Next to make was the brake screw and handle. The only decent picture of this brake van appears in LB&SCR Carriages Vol 2 and shows the vertical handle of the lever. What happens the other end we don't know but, looking closely at the photo and to me at least, it looks as if the horizontal part of the lever is of square section and tapered. I didn't fancy a lot of delicate filing and so, I have based my example on this one which appears in a drawing of a MR brake van. There is a nice plan view in the drawing too.
This is how I turned the screw mounts. My 4 jaw wouldn't accept the 1/8" x 1/8" square section brass and so, I drilled a hole in a piece of hexagon and soldered it inside. This shows the mount part machined.
This is the vertical handle being turned well, actually, it's finished. I turned the bar down to 1/16" and then turned a spigot on the end that would eventually fit into the flat section of the handle. When I fitted the spigot, I was able to simply peen over the end as one would with a rivet, and then cleaned it back.
The parts to be silver soldered together. I opted for silver soldering as I wanted to metal black the finished handle and I've never had much success with trying to blacken soldered things.
It was a bit of a job positioning the little collar as every time that I heated the flux, it would bubble and the thing would move but I got it in the end after repeated re-positioning. I wasn't so fortunate with the little turned handle as that did move or, at least, I think the bar moved as it was heated. I made a new one, cut this one off and re soldered. I wasn't going to scrap the whole thing as positioning that collar was a pain.
The finished handle et al. If the handle looks as if it has a bit of a lean it's because nothing is fixed yet as this is just a dummy run to make sure all fitted and that the handle could be turned without hitting the sides of the window. The vertical handle looks a bit tall but it scales at about 6" so, about right. I needed to bring it all this far so that I could fit the long brake rod underneath the van, which is next on the list.
If anyone out there thinks that this is all too much and that finished stages is all that is wanted then, just shout and I'll keep it brief
Jon