The following article, written and illustrated by Stewart McSporran, describes his experience of building a MODRATEC Lever Frame for his 'Loch Awe' model railway. The article is reproduced here by kind permission of the The 2mm Scale Association who published it in 'The 2mm Magazine'.

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Building the MODRATEC Lever Frame - Stewart McSporran

Building the Kit

So, what do you get for your money?

When the package arrives you'll find that "kit" is a bit of a misnomer; aid to scratch building is probably nearer the mark. It contains a large quantity of brass and screws, Figure 2.

Figure 2: The Kit as Delivered [Click for full size image]

Building the kit requires the drilling of many holes, many many holes, many many many holes. (Sorry, got a bit Round the Horne there.) I estimate my 18 lever kit required around 250 holes to be drilled and approximately 75 of those had to be tapped. To achieve accuracy in drilling, the kit comes with a set of drilling templates, Figure 3, which, when used in conjunction with two jigs that you'll need to make, do indeed ensure accuracy. I only made one mistake out of all 250 holes.

Figure 3: Drilling Templates

The first step is to identify and mark out every part prior to drilling. This is simply a "measure twice, cut once" exercise to familiarize you with the parts. Figure 4 shows all the parts marked up. The brown rectangles are acrylic sheets with their protective paper covers on.

Figure 4: All Parts Marked Up Prior to Drilling

The actual drilling is carried out in two stages; first of all set up the template and drill through the appropriate hole in it to create a pilot hole on the work piece. Once the work is marked the template is removed and the hole drilled fully through. Note that each leaver has a blind hole that is used to hold a spring and ball bearing; more on this later. Figures 5, 6 and 7 show the marking out process and both of the user constructed drilling jigs.

Figure 5: Drilling Pilot Holes in a Lever Using Jig 2

Figure 6: The Pilot Hole Created in Figure 5

Figure 7: Using Jig 1 to Mark Out a Bearer

It's not very clear from the instructions exactly how the jigs should be constructed and used. Basically they provide a means of holding the drilling templates in registration with the work piece. I got jig 2 pretty much right, but if I were to make jig 1 again I would use metal pins rather than dowels for the vertical stops shown to the right in Figure 7. I would also make sure that the centre of the pin was no more than 5mm from edge of the jig, not central.

Once the drilling is finished initial construction proceeds quite quickly. Figure 8 shows a trial assembly of the framework, whose purpose is to allow fettling of the tappet guides.

Figure 8: Fettling the Tappet Guides

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I put the frame in for the club modelling competition and received a lot of favourable comment from members.... (Archie)

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