More Pre-Grouping Wagons in 4mm - the D299 appreciation thread.

[sharris]

I think the answer is probably to use the most appropriate method for each part. I can see that the Silhouette would be excellent for evenly scribing planks, door outlines, panels and the fiddly bits, but it might be easier to chop up lengths of microstrip to do the chunky solebars and head stocks rather than trying to print and laminate them with the inherent risk of distortion.

[Compound2632]

Some progress with the LNW wagons today. The second side of the D54 to D53 conversion took about half-an hour. Top plank cut off, diagonal strapping and door banger plate scraped off, ‘bolt holes’ drilled:

 

 

On this side I used a triangular needle file to gouge out the grooves between the planks where I’d removed the strapping. New strapping on and scraped down from 10 thou to nearer 5 thou, and bolt heads embossed from behind:

 

 

I then had a complete aberration: instead of cutting the remaining 5-plank end down to size, I started work on the end I’d already modified! Some bodging with the bits of end pillar I then trimmed off the remaining end sort of saved the day:

 

 

Some tidying-up needed once the joints have hardened. The plastic used for these kits is quite soft, so easily scratched, skrawked, or indeed moulded when soaked with MekPak.

 

Meanwhile, in the paintshop, the waterslide transfers have been applied to the gloss-varnished D3 and D4, using Microset and Microsol. Here’s the D4:

 

 

This is looking promising – the carrier film is hardly visible, except in the groove under the right-hand diamond. Thanks to Edwardian and others who recommended the gloss varnish. This transfer sheet is suffering from age; the transfers aren’t coming cleanly off the backing sheet – a tear in the T of TONS has been repaired using the I from MEDIUM.

 

The first instalment of my PGCE bursary came through this week so I’ve ordered my Christmas presents – Vols. 1 & 2 of LNWR Wagons and another of Bill Bedford’s resin kits – the D1 one-plank open.

 

 

Edited June 7, 2022 by Compound2632
Images re-inserted

[richard i]

Brave to enter the profession, I am almost 20 years in.

Just remember it can consume all your hours and you have to be strict about leaving yourself some modeling time....for your own sanity.

Richard

[jrg1]

If you are scribing planking, I recommend an Olfa P45 cutter-I also use one for etch fold lines, as the cutter gouges a groove.

[Compound2632]

Just remember it can consume all your hours and you have to be strict about leaving yourself some modeling time....for your own sanity.

 

 

Thanks Richard - the frequency with which I post genuine modelling progress has gone down!

[Compound2632]

This is for MikeOxon! Back in September there was a further round of discussion of GWR wagon red, spread over several threads and blogs, including Mike’s own which included photos taken at Cinderford sometime around 1890. These showed a mixture of GWR wagons that look either ‘light’ or ‘dark’. One interpretation is that the ‘light’ wagons are painted grey and the ‘dark’ wagons red, suggesting both liveries coexisted at this period. There was some very interesting discussion of the spectral response function of early photographic film and attempts at modelling this by digital post-processing photos of model wagons in the two liveries. There was also discussion of paint chemistry and weathering processes, in the course of which I made the suggestion that the surface finish of the paint may be a factor in the apparent colour – with the paints then in use new paint would be gloss, weathering to matt.

 

I’ve had my latest part-finished LNW wagons sitting next to some completed ones in my cabinet for a while and have noticed a difference in apparent colour. The wagons I’m comparing have all been painted in Precision NBR wagon grey over Halfords grey primer. The completed wagons are sprayed with Humbrol matt varnish. The latest ones have a gloss finish (again Humbrol) to improve the appearance of the waterslide transfers. Of course the intention is that these will eventually be sprayed matt, once I’ve got round to adding the tare weights using Pressfix transfers.

 

This first photo was taken indoors on an overcast day with the room light on – a ‘natural light’ 14 W (75 W equivalent) bulb. D54 coal wagon in matt on the left, D4 open in gloss on the right:

 

 

Next, with the addition of some ‘floodlighting’ from my modelling lamp, the angle highlighting the planking grooves:

 

 

Finally and for me the clincher, with camera flash (note shadows on the background paper):

 

 

(There seems to have been a sudden fall of snow – or drifting of the flipchart-paper!)

 

I admit that this is somewhat unscientific – these are colour photos taken with a modern digital camera. However, I think they do demonstrate that surface finish does have an effect. Nineteenth-century photographs will of necessity have been taken in strong sunlight, so I think the last photo taken with flash is particularly telling.

