More power for Pontesbury Sidings - building Canopus (pt 2)

When we last left Canopus we had a powered chassis - but with some issues. When placed on the track there was a mysterious short appearing to relate to the trailing truck. 

The truck had been built by the previous owner. I noted that it was a bit wide to gauge, but more importantly the side of the truck was within touching distance of the worm when the truck was over to the right. When running in reverse the worm was grabbing the right side of the truck frame and holding it and the wheel against the side of the chassis, and at the same time causing the other wheel to be in contact with the truck frame thereby causing a short - it was intermittent enough to allow the motor to turn but drawing significant current.

My solution was to trim back the truck frame so that it was completely free from touching the worm. In doing this the soldering of the frame gave way and I had to refabricate the truck, and I took the opportunity to narrow it slightly. To make sure the short didn't reappear I also added tape to both insides of the chassis and glued a sheet of 15-thou of plastic card over the face of the truck frames. 

Refabricating the trailing truck

I re-tested and found that this had cured the issue. 

In handling the chassis I noted that the soldering on one of the slide bars had come undone, so I had to revisit with the soldering iron to get a solid joint. Note to self - don't touch the slide bars, they are fragile!

To complete the chassis I decided to add a Branchlines 6mm x 12mm flywheel on top of the Mashima motor. This improved the running further as the flywheel eliminated the majority of electrical dead spots even at low speed. The chassis now runs well, if with a bit of gear noise running forward and with a distinct waddle running in reverse. I was happy to note that it was able to handle the Peco medium radius turnouts without any difficulty.

This brought me to the cosmetic side of the kit. 

To complete the chassis I soldered the reversing lever link and actuator to the lug on the right side of the chassis frame, with a piece of 0.45mm nickel-silver wire at the pivot point. I did not connect it to the reversing lever coming from the cab, but made sure the rods lined up; this will enable body and chassis to be seperated in future. I then added the castings for the trailing axle with thick CA.

I then cleaned the chassis with a fibreglass pencil and gently washed it with rubbing alcohol. As the chassis had lots of moving parts that I didn't want to mask for air brushing I brush painted the chassis matt black (Lifecolor) and highlighted the cranks red (Badger Modelflex - signal red).

Complete chassis with basic body assembly behind

Moving onto the body. The cab bunker and running plate had already been formed up, but had fortunately not been combined with the cab roof or tank/boiler/smokebox assembly. The first modification I needed to make was to the cab roof. The previous owner had riveted and rolled the roof nicely, but had also inserted the safety valve casting. As there was now a flywheel in the cab where the casting should sit, I had to remove the casting. Instead I soldered two short lengths of brass tube so they protruded above the cab roof as the top of the safety valves, but were flush inside to clear the flywheel.

I attached the cast saddle tank to the running plate / cab assembly with thick gel CA. This was quite tricky to get level as the running plate had been formed with a distinct hump, but there was not a lot I could do about that at this juncture. I found that the brass chimney casting is a distinctly odd shape, and I tried to improve this a bit by turning it in my improvised mini-drill "lathe".  Quite a few of the castings - both brass and whitemetal were badly formed - it looked like the mould parts had been slightly off-set in some instances. In cleaning up the brake standard the handle snapped off and I had to solder a piece of brass wire to the top of the whitemetal casting. 

I drilled holes in the tank for the balancing pipe which I formed out of brass wire - ignore the starting dimples in the tank they are in the wrong place, as the pipe is just forward of the tank filler. Then drilled holes in the side of the boiler to accept the injectors - I didn't install these yet, that would be after I had painted the body, along with the spectacle plates. 

The complete chassis with part complete body shell attached

Canopus stands next to Baldwin No.4 - very similar sized locos

The next step will be paint - but what colour? Canopus appears to have had a standard Manning Wardle lined green livery at the Pentewan Railway. Lined green appears to have been the standard paint scheme for most industrial and contractor's locos at the turn of the twentieth century - unless the customer had their own scheme. In RAF service she is reported to have been painted unlined black with what appears white lettering on the tank. This must have been a very light coat of paint indeed though as evidence of the old lined livery is clearly showing through. 

However, as my rationale for having the loco at all is based having been a Col. Stephen's purchase in 1923 I intend to paint Canopus unlined black with red beams and slightly rustic white numbering on the beams, like the rest of the SDR fleet. I will be numbering her No.5 (next in sequence after the Baldwins).

The final installment will cover paint and details.