point - it was my own mistake! I simply had misplaced the bracket in the first place.... Luckily it wasn't that difficult to remove and rotate it. Some paint touch-ups needed but these won't be visible anymore from a normal viewing angle once the side valences are in place.

So, right side driving gear completed and this part of the model fits without a flaw. Only thing to keep in mind is to place spacers between the various rods and shafts and to install brackets 69/71 and 70/72 during the process of installing the driving gear parts, rather than before (as indicated in the instruction drawing).

Next will be (rei)nstallation of the braking shoes, front bogie and rear wheels. For proper aligning of the wheels I will prepare another section of rails first.

Herewith a few pictures of the completed rightside driving gear.

Erik

[joshuajaeseo]

Impressive! Love the details!

[otherDoc]

That is some valve gear! Wow!
otherDoc

[Diderick A. den Bakker]

About the valve gear: for some reason this part of the machinery is often much more complicated on German locomotives. The Gresley gear looks relatively simple. I found a very interesting Youtube link, showing how it works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKH9TYhz3LA

[romanmodels]

good work erik.

[Erik Zwaan]

Thanks Joshua, otherDoc, Diderick and David for following once again and your kind words. The youtube movie regarding the driving gear/lock is very informative. There are also other clips where you can watch the Gresley speeding through the landscape and look at this gear moving up and down frantically! These machines must have required a lot of maintenance I suppose. I am told that the A4's were nicknamed "streak". Well, by looking at the speed by which they travelled through the countryside, that's quite understandable.

There's not so much progress at the moment. Before eventually positioning rear wheels and front bogie I have made another stretch of rails and for the first time lined up locomotive and tender.

I modified the original rails, by gluing it (part 156) on 1mm thick cardboard, cut out the sleepers, pasted them on another piece of board (wood) and put filtered fine sand grains in between.

From actual pictures it becomes clear that the flooring of cockpit and tender work area should be at the same level but in the model surprisingly there's quite a height difference. I'm trying to figure out how to solve or at least minimize this difference. Also the connecting "spoons" (I'm sorry, don't know the proper words in English) do not match, the slots through which they should stick being also at different height. I have no clue why there's this difference.

I positioned the rails as to get an inside pitch of 2.8 cm. A bit wider than indicated in the model (2.6 cm) but I had to correct this otherwise the wheel flanges do not fit in between as I found out when preparing the first stretch for the tender, last year October.

Í'm still working on the finishing touches to the rails. Glued both segments onto a single piece of laminate (floor board) and need to finalize the ballast bed details, add a bit of grass and small scrub along the stretch.

In the mean time also the braking shoes are in place, as can be seen in the pictures and the tedious job of preparing the brake rigging has just been done. For this I cut out the printed parts bit by bit and used them to laminate the extremely delicate laser cuts. Edge coloring is subsequently required, how I dislike this kind of work....

Next time all wheels will be aligned and glued in position.... eh, I hope. Then, how to properly place the brake rigging will be another chapter.

Erik

[Tim Crowe]

She's nearly ready to roll

Keep up the good work

Tim

[Kevin WS]

Excellent. Really looking good...

[ricleite]

Hello Erik,
If you allow me a joke, you are already seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. And it is the train

[Erik Zwaan]

Thanks Tim, Kevin and Ricardo. Yes, there is light at the end of the tunnel - well, there has always been light up there but slowly I'm getting towards it .

I was planning to glue all remaining "wheel items" to the loc first but decided that it would be ergonomically better to place the side valances first. That sounds rather academic but I mean to say that the front bogie would only be in the way when installing the side valances afterwards so there we go to do it the other way around.

The model provides two different sets of side valances, open ones and closed ones. Originally the A4 Pacifics were provided with the closed ones, in the same royal blue color as the main body, but during the years of service they were often removed to allow easier access to the driving gear and other rolling parts for maintenance and/or inspection.
The "Mallard" has the closed valances and the "Gresley" the open ones. Moreover, as the closed ones partly obstruct the view of the driving gear the choice was easily made: Open valances.

Dry-fitting yielded no issues except for the steam cylinder cover plate, which appeared to be too wide, requiring trimming. A bit of a pity as the rivet print had to be partly cut away - see the first picture. The fit of the rounded front section is good but I will add some filler to seal off and smoothen the small gaps.

Similar corrections are required where the boiler body meets the chassis, especially at the front side: You may have noticed the small gap there, which is already closed off to some extent with white glue. I suspect that the gap originates from the scaling error of the body. Not really a big deal though, as it seems.

The left side valance shows details of cabling and I might detail this a bit further later on.

In the mean time the stretch of rails is also finished, with final sand and grass detailing. This was truly a relaxing intermezzo I must say.

From actual pictures, as well as shown in the GA drawing, the flooring of the tender and cockpit is at the same level. For some reason it isn't in the model. Also, the hook-up blocks between tender and loc are not at the same level, whereas they obviously should. I have no idea why and will try to correct this... Modifications to already finished work.... Grrrrr.

Aligning and gluing all remaining wheels/assemblies in place is next and hopefully I can finalize this over the coming weekend.

Erik