 

 

 

 

Edited June 7, 2022 by Compound2632
Images re-inserted

[MikeOxon]

This is for MikeOxon!

 

Thank you for taking this up and conducting more experiments   I agree that surface-finish affects the apparent lightness of a surface, depending on the nature of the incident light.  For a shiny surface in direct light (e.g. sunlight), there may be a bright specular reflection in one direction, with much less light spread in other directions, whereas a matt surface will spread the light more evenly in all directions.  You have demonstrated this very well in your second photos where the edges of the grooves provide bright specular reflections.

 

I always try to avoid direct flash, on camera, because it can exaggerate differences of light and shade, but, in this case, that's exactly what you are aiming to do!  You have, however, introduced the difficulty that the wagon further away (on the right) will receive less light from the flash so, to complete the picture, it would be interesting to check what happens if you swap the wagons over, putting the 'gloss' nearer the camera.

 

Photographs always tend to produce deeper shadows than we observe in 'reality' - solebars in shadow often look black, for example.  It will always be difficult to 'prove' anything from B/W photos of coloured objects but, taken together with other evidence, we can use them to explore possibilities.

 

EDIT As an afterthought, here's your 'shocking red' wagon given the 'colour blind' early film emulsion treatment:

 

Edited October 30, 2016 by MikeOxon

[Mikkel]

Thanks gents for these very interesting experiments.

 

The very obviously different shade of the numberplate in the black and white photo above intrigues me. Was this treated differently from the wagon itself during the painting/ varnish process? The original photo also shows a colour difference, but it comes across very strongly in the black and white rendition. 

 

 

Edited October 30, 2016 by Mikkel

[MikeOxon]

 

..............................The very obviously different shade of the numberplate in the black and white photo above intrigues me. ...................

 

 

Indeed.  I've tried a little colour analysis on the original photo, to try and understand why the B/W conversion has brought out such a strong difference.

 

 

I used the 'point sample' tool in Photoshop Elements to pick from two marked points and then looked at the R,G,B components of the two colours.  The cast plate background is not only lighter overall (higher numbers all round) but has a much higher proportion of green and blue, even though the visual appearance is still reddish. 

 

If the cast plate were simply 'brighter', the numbers would have increased from (157,65,14) to (182,90,39) - i.e 25 brightness steps all round - whereas green has increased by 47 and blue by 67, which have contributed to the blue-sensitive B/W conversion.

 

This raises another factor in the shiny vs matt argument in that, if the plate is 'shinier' it may be reflecting colour from the environment around the wagon, so changing the apparent hue.  The brain has an extraordinary ability to discount such effects in real life but they can be very apparent in photos, where, for example, shiny leaves can be seen to reflect a lot of blue from the sky.

 

What a tangled web

[Compound2632]

Mike and Mikkel, thank you both for your comments. With regards to my experiment with the LNW wagons, right now with artificial light only, what the naked eye sees is closest to my middle photo but in strong sunlight the difference is more pronounced - closer to my flash photo. I don't think there is that much difference in the flash-light flux incident on the two wagons - the camera is set to x4 digital zoom and is about 40 cm from the wagons. (It's just a cheap and cheerful family snap camera: Panasonic Lumix DMC-FS62.)

 

Mike's experiment with my red O4 photo is interesting. As I described in the original post #15, the body colour is "Humbrol 100 with a light wash of the grey slop in the bottom of my brush-cleaning jam-jar", while "for the plates, I scanned a photo in Atkins (Vol. 1 p. 70, wagon no. 73697), imported into CorelDraw, traced and printed onto photo paper at the best resolution of my HP Deskjet printer. The base colour was adjusted to hex code #BD6038 (R: 189; G: 96 B:56) but some highlight and shading was added to try for a tromp l’oeil effect for the raised numbers and edge of the plate". So that's not far out from Mike's analysis - certainly there is a significant blue component. The colour match of the plates to the body colour was by eye and "close enough". What I didn't do and perhaps should have, was to give the finished wagon a spray coat of matt varnish to unify the surface finish – so the plate is probably both shinier and bluer than the body.

