As I have
said previously the Shropshire Minerals Light Railway would have been a
challenging railway to operate. If Col Stephens had inherited the SMLR in 1923
he would have needed heavier power than the WW1 Baldwins and Kerr Stuart Skylark
he bought for the Snailbeach District Railway.
There were
plenty of surplus locos in the aftermath of WW1 because of the extensive use of
narrow-gauge railways in military supply, and also as public light railways had
started to suffer road competition. At the time the ex-Pentewan Railway 0-6-2ST
Manning Wardle Canopus was for sale at second hand dealer, in real life
she ultimately ended up as a RAF Air Construction Corps loco before being
scrapped. Let’s just suppose that instead
Stephens bought her for use on the SMLR – quite a reasonable assumption; he
liked both a bargain, and Manning Wardle’s products (there were several on his standard gauge lines). At 2’6” gauge with outside
frames Canopus would probably have been easier to re-gauge to 2’4” gauge
than the 60cm gauge Baldwins.
|
Historic photo of Canopus in RAF service - Wikipedia Commons |
The model
I purchased
a Backwood’s Miniatures kit for Canopus off eBay a couple of years ago –
probably paying a bit too much for it, but its long out of production with
Backwoods closing down in 2016. The kit was one of the first of a breed of
prototypical kits for 009 but is rather infamous for being difficult to build due to some flaws in the design. One of my favorite blogs documenting a build is this one: https://caffeine-train.blogspot.com/search/label/Backwoods%20Miniatures The kit
I bought was part built which was a bit of a risk, but what the previous owner had done had been done very
well, but not without some issues.
The
previous owner had made the frames and gearbox assembly nice and square and
soldered them neatly. They had soldered the outside cranks to the axles, but
the right lead crank had been removed, presumably to sort out a bind, so it was
not a rolling chassis. The other main issue was the slide bar yoke. This had
been split and patched to widen it, as its well documented that as designed it’s
just too narrow to allow the lead crank to rotate behind the crossheads. However,
the slide bars which are supposed to fold up out of the yoke had been snapped
off on the left side – these would prove a “right swine” to re-attach.
The first job I tackled was the loose crank. As the others
were soldered, I thought I better solder it back on. I attached the side rod on
the left side with some of the tiny (16BA I think) nuts included. Then used the side-rods to judge whether everything was in quarter by eye – as my quartering tool wouldn't fit this type of chassis construction. Next, I slid the wheels on the leading axle fully to the right side of
the chassis, and with the left side-rod loosely on the cranks I clamped the
chassis into a helping hand. I swapped the bit on my temperature controlled 50w
iron for a medium sized bit rather than an electrical pencil tip, as I find
this much easier for soldering brass components. The whole chassis except the
front left crank was submerged in a bath of water to ensure that the heat from
soldering the axle didn’t melt the plastic wheel centres. I had two goes as
soldering the crank – the first time the crank slipped just as I was taking the
iron off it before the solder set. I then tested the chassis and found that it
rolled quite nicely with no major bind. So, I slid the wheels back into place
using a back-to-back gauge to get everything in line.
Next, I tackled the crossheads, one was already constructed
the other was still a fret of parts. I needed to provide my own piece of brass
rod to form the piston rod as it was missing from the kit. Fortunately, the
previous owner had obviously read up about another of the kit’s shortcomings
and had purchased replacement connecting rods of the correct length so that the
crossheads didn’t foul at the end of each stroke. I found the crosshead fiddly
to assemble, and had a couple of goes before I was satisfied it was solid. I
used a razor saw to make sure the channels on both sides of the crosshead were
clear of solder. I don’t like rivets in any shape of form so rather than riveting
the connecting rod to the crosshead, I made my own soldered pin arrangement –
which calls for some deft movement with the soldering iron and a paper washer
to stop the solder flowing where it wasn’t required.
I then tackled the slide-bars; first reinforcing the still
attached set on the right side of the loco with a fillet of solder at the yoke
end. Then attempted to solder the loose ones on. I had several goes at this –
and eventually got them to attach sufficiently straight. I inserted the
cross-heads only to find I’d accidentally put the left side connecting rod
into the crosshead assembly upside down. It meant that the lubricator on the
big end was pointing down. I couldn’t face disassembling the whole thing again,
so as the connecting rods are otherwise plain, I just cut the etched lubricator
off and filed it flush. I then attached the crossheads and slide bar yoke
assembly loose into the slot in the frame. Trialling rotation, I noted that space
behind the crosshead was still very tight indeed. I decided not to add a nut to
the leading cranks, with the centre and rear nuts holding the side rods tight
enough that there was no need for them on the leading axle.
The cylinders in the kit are whitemetal castings to be
attached to the etched brass frame with thick CA or epoxy. The left side one
had been drilled out by the previous owner, but the right cylinder only had
what appeared to be a starter hole at one end. I attempted to drill this out
with an appropriately sized drill bit, only for it to snap off. I tried the
same from the other end only for the same to happen – there was something hard
in there. It transpired that the previous owner had also had an issue with a
snapped off bit and it was still stuck in there. This called for some major
surgery on the cylinder. I cut off the cast in piston gland and managed to get
the snapped off section of bit out. By now however the hole was much too slack
for the piston. So, I drilled out the central hole with a wider bit and fitted
a sleeve of brass tube securing with CA, building the gland back up with small sections
of concentric brass tubing.
I then tried to attach the cylinders to the slide/crosshead
assembly and to the chassis, in the process of trial fitting I ended up damaging
the left side slide bars. I decided to solder both ends of the slide bars – I
turned down my iron and used low melt solder to attach the slide bars to the
whitemetal cylinders. I found I needed to use low melt solder throughout this
piece of work as it was too easy to get the whole assembly hot enough to melt other
solder on joints not being worked on otherwise.
Once this fiddly piece of work was complete, I attached the
connecting rods and trialled rolling the chassis before soldering up the crank
nuts. I found that a little bit of filing was required on the inside of the cylinder
glands to ensure that the lead cranks didn’t catch – despite leaving the lead
axle crank nuts off.
With a rolling chassis I next turned to altering the trailing
truck attachment. I added a washer below the chassis bolster and drilled and
tapped this 0-80; I tend to use American thread sizes as I have modelled in US
outline HO for a number of years and they are to hand on the workbench. A cut
down 0-80 countersunk bolt attached the truck which the previous owner had made
up. I then attached the motor / gearbox
assembly to the main frame, with the worm just clearing the chassis stretcher
to which the trailing truck attaches. I it tested under power, and it ran
reasonably well first time. Phew!
Next up was the attaching the electrical pick-ups. The
sketch in the Backwoods instructions leaves a lot to be desired, so I rather
did my own thing. Gluing two strips of copper clad strip to the lug on the top
of the gearbox and the slidebar yoke. I formed wheel wipes from the springy
phosphor-bronze wire provided, these are an inverted v-shape so there is a wire
pick up running on both side of each wheel.I tested the chassis under power on stands on the desk and
it ran well, if slightly “dry”, it ran much better after I lubed everything up -
Tamiya plastic-friendly grease in the gearbox and light oil on the axle bearings. However, as soon as I put it on the track it didn’t run well at all –
there appeared to be some form of intermittent short. This appeared to be related
to the trailing truck, as when the truck was removed the short disappeared and
the loco ran sweetly.
I’ll cover resolving this issue and the next steps in a
future post...