Tender: Side sheet doors

Next on the list (it's a very long exhaustive list) was to do the doors for the tender, in this case the doors that connect to the cab doors when the locomotive is in service. These are not covered in Don's drawings and thus I did a little research and scaled off photos to get me the dimensions required.
These doors as fitted to a Gresley Pacific are a little different to most other types used. Most have single doors, the majority attached to the cab, perhaps IIRC a few to the tender, for Gresley we have doors attached to both which then 'interlock'.


I first cut a piece of 12" wide copper to the correct door height, marked out the reinforcing strips, tinned that area and then sweated on suitable pieces of brass strip.
This gave me a piece big enough for the tender doors and also the loco doors at a later date. This picture was taken after a quick clean with a sanding sponge.

Before cutting the doors to size I soldered on the hinges, I cheated a little here as in my old model boats box I had some brass rudder hinges from a ship of the line model.
These happened to be the correct width with small holes just like the prototype. I put a suitable piece of brass rod to represent the pin( that will be fixed to the tender side) and squeezed the hinge together. This was then clamped to the door and sweated on. The pic shows one hinge in place and another just to show what it is. Once in place the two brass rods were removed.

The two completed doors, showing both inside and outside views

The pins where done as pairs, one piece of brass bar cut over-length with the brass rods( used earlier to space the door hinges) silver soldered on each end. The pic shows a simple jig spacing the hinges at their correct positions holding them against the tender. These where then soldered on taking care not to let heat get to the locker doors. Once happy with the position and fixed, the over-length tabs used to hold the pins at the correct distance as seen in this picture were cut off and filed to finish.

I then reversed the jig to hold the pins for the other side were the process was repeated. We can see here that  both doors are tested in place. I later gave the effected area a good clean and ensured that the doors hung correctly.
The locking clasp for the doors was covered later