Back to the BG for a bit. Today's goal was to erect the body sides.
I formed a simple right-angled jig of softwood. Fortuitously, the scrap wood I selected fitted neatly in the body between the folded top and bottom edges. To help things along I also formed the turnunder so the etched parts would sit neatly while I ran a solder joint up the corners.
This was reasonably successful in that I managed to get a pair of sides and ends joined together.
After a little vocabulary extension I also managed to join the pairs together.
Like all good soldered joints, each part was cleaned, fluxed and tinned with my regular cored electrical solder. When brought together with a variety of clamps and wood offcuts, more flux and more solder on a clean iron tip let me run a seam up the join. The second attempts were better! Things even ended more or less square! Miracles do happen!
Now I have a fairly rigid body to sit on the frames. Next step is to fit the partitions for strengthening, blinders for the various grilles, and get some new material in for the roof. I have borrowed Rob P's idea of shaped internal ribs and longerons fitted to the roof itself, but I need to get some suitable brass sheet in first.
The underframe is pretty much complete now. The safety chains have been fitted, either side of the main coupling. I need to get some road testing done, which is a story in itself.
Yesterday I set about fitting an outside third rail to my test track, gauged off for the 49mm for the broad gauge. The idea was simple: take a length of C&L flexible track and slice it down the middle, then slip the chopped sleepers between the standard gauge ones, drill and pin.
Ah, the best laid plans. The test track is built on a flexible mat surface, because that's what was available in the loft space. This is fine for track with rails a fixed distance apart. A single rail, though, doesn't hold the gauge because of the flexible material. After some abortive attempts at getting things lined up, I decided the easiest thing was to actually build a proper BG test track on a rigid surface. This is what I will do, once I've acquired the relevant components from the BGS.
So, while the coach body is now almost ready to fit to the chassis, I don't want to do that until I have been able to test the running and squareness of said chassis. That needs the test track. Guess what I'm going to be spending some money on shortly!