 

The point about reflected light from the surroundings is interesting too. I’d understood that the famous “blackberry black” of LNW engines had a blue component due to the reflection of the blue of the sky, the actual paint being “drop black” but with a high standard of finish including several coats of varnish (see Talbot et al., “LNWR Liveries”, HMRS, 1985). Of course those who have described this colour were choosing to remember what they’d seen on glorious June days out at Rugby or Tamworth, not on overcast, smog-laden February days in the bowels of New Street Station.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited October 30, 2016 by Compound2632

[wagonbasher]

Intriguing that the kit numbers 755 and 756 morphed into 575 and 576! The number 754 doesn’t appear to have been used – perhaps this was going to be the cattle wagon?

 

I’ve started four wagons from my recent Ratio kit purchase. The 4-plank wagon from kit 576 has being built as a D4 with grease axleboxes and scotch brake and one of the dropside wagons from the Permanent Way set, kit 575, as a D3 by the simple expedient of cutting the end pillars down, as pointed out by Brassey and illustrated in post #130. Both these are currently in the paint shop.

 

The D3/D62 dropside wagons were 16’0” over headstocks, whereas the fixed-side 2-plank D2 was 15’6” and hence the version in kit 752 used the shorter underframe. In the Permanent Way kit, the short underframes are used for the bolster wagons which I’m less enthusiastic about, so I’m scratch-building a D2 body.

 

LNW D2 WIP 1.JPG

 

Sides are 40 thou Plastikard, with the grooves scribed on, scrawking with a 45° blade held perpendicular to the side to give the bevel in the top of the siderail and lower plank. The vertical strapping is 30 thou x 10 thou Microstrip. My first plan was to drill 0.5 mm holes and poke plastic rod through to represent the bolt heads but (a) the small bits I’ve got turned out to be a duff lot with no bite and (b) I came to doubt I could get the holes lined up well enough. I then thought of adding individual bolt heads made by dicing up 20 thou x 10 thou Microstrip but these proved (a) hard to cut square and (b) hard to position. The photo shows what I did instead – strips of 20 thou x 10 thou Microstrip lined up reasonably parallel. These are trimmed back to leave square(ish) bolt heads:

 

LNW D2 WIP 2.JPG

 

This might be thought rather an inefficient use of Microstrip; my excuse is that the packet I was using cost me 95p sometime around 1985! I’ve also added corner plates from 10 thou plasticard, with bolt heads embossed using a pair of compasses with a bluntish point. The corner plates are lightly scored on the inside of the bend; this helps them fold neatly with a nicely rounded outside bend. I just need to add the end pillars – 60 thou x 60 thou Plastikard should do (I think the originals are 4½” square timber).

 

My fourth wagon is going to be a 4-plank 8 ton coal wagon to D53, using the 5-plank D54 from kit 576 as my starting point. I began by removing the top plank from the side by scoring and snapping off and trimming down the end pillars ready to do the same on the end. I very carefully scraped the diagonal strapping off and made good the planking groves (only the RH end as I’m feeling my way here):

 

LNW D53 WIP 1.JPG

 

I drilled holes in the positions of the bolts for the new diagonal strapping:

 

LNW D53 WIP 2.JPG

 

… using a larger diameter than I would really have liked. This photo also shows the end cut down to size. Note how steeply angled the top of the end pillars are on LNWR wagons. (If one was feeling extravagant, one could save some labour and simply use the ends from the 4-plank open!) The replacement diagonal strapping is 30 thou x 10 thou Microstrip, scraped down to nearer 5 thou thick:

 

LNW D53 WIP 3.JPG

 

Bolt heads were embossed by poking through from behind with the blind end of one of my duff 0.5 mm drill bits. I’m not satisfied with how this experiment has turned out and anyway the alignment of the strapping where it meets the corner plate isn’t right so I’ll be scraping this effort off and trying again.

 

These four wagons use up two short (15’6”) and two long (16’0”) underframes. I might use another short underframe to make a D1 one-plank open but I’m casting around for ideas for 16’ wagons – in post #136 Penlan has listed the covered goods wagons – D33, D87 and D88 are all 16’ long. The 1909 date for D88 rules it out for my period; D87 might just be squeezed in as brand new – flat sides but lots of interesting strapping.  That leaves D33 as the ideal candidate but the outside framing looks challenging and, from Penlan’s notes, it seems there are many pifalls such as different door widths on either side – so that’s probably one not to be thought of until I’ve got the LNWR wagon books.

