Added September 2021

THE CAB, BUNKER AND SIDE TANKS

The weight diagram shows that the front of the bunker extends into the rear of the cab, making construction slightly awkward. I’ve cut out the cab side sheets from two pieces of 10 thou nickel silver soldered together. Once separated, I’ve soldered the cab beading in place (a thin strip of 5 thou n-s).





The cab rear was drilled and partly cut to shape with the cab front, but requires shortening so that it sits on the bunker front. A bit of trial-and-error is required to get the bunker front, cab side and rear sheets to the same height as the cab front - spot soldering the pieces in place, checking, unsoldering and adjusting - repeat until satisfied.





With everything fitting together nicely, the last part is to solder on the rear window bars - short lengths of copper wire. Finally, the cab components can be fully soldered in place, again checking with a square and vernier calipers to make sure everything is central and square.






The bunker rear is a simple rectangle of 10th n-s, carefully marked for the finished width, and and bent using my miniature bending bars. The sides are over-length, for subsequent accurate trimming over the running plate, and fitting.






The side tanks are very different from the Stroudley style. The sides are vertical with a narrow beading around the top edge. The flat top of the tank is recessed slightly below the beading. I’ve cut and bent the tank side to shape (slightly oversize), and then soldered in the flat top (predrilled with the locations of the fittings). After a final fit to length, I’ve soldered the completed unit to the boiler, running plate and cabside.



With both tanks fitted the next stage is the top beading around the side tanks and bunker. Each section is made up from several parts of 5 thou nickel silver, cut in thin strips using the guillotine. For the side tanks, I first added the curved section in front of the cab opening, including the cab grab rail. The two straight sections on top the tanks were then added, leaving just the corner section at the front end of the tank. For this, I cut a wider strip of n-s, and shaped the inner corner to match the strips already added. I then soldered this in place, trimmed off the excess around the outside, and filed the external curve to shape.

The sketch left hopefully makes this process a bit clearer.