Scale is quoted as 16mm to 1 foot (1:19) which makes it somewhat over scale for the approximate 1:24 scale of the H&MGR.  (NZ 3'6" on 45mm gauge track)  But that will be dealt with later.

So as soon as time permitted it was time to oil the motion and bearings, fill the oiler with steam oil, fill the boiler with 110mm of distilled water  and butane gas into the gas tank. 

The first run, as the wise heads advise, was on rollers.

           

13th May 2012 Update.

This is my first experiment in fitting Radio Control (RC) to a loco, and after reading lots here, on the old GSM and current GSC forums and studying there photo's I don't have much, if anything new to offer in how the RC is fitted.

Handy pages here on the "Club" are: - 

Accucraft Ragleth     Edrig r/c for bigjack.   Developing Caradoc    Bodging a body for Lawley   and   Edrig Upgrade

The servo for the reverser fits into the drivers side bunker and the regulator servo is mounted under the floor pretty much following what others have done before me.  All parts sourced from Hobby King including the linkage stoppers and the clevis horn.  The connection to the regular control arm is a home made bodge from a bit of K&S RHS.

8th July 2013 update

The Leader as it comes out of the box is a fine locomotive but as our railway is nominally set as an NZ Bush Tramway with ambitions to become as small branch line some alterations are needed to bring it into scale.  To match the normal track gauge of 3'6" I try to scale rolling stock to more or less the correct scale of 1:24 on 45mm gauge track so as it come Leader is a bit bulky.  I can do much about the underframe but a new body isn't to onerous a task (I hope).  First thoughts were a fully length saddle tank based on an NZR C Class 0-4-2 loco.  So a cardboard mock up was tried.

Just for fun a side tank mock up was made, very loosely inspired by an 0-4-2 Barclay that worked on a couple of bush tramways.  Both the C and the Barclay were inside framed but lets not let facts get in the way of a good story!

Hence a cunning plan hatched to build two interchangeable bodies and I can effectively have two locos from one!

Partly because I think I like the side tank version better, and partly because I'm not sure if I yet have the skills to build the saddle tank, building the side tank version has been started first.

Job one was to fit a wrap of ceramic/thermal blanket supplied by DJB Model Engineering under boiler cladding of 0.05" thick brass sheet.  The theory is it should increase the run time as less gas should be needed to raise steam with an insulated boiler, we'll see.  

The other reason was to thicken the boiler diameter a bit as it is skinnier than the smokebox as you'll note in the picture below.

Trusting in the hope it is unlikely I'll need to remove the boiler cladding the boiler bands have been soldered in place.  Here the last one is temporarily clapped up with wire prior to soldering in place.

Job two, side tanks and cab side.  In hindsight I should have put more thought the marking out and included the rear of the cab side cutting out the door way complete, the problem I saw at the time was just how I was going to successfully cut it out.  Buy an bandsaw?  Score repeatedly with a scrawler till I could flex and snap the cut line?  Or score heavily then follow the cuts with a piercing saw?   Since I had a piercing saw I gave it a try and working quitely away, sitting at a low level (the work almost at shoulder level) amazingly straight likes were achieved.  The piercing saw cutting along the line os least resistance, the scored lines.  The other scored lines will be fold lines.

Rivets were pressed while the side were still flat.  The area for 4 to 5mm radius front curve was annealed and bent around a piece of dowel.  Folding over the tank sides was less succesful on the first side, folding up with just the internal score line.  I did attempt to anneal the bend area but the fold was okay but not as sharp as I would have liked.  The second side I heavily scored the external side of the fold line and the folding was much sharped and more controlled.

With a band soldered along the tank side both sides were acceptable, though not perfect.

Soldering fine brass strip around the cap opening had me worried for a while, but with nothing ventured nothing gain the first side was 

pinned down to a block of Hebel Stone (light weight concrete that pins can be pushed into).  A small amount of flux was brushed along the joint before positioning little bits of solder along the joint.  Introduce a micro-torch gas flame to melt the solder and it worked!

Picture below is the result following a little clean up work with scrapers and a fibreglass eraser.

Job three, cab front and back.  Cutting and riveting of the cab front and back were much more straight forward, curve for the roof scribed using Leader roof as a guide.  Cut again with the piercing saw following heavily scored lines.