 

Any other suggestions for common types? I don’t want ballast wagons – I feel these would only be seen in groups and on LNWR lines. My excuse for all these LNWR wagons (remembering that 1903-ish is well pre-pooling) is that there will be a LNWR goods service (worked by a Bachmann coal tank…) exercising running powers over my Midland line – which means I’ll be needing a brake van; London Road Models do a D16 which would suit nicely. I’ll have to get my whitemetal soldering skills up to speed first!

I'm working on a couple of Ratio LNWR wagons myself so spotted this excellent thread..  Just a thought with you 5 plank to 4 plank strapping is the use of Aluminium Foil Tape.   You can buy this relatively cheaply and it is quite thick aluminium foil (certainly thicker than they type you wrap your butties )..

 

The tape comes on a silicone release carrier, If you draw a line down the back of the tape (draw on the paper carrier) then make your rivets / bolt at the right spacing with a small but blunt pointed object (practise with different things to get the size of indent you want.  Turn the foil over to view the rivets and by eye cut your strap either side of the rivet line.  It is self adhesive so peal off the backing and stick on, trim off the surplus at the ends with a knife.  If the strap looks too thick / too thin just do it again. smooth the strap down loosing any blemishes and knife marks. 

 

Note, you must use primer suitable for aluminium otherwise your paint will fall off

 

Andy

[Compound2632]

I'm working on a couple of Ratio LNWR wagons myself so spotted this excellent thread..  Just a thought with you 5 plank to 4 plank strapping is the use of Aluminium Foil Tape.   You can buy this relatively cheaply and it is quite thick aluminium foil (certainly thicker than they type you wrap your butties )..

 

The tape comes on a silicone release carrier, If you draw a line down the back of the tape (draw on the paper carrier) then make your rivets / bolt at the right spacing with a small but blunt pointed object (practise with different things to get the size of indent you want.  Turn the foil over to view the rivets and by eye cut your strap either side of the rivet line.  It is self adhesive so peal off the backing and stick on, trim off the surplus at the ends with a knife.  If the strap looks too thick / too thin just do it again. smooth the strap down loosing any blemishes and knife marks. 

 

Note, you must use primer suitable for aluminium otherwise your paint will fall off

 

Andy

 

Thanks Andy - sounds a promising technique; hope you can post some photos! My conversion to D53 is just waiting for the paintshop - or rather waiting for the final touches to my D2 so both can go in together - but my coursework comes first at the moment...

[wagonbasher]

Thanks Andy - sounds a promising technique; hope you can post some photos! My conversion to D53 is just waiting for the paintshop - or rather waiting for the final touches to my D2 so both can go in together - but my coursework comes first at the moment...

 

Ok give me a couple of days

 

Andy

[agt613]

Brave to enter the profession, I am almost 20 years in.

Just remember it can consume all your hours and you have to be strict about leaving yourself some modeling time....for your own sanity.

Richard

Richard is right. I am married to a teacher (now retired, thankfully) who did a 70 hour week for 20 years. She looks back and finds it crazy. I found it quite wearing and a bit lonely, to be honest. If you have a 'better half', give them all the time you can or they might wander off!

[sharris]

I'm working on a couple of Ratio LNWR wagons myself so spotted this excellent thread..  Just a thought with you 5 plank to 4 plank strapping is the use of Aluminium Foil Tape.   You can buy this relatively cheaply and it is quite thick aluminium foil (certainly thicker than they type you wrap your butties )..

 

The tape comes on a silicone release carrier, If you draw a line down the back of the tape (draw on the paper carrier) then make your rivets / bolt at the right spacing with a small but blunt pointed object (practise with different things to get the size of indent you want.  Turn the foil over to view the rivets and by eye cut your strap either side of the rivet line.  It is self adhesive so peal off the backing and stick on, trim off the surplus at the ends with a knife.  If the strap looks too thick / too thin just do it again. smooth the strap down loosing any blemishes and knife marks. 

 

Note, you must use primer suitable for aluminium otherwise your paint will fall off

 

Andy

 

I've used adhesive copper foil before for EMI shielding, but never thought about it for modelling, might have to give it a try - it's also particularly good for shredding fingers, so be careful with the edges when sticking it down! I think it's more expensive than aluminium, but if you're using brass-friendly primer it might be more compatible. The datasheet here has foils (Al and Cu) with thicknesses from about 0.15mm down to 0.07mm.

