NS 8811 A wartime 'Austerity' 0-6-0ST

kevsmith May 3, 2020

  1. kevsmith

    kevsmith TrainBoard Member

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    The Hunslet Austerity 0-6-0ST as NS 8811


    Forgive the lengthy pre-amble but before going into the construction of my latest 'lets get it finished in lockdown' projects I thought I'd give you some background on the 'whys and whats'


    Many years ago, long before I went fully into Z gauge, I used to tour the U.K with two big gauge 1 exhibition layouts. One was based on a typical British coal mine and the other on a Bavarian branch line. As the show team got older and we found ourselves living further apart geographically it became apparent that lugging 8 metre long, heavy, layouts about was getting too much so they were both retired and sold.


    Mardy Colliery principally ran small British industrial tank locomotives and here the saga of the Austerity tanks begins. The design was a development of a standard Hunslet 550050 class modified and simplified to meet the requirements of the war department commission for a locomotive that could be built in large numbers relatively easily for use in the U.K and Europe after liberation to replace the thousands of locomotives lost in conflict.

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    No less than 485 were eventually built by Hunslet and other manufacturers and so rugged and powerful was the design that construction carried on until 1964!

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    The Wemyss Private railway in Scotland had theirs handsomely finished in crimson lake. I really must get around to rewashing the original transparency and rescanning !


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    I started with the 550050. Construction was nickel silver superstructure on a GFS steel chassis with wheel castings by Locosteam and power was a Beuhler motor mounted vertically in the firebox. All axles were sprung. It had the characteristic deep buffer beams and sloping back to the bunker. It was finished in an industrial livery and named 'Topham'


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    Kev
     
  2. kevsmith

    kevsmith TrainBoard Member

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    next was 68011. A standard model that went into British Railways stock after the war and then went into preservation on the Kent and East Sussex railway. Construction was the same as 'Topham' and it was a very powerful, smooth runner. It became the loco of choice to bring the empties up the incline into the colliery yard on the layout as the four wheelers usually needed a banking (helper) engine to get up.

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    i went the whole hog with this one and fitted working inside valve gear. This was barely visible but gave me a certain satisfaction knowing it was there

    Attacking the incline

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    The pair working the coal screens on Mardy Colliery

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  3. kevsmith

    kevsmith TrainBoard Member

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    Lurking in the wheel casting drawer were two more sets of driving wheel castings. Jack wanted an Austerity that had the unique cut down cab of the examples that ran on the Lambton, Hetton and Joicey Colliery system in the North East coalfields and so I started two more locos with the fourth being again a standard example. This time the superstructure was brass but in all other respects the design was as before. I got the Lambton cab one finished after a major fight with the shape of the roof but the last one fell off the radar and was dispatched to the loft in 2000

    Every now and then it was taken out and dusted off but my heart really wasn't in it so it has languished for quite a while. Now I am working from home due to the lockdown and there no show deadlines for the Z layouts it seemed the obvious next one to finish after the Thai railways C56 2-6-0.


    The pair of them taken on an early digital camera. Jeez they were rubbish back then! Seen on the dual gauge test track mixing gauge 1 and gauge 3



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    The Lambton one working Jack's later colliery layout

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    The first thing to decide was what to finish it as. Another British one didn't appeal to me but then I remembered the 27 that were sold to the Netherlands Railways after the war. Substantially unaltered, no less than three of these have survived into preservation to join the 67 other examples that have survived. That's right, there are 70 still surviving today and it has been a mainstay of preserved lines in the U.K for decades being powerful, easy to maintain and easy to get hold of.


    I've decided to do NS 8811. It won't be an exact copy as the original has been modified in preservation a couple of times but should be fairly close and finished in WD Green with the characteristic continental headlamps.




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    Laying all the bits out it was apparent it wasn't far off. It had donated one wheelset to the Lambton one due to a quartering issue and the side rods needed tweaking and I couldn't find the firebox backhead anywhere so will have to make another.



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    more soon

    Kev
     
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  4. kevsmith

    kevsmith TrainBoard Member

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    A start was made by making the torque arm that holds the motor upright but allows the back axle to move up and down on the springs and also the inside valve gear. 68011 had full working inside valve gear but on 8811 it will be static. It is just to fill the big empty void between the frames. The chassis was then run up and down with the gear wheel disengaged to check for tight spots. One crankpin hole needed easing slightly and it was o.k


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    Next was the new firebox backhead, reversing stand and the details on the cab roof.



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    Balance weights added to the wheels. Not the offset centre one. This to balance out the weight of the valvegear and connecting rods. Brake hangers and brake blocks fitted

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    The boiler/saddle tank virtually complete. The safety valves and whistle live in a recess just in font of the cab and will be fitted after painting

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    Kev
     
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  5. kevsmith

    kevsmith TrainBoard Member

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    The brake rigging has been added. this drops out so I can push the brake hangers forward to clear the wheelsets and get them out for painting. The sand pipes will be added right at the very end

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    The injectors are real pigs to make and involve a bit of finger burning but they are very prominent on the real thing so you cant really miss them off

    Chassis and wheelsets primed in red acrylic primer after a good clean up. Nothe that the driven axle and motor just has the working bits masked off

