Making some handbrakes in 7mm/ft

I figured as I had just finished a number of controllers I had better make some goose neck type handbrakes to go with them. My current project, the old style drop centre along with my next couple of planned projects, were all non-airbrake cars until the end and with reasonably open cabs controllers and goose neck brakes were always going to be necessary.

I like mass producing items like these because once I have everything set up the work goes quite quickly. With 14 of each now I won't have to think about these things for a couple of years at least.

Brass seemed to be the only way to go and it was obvious that I was never going to get the taper on the goose neck so I didn't bother. The first photo shows the "kit" of pieces I cut before I started. There is one short piece of brass tube missing from the first photo. More about that later. I made up a very simple jig with some fine nails to bend all the brake handles as well as the "V" brackets that held the brake unit to the front wall.



Then I soldered the short section of tube to the brake handle in the appropriate place. My favourite flux is "Yorkshire Flux" I'm not sure if it is still available but I was given a small bottle many years ago. It never seems to go off and not being an acid, clean up afterwards is minimal.

With the brass tube in place I soldered the bracket in place and epoxied a ring cut off a length of styrene tube to the base to represent the ratchet. Then I had a problem. I wanted to make a token effort at least to represent the knob on the top of the goose neck. My first attempt was to use epoxy. I hoped that it would form a tear-drop shape and look the part when it had set. It was not to be and that idea was a complete failure. It might have worked with 1 hour set epoxy but the 5 minute stuff went off too quick.

My next attempt which was also a failure was to try and model them with Milliput. The knobs were too small and wanted to stick to my fingers more than they did to the end of the brass rod. So I ended up cutting another 14 short brass tubes and soldering then to the end of the handle.

So everything ended up a bit squarish but that still suits me. I have never pretended to be a master class modeller. When I used to fly RC model aircraft my favourite was "Stand Off Scale" and that is still the way I prefer to model. If the proportions are correct and the model "sits" right and most important of all, runs well, I am very happy.

The finished hand brakes.