 

http://www.farnell.com/datasheets/1848360.pdf

[wagonbasher]

Ok give me a couple of days

 

Andy

Quicker than I thought

 

 

I've just made a single strap as an example, the wagon is not meant to have external strapping and did have the bolt getting in the way a bit.

 

I drew the line on the back (probably pushed on too much) then every 4mm (I measured the wagon, I had to rub a pencil over paper to get the size and spacing of the wagon sides).  I embossed a bolt head with the end of sharp tweezers.  The cut out strip looked good but on the model it is a little wide.  I would just do it again until happy.  almost no cost and takes seconds.

 

Andy

[57xx]

I've used the gloss varnish thing to darken up wagons I've used Halfords red oxide primer on. Saved having to buy any bauxite paint I think I stumbled on it by accident when applying a Klear coat for applying transfers.

[Compound2632]

Just arrived, as compensation for not having time to get to the Warley show this year, a wagon kit so simple I might even get it built in between lesson planning! The Mousa resin kit for the LNW D1 one-plank open wagon, with choice of primitive or even more primitive brake block (singular…):

 

 

Note the MJT waisted bearings - hoping for a better fit this time. I see Bill has just got his D2 and D3 out as 3D printed resin – so there will be many about before I get my Ratio kit-bashed D2 finished! My Ratio-based LNW wagon-building bout is really being overtaken by technological developments what with these, London Road Models w-irons and Coast Line Models 3D printed and etched parts. Though I think I did mention splashing out on some Coast Line grease axleboxes – here they are fitted to my D53 conversion:

 

 

The 3D printed parts are rather brittle – I snapped one spring so had to graft on part of a spare oil axlebox spring from the Ratio kits – this bodge is tucked away out of sight under the brake lever. Note the profound lack of interior detail – waiting for a load of coal. (There is a hole in the floor to avoid warping.)

Edited June 7, 2022 by Compound2632

[wagonbasher]

Just arrived, as compensation for not having time to get to the Warley show this year, a wagon kit so simple I might even get it built in between lesson planning! The Mousa resin kit for the LNW D1 one-plank open wagon, with choice of primitive or even more primitive brake block (singular…):

 

LNW D1 Mousa parts.JPG

 

Note the MJT waisted bearings - hoping for a better fit this time. I see Bill has just got his D2 and D3 out as 3D printed resin – so there will be many about before I get my Ratio kit-bashed D2 finished! My Ratio-based LNW wagon-building bout is really being overtaken by technological developments what with these, London Road Models w-irons and Coast Line Models 3D printed and etched parts. Though I think I did mention splashing out on some Coast Line grease axleboxes – here they are fitted to my D53 conversion:

 

LNW D53 WIP 9.JPG

 

The 3D printed parts are rather brittle – I snapped one spring so had to graft on part of a spare oil axlebox spring from the Ratio kits – this bodge is tucked away out of sight under the brake lever. Note the profound lack of interior detail – waiting for a load of coal. (There is a hole in the floor to avoid warping.)

I fitted Bills separate axle guard spring unit (I see the one in the kit is a one piece) this morning below a Ratio LNWR two plank.  If I had realised how much I would have to cut away of the sole bar I would have replaced the solebar  (very little detail to replicate).  Its a year since I used the Mousa spring system and I had forgot how easily the spring steel enters the skin...   Several punctures later. 

 

Andy

[Quarryscapes]

The D1 is lovely isn't it! Here's mine, built with rigid W Irons from my own range as I couldn't be bothered faffing with the springing. 

 

LNWR in Pen Llŷn by Alan Jones, on Flickr

[Jol Wilkinson]

For those building Ratio 9' WB LNWR wagons and may not be aware, London Road Models now produce an etched underframe "conversion" that provides the option of springing/compensation. Etched axleguards also look, in my view, more realistic.

 

http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/115226-london-road-models-new-releases/

[Compound2632]

The timely arrival of the H&P Peckett was an unexpected birthday present. Rather more anticipated was Vol. 1 of LNWR Wagons. This, of course, has distracted me from finishing the wagons already started…

 

I had mentioned on Guy Rixon's LNWR wagon thread the temptation posed by spare Ratio solebars. Having solved the problem of not enough grease axleboxes (using the Coast Line Models 3D printed ones), the limiting factor to how many wagons I can squeeze out of the Ratio kits would appear to be the number of headstocks and buffer heads. What possible use are solebars without headstocks and buffers?