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    The brake rigging, Rods,backhead, cab roof and reversing stand being mainly brass were cleaned up and then dunked in white vinegar for about 30 minutes to etch them. Rinsed and dried off and sprayed with the new Hycote aerosol etch primer I discovered recently. Not cheap but sure seems to work

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    The backhead has had the bits I want to keep polished metal masked off with 'Maskol' fluid which can be peeled off once the black top coat is on

    The cab and footplate had a lot of crud on it particularly in the bunker and the inside corners of the cab. It was grit blasted ( with a full size one spot blaster not a model one) to get it cleaned up

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  6. kevsmith

    kevsmith TrainBoard Member

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    This odd picture is the boiler/saddle tank dunked in white vinegar to etch it even more. I agitated it every ten minutes for about 40 minutes so the inside of the boiler got a good clean as well as the inside of the smokestack

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    body components in etch primer, chassis and wheels in black

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    I've made a start on painting the inside of the frames and dummy valve gear red.

    So once the black had cured I popped the wheelsets back in the lathe and polished the paint off the treads and flanges. The crankpins were polished up and the coupling rods painted Burgundy.

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    The axle retaining screws were refitted and the brake rigging put back on.

    So I had bought some British racing green paint which is a very useful Brunswick Green and though I'd do a test shot to see how it looked. AAAGH! it was metallic. Fortunately I had only misted one side of the tank so I let it dry and rooted through the paint cupboard to see what I'd got in stock. I'd got some Brooklands green which actually looked all right.

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    The inside of the cab is starting to get painted Buff before I put the backhead and reversing stand in


    Kev
     
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  7. kevsmith

    kevsmith TrainBoard Member

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    There is a bolt that comes out of the back of the boiler through the front of the cab. A nut on the inside of the cab pulls the two together. A simllar one comes out of the bottom of the smokebox through the footplate. The chassis is held to the body with 6BA screws that engage with captive nuts on the top of the footplate. The sprung buffers have been added after polishing up and the screw couplings. These are lost wax nickel silver components you have to assemble yourself and add to the laser cut steel drawhooks


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    Once the main assembly is done the backhead goes onto the same bolt with another nut holding it on. Reversing stand is in. Now I had very little idea what sort of uniform Dutch drivers and firemen wore so I asked Martijn over on the JNS forum if he had any info. Based on what he sent me I went scurrying into the loft as I was sure I had something somewhere

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    safety valves and whistle are mounted in the recess on top of the boiler

    Now the headlamps look very strange to my British eyes and are very distinctive but would really make the model look like an NS one.

    Years ago I had cast some German ones in resin for the Baden State Railway 0-4-0+0-4-0 Mallet I had scrachbuilt that looked as if they might be a good basis

    This is one of those 'warts and all' close up pics that show where I had got to

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    More soon
     
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  8. RailMix

    RailMix TrainBoard Member

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    This is very nice work. That round cab roof version is very unusual. It must have been built to deal with some extremely tight clearances, and, I suspect, was not very comfortable for the crew.
     
  9. kevsmith

    kevsmith TrainBoard Member

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    Thanks Tom
    You have to bear in mind that the area the Lambton Hetton & Joicey was right in the middle of the area where the very first ever railways were built. The North East of England was one of the cradles of the industrial revolution. The Stockton & Darlington (1825) was running steam locomotives five years before Rocket won the Rainhill trials for the Liverpool and Manchester. Bridges and tunnels in the U.K have always been incredibly small compared to railway systems built overseas afterwards but the LH&JR were even tighter. It was a big railway system as well and unusually for a coalmining enterprise in England had tender engines as well as tank engines.

    The restricted loading gauge (as we call it over here) still gives us problems to this day. The railway company I work for still cannot send a full height ISO container south down one line we run on because a farm overbridge built in 1878 is still there!

    Kev
    Lord, Please open the pubs again before I become an alcoholic!
     
  10. RailMix

    RailMix TrainBoard Member

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    I suspected something like that was the case. Sounds like interesting operation, picturesque structures and a lot of interesting equipment.
     
  11. kevsmith

    kevsmith TrainBoard Member

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    Finished.

    Lettering was a bit old school. I had some very old dry print white alphabets of uncertain condition. So I applied the letters and numbers to some Microscale clear decal and as expected some didn't apply properly. Sealed them with acrylic varnish and then applied them like a regualr decal

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    The fancy lamps were painted and had the lenses put in.

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    Now to decide what to do next? (After tiyding up the workshop the looks like a bomb has hit it!)

    Kev
     
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  12. kevsmith

    kevsmith TrainBoard Member

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    Part 2 of the video



    Maybe this other stalled project, At the other end of the gauge spectrum

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    NKP Berkshire 2-8-4 in Z. There already 9 parts of the build video on youtube but as an example of how far it has fallen off the radar the last post was October 2011!

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    Kev
     
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  13. kevsmith

    kevsmith TrainBoard Member

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    Just got the February issue of Continental Modeller magazine and they have run a six page article about the model

    Which is nice, as is the payment!

    Kev
     
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  14. uhrwerk

    uhrwerk TrainBoard Member

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    Beautiful and inspiring work!
     
  15. CNE1899

    CNE1899 TrainBoard Member

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    Kev,
    WOWIE! Man do you have some talent. Love the 0-6-0 resurrection.
    On top of that a brass Berkshire in Z! Hope to see the Berkshire build in the Z forum.
    Brass is where I aspire to in Z.

    Scott
     

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