Sundry length of brass angles were soldered inside to provide structural framing around the cab and joint the rear wall.  Positioning these would have been easier if I'd cut the cab side/door from one piece of brass.  Again things are pinned to the Hebel Stone block.

Attaching the back section of the cab side and associated beading was a very nervous job I'd worried over doing for several days.  The result thankfully was very pleasing having spend quite some time first soldering on the rear cab side then pin jigging up the beading in a similar fashion to the previous work.

Kaitaki now has a side tank body ready for detailing!

25th July 2013 Update.

Starting at the cab end simple hand rails of 1.2mm dia wire bend at right angles at each end (as Chris suggested) and soldered in place with washers soldered in place to represent some form of collar.  Brackets for fire irons added to back wall soldered in place plus pins soldered in to represent some form of rivets or bolts.  Lamp bracket to be added to, the mounting holes already drilled.

At the smokebox end of the tanks oilers from Locoworks have been added (one each side) along with Leader valve chest cover also from Locoworks.  The Leaders original sand boxes have been brought forward to between the sidetanks and the smokebox.  Roundhouse clack valves (one each side) soldered onto the boiler cladding.  A blower pipe has been made from brass rod and M2 nuts drilled out and then slid over the rod to I hope look like joints. 

To try and fill in some of the rather large blank expanse of the Leaders underframe I've added some air tanks from Ozark Miniatures under the cab, bolted with some long bolts made from M2 threaded rod to the running board.  The other detail, which is intended to be more a shadow detail than a feature is dummy springs and axle boxes.

The components are 5 thou thick ( 0.005 inch) brass as the backing sheet, dummy axlebox cut from K&S strip 19mmx0.7mm (approx), some 3mm or so angle and Ozark Miniatures loco springs.  I had a bit of trouble initially soldering the springs in place, they having proportionally more mass than the rest of the assembly.  I have two spare springs so "can I do it" I thought, "can I get just enough heat in and out quick enough with the micro gas torch".  I could!  Just don't wave the flame over any of the whitemetal of the spring as I discovered.  They melt quick then, but luckily it was only a slight melt and I managed to salvage that one.  I didn't melt any others - phew! 

23rd September 2013 update

Firstly I give credit to Chris Bird for his excellent tips on painting found here https://sites.google.com/a/gardenrailwayclub.com/club/workshop/painting---the-easy-way   Rather than describe in detail how I did it I would rather refer you to the afore mentioned topic.  I pretty much followed Chris's advice to the letter, cleaning and decreasing the work scrupulously and practising on some tins first.  Hmm okay honesty time, I practise with the spray can etch primer but didn't practise with the top coat.  That was a mistake, the top coat cans I had turned out to be the 4" brush version of spray cans.  Luckliy I discovered this when doing the small parts first, so after stripping all the paint off with paint stripper and a full reclean the small parts were re etched primed.  I then bought some better enamel paint spray cans, from an auto parts chain, and practised more on the tin cans.  Success the second time.  

Following Chris's example thin coats were applied and "flashed" off between coats using a hair dryer.  This is a neat way of working up several thin, very thin coats quickly.  I even used the method to work up brush applied finishing coats on some of the small parts.

Here are the dummy spring and axlebox details painted and fitted....

Headstock Detail & New Couplings

While Accucraft chopper couplings work well they are rather bulky for the NZ feel I was trying to capture.  I had some Slaters Plastikard "Standard Chopper Couplers" https://slatersplastikard.com/others/16mmParts.php  purchased for a wagon building project yet to be started so it made sense to fit them to Kaitaki as Kaitaki would be hauling the said wagons, hmm went I get around to building them.

I was a bit unsure exactly how Slaters intended the couplers to be used so I came up with the idea of fabricating a coupler pocket and pivot the coupling on a 1mm dia pin in the coupler pocket, using the supplied spring, for centring.  To made the centring work better fitted an M3 washer to either end of the spring.  The picture below shows the assembly jig for the coupling pocket.  The jig is soldered with high temperature solder, so in theory as long as I heat the coupling pocket up just enough to melt soft solder my jig won't fall apart!