 

Cue the D12 timber wagon. These were built with dumb buffers at least as late as 1897 – the date of the GA drawing in LNWR Wagons – and not fitted with sprung self-contained buffers until 1914 if the note dated January 1914 on the drawing is any guide. There’s a photo in the book showing a freshly repainted example – with LNWR between diamonds – dated August 1909. So these wagons were certainly in traffic with dumb buffers in the first decade of the 20^th century.

 

They were 12’0” long over headstocks and 14’7” over the dumb buffers, with 7’6” wheelbase. The sketch shows the key dimensions compared to a typical 16’0” or 15’6” long wagon per the Ratio kit:

 

 

The 7’6” wheelbase can be got by cutting 6 mm out of the middle but the Ratio solebar ends aren’t quite long enough to make the dumb buffers. However, on the D12 wagon, the wooden solebars had a strengthening plate of 3/8” thick iron or steel that did not extend all the way to the end of the buffers – it extends about 7½” beyond the end of the body, having a total length of 13’3”. If you add 18” to this to allow for the difference between the 7’6” and 9’0” wheelbase, this gives 14’9” which is the length of the solebar of at 15’6” wagon (headstocks being 4½” thick). The end of the iron plate is very distinct in photographs, so I can use the Ratio solebar with a slightly thinner extension plus backing piece to build up the dumb buffer:

 

 

I chose to use the ‘long’ solebar (for 16’0” wagons) from the Ratio kit and cut 1 mm from each end as well as 6 mmm from the middle, in order to get squarer ends – the mouldings are slightly rounded:

 

 

The Ratio parts for the D48 twin rail wagons can be adapted – the sides are cut down to 48 mm long, the floor to 46 mm, and the plain ends without buffer housings are modified to fit over the solebars, with end pillars added:

 

 

Progress so far – from sketches to the parts in the photos – took less time than writing up these notes. I should note my indebtedness to Guy Rixon’s work on a sprung-buffered D13 timber truck pair – if this single wagon works out I might be tempted into buying another Ratio kit 575 and making a dumb-buffered pair – after all a solitary short timber truck is no good for carrying a load. Mousa (Bill Bedford) is promising a resin kit – again for the sprung-buffered version – his website says D12 but the picture is the diagram for the D13 pair. The GA drawing of D13 in LNWR Wagons shows that the wagon bodies are asymmetrical – the bolster is on the centre-line of the wheelbase but the length of body from this centre-line to the conventional headstock at the fixed coupling is 9”greater than the length to the dumb-buffered end.

 

Also at the back of my mind are the equivalent Midland timber trucks – short (7’ wheelbase) to D388 and long (9’ wheelbase) to D389.

 

[Compound2632]

LNWR D12 timber wagon completed apart from bolster:

 

 

I’ve spent several happy hours spent applying squares of Microstrip with solvent – using similar techniques to that I’d used for the D2, i.e. welding the end of a strip in place and once cured cutting off the strip to leave a square piece. Although Earlestown seem to have been partial to square-headed bolts, unfortunately most of these square-ish bits of Microstrip actually represent round-headed carriage bolts…

 

The dumb buffers are built up using the block that supports the double brake molding – with all the scotch-braked wagons I’ve built there are plenty of these going spare and they’re the same height as the solebars.

 

End pillars are 60 thou square Microstrip and corner plates from 10 thou Plastikard, with embossed rivets – as for the D2 open wagon. I felt the sides were a little shallow so added a representation of the ⅜” metal capping strip – of course a scale ¾” thick. The bolster support is 40 thou Plastickard – on the real wagon this was a massive piece of timber 10” deep resting on the solebars – it took the whole weight of the load. The curved runners are built up from thinner material, curved around a 10-pence piece per Guy Rixon.

 

I thought I’d have a go at making my own grease axleboxes by adapting the spring and oil box base unit from the kit – rounding off the bottom. The axlebox fronts are from 40 thou Plastikard; the LNW boxes have a very distinctive raised circle; I’ve tried to represent this by pressing the blunt end of a 2 mm drill bit firmly onto the Plastikard while softening it with Mek-Pak – the box nearest the camera is the most successful! A square of 10 thou Plastikard represents the sloping lid of the box.

 

The brakes on these wagons didn’t have push-rods but were of a type LNWR Wagons describes as “iron block, flap and links” – a step up from the simple scotch or “flap” brake; the brake block dangles from an iron link and is pushed on by a lever arm directly connected to the brake lever. I’ve tried to represent this by cutting up the kit brake gear; the brake lever is shorter than standard so has been cut-and-shut from the one in the kit.

 

I’m leaving off the bolster until I’ve built a D13 pair of timber wagons to go with this – LNWR Wagons reproduces some loading instructions this wagon might be a runner rather than bearing the load and in this case it seems the bolster would be removed.

 

 

[Compound2632]

Today I made a great leap forward: I have at last successfully soldered together a whitemetal kit – after about 25 years of abortive attempts at approximately five-yearly intervals. I attribute my success to the following factors coming together:

• The right iron: Antex 50 W low-temperature controlled (65°C - 195°C)
• The right solder (Carr’s 100°C Sn/Pb/Bi – C1044)
• The right flux (Carr’s Red Label)
• Careful study of RMWeb threads such as this recent one
• Scrupulous cleaning of parts
• Courage to use the iron at the top end of its temperature range

The test piece is a David Geen kit for a Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway 3-plank dropside wagon to Diagram 15. According to Lancashire & Yorkshire Wagons Vol. 1 by Noel Coates (Wild Swan, 1990), 1722 of these were built between 1893 and 1901. They are described as Fruit Wagons which I take to be a L&Y code name rather than their intended traffic!

 

Back in the summer, I had tried assembly with UHU but rapidly became unstuck. What I did discover was that the wagon was about 2 mm too wide. The kit instructions reproduce the same drawing, Drg. 3403, as the book; the plan view shows a width of 7’6½” which I read as the outside width though it could be mistake for the inside dimension. The end view is very poorly reproduced but does show what appears to be an overall width dimension possibly marked 8’1”. Other drawings in the book, e.g. the Pitch Wagon, Drg. 3434, clearly show the overall width on both plan and end view as 7’6½”. So I set to with my knives and files and shaved 0.5 mm off each side of the end castings, put rebate 0.5 mm deep on the inside of each end of the sides to thin the visible end down to 1mm, and also cutting 1 mm off each end of the headstocks. Sides and ends were carefully matched and labelled (apologies for the less than sharp photo):

 

 

That was as far as I’d got. I had thought of replacing the whitemetal axleguard/axlebox units but couldn’t find a supplier of etched W-irons of the L&Y pattern with curved keeper plate.

 

Today the Christmas kitchen chaos had subsided sufficiently for me to move the Christmas cake and set up my soldering iron in its place. I started with the iron at about its mid-setting, nominally 130°C, and managed to solder the axleguard units on to the back of the solebar on one side, though it took a good few minutes and the solder never really flowed in the satisfying way I’m used to in my occasional forays into etched brass. However, trying to solder ends to sides was a failure – I just ended up with encrusted lumps of solder. After a pause for thought, cup of tea, and helping my younger son with a 500 piece jigsaw of Turner’s The Fighting Temeraire – all swirling greys and browns but at least we put all the edge pieces in – I returned to the fray, boldly turned the iron up to its maximum temperature, and bingo! the solder flowed, I managed to get everything square-ish, and if anyone tells me the L&Y use split spoke wheels I shall be annoyed:

 

 

Unlike plastic or etched brass wagons, there’s no springing the wheels in and out - they have to go in as the second side is soldered to the ends. (I’d put brass bearings in the axleboxes of course.) A little bit of precision twisting was needed to cure some wobble. It weighs in at 40 g compared to 7 g for the LNWR timber wagon!

 

When cleaning the parts before soldering, I used Fairy Liquid and an old electric toothbrush, rinsing in warm water. I’ve read that Fairy Liquid isn’t the ideal de-greasing agent – lighter fluid being preferred – but evidently I’ve not experienced a problem.

 

To be continued…

 

 

 

 

 

[Penlan]

Unlike plastic or etched brass wagons, there’s no springing the wheels in and out - they have to go in as the second side is soldered to the ends. (I’d put brass bearings in the axleboxes of course.)

 

I normally put a groove in the lower part of the bearing etc., so I can 'ease' an axle in place. Still need to push the (whitemetal) axle boxes together afterwards, but in the way I model, wheels are the last things I want to put in place.

But Hey-Ho, everybody has their own methods that they are happy with - it's a hobby.    

Edited December 29, 2016 by Penlan