Drum lane - a pizza layout built on a cable drum

[luke the train spotter]

So I am giving the pug a break at the moment whilst I think some things through with it like how do I want to weather it and what I should call it etc. I wanted to run a brake van on Drum Lane but the BR standard 20 ton one (the only one I've got at the moment) details on the corners due to the tight radius on a fairly big wheel base. Shame really as I dont have any smaller brake vans and I would really like to run one but I have a solution - kit bashing. So I had this Br standard 16 ton mineral wagon chassis that was knocking about in my scrap box. It has no wheels or a body and had no weight either. I filed all the tabs and clips down on it and it looked like this. I had a semi complete Dapol 20 ton brake van kit somewhere so I dug that out the storage boxes and pulled the body off it. Here it is in a kind of dodgy paint job. It turns out that the brake van body and 16 ton wagon wagon chassis are the exact same length (brake van is about 2mm wider than the chassis but I cant be bothered to fix that) without any modifications at all. A dry fit was conducted to check everything. I hate the bulky couplings on display at the end of the train when I will only ever use this brake van in one direction so I removed that. I managed to get the coupling out in one piece though I dont know why I bothered. I then glued the brake van body onto the chassis with some super glue from pound land and waited that to set off. In the meantime I need to sort out a weight. Hmmmmmmm..... I am out of lead strip and any thing like that so I will just have to find something heavy. I have a massive lump of metal that I cut out from an old tender drive loco when I was modifying it so that will do. I cut it down to size and then glued it inside the body. Next time I will probably be working on making some of those planks that go along the chassis to let the workers climb up into the brake van, think about the paint job and build some form of an interior to hide the lump of metal. Oh also thinking of making a working red tail lamp but I'm still unsure about that. Thanks for looking everyone.

[Jwnewall]

Sorry if you have pointed this out but it would be a great idea to also use the bottom layer of the cable drum where the mouse is poking out of the hole, multi layer layout with trains in different directions will catch anyone's eye! Maybe two different themes.

[luke the train spotter]

Sorry if you have pointed this out but it would be a great idea to also use the bottom layer of the cable drum where the mouse is poking out of the hole, multi layer layout with trains in different directions will catch anyone's eye! Maybe two different themes.

 

I have thought about that and it is a good idea. Just want to get the top layer sorted first with at least some basic scenery before moving onto the bottom layer. The plan is urban industrial for the top layer so I could do rural industry on the bottom layer or just rural branch line maybe a light railway to make small stock plausable.

[Guest ShildonShunter]

Luke the brake van is coming along nicely can't wait to see more.

[luke the train spotter]

Luke the brake van is coming along nicely can't wait to see more.

Thanks Shildon Shunter. I plan for the brake van project to be much shorter than the pug project. At the moment I'm only planning to add some hand rails, sort out the interior, add some foot rails and give it all a repaint and a weathering.

[luke the train spotter]

Here is part 2 of my brake van project. I started by looking at some prototype pictures of midland railway style brake vans as that is the look I am trying to get on my brake van. I cut some 1mm thick 3mm wide strips of plasticard for the kind of foot rail thing that runs along the chassis. These were super glued just on top of the axle boxes and were trimmed to size once glued. I just used scissors for the trimming. Next up I cut some more 1mm pasticard to make a basic interior. They were cut roughly following some basic dimensions. Here is a dry fit. Here are the sheets outside the wagon. I then drilled holes in them were I roughly wanted the windows to be with my dremel. The pieces of plasticard were held down to a wooden block with masking tape to secure them. To clean the cuts out and give it a more neat appearance I framed the windows with strips of 10 thou plasticard. Before glueing them in I made some false floors for them to sit on. These were made of 10 thou plasticard and were secured with plasticard. I accidentally broke of a bit of the plastic body of the brake van so I made a replacement part out of some 1mm plasticard and glued it into place. At this point I could start to add fine details. Firstly I stuck on the coupling hook and chain. The lamp irons on this model were poor and moulded on with thick plastic with little definition. They were scraped off with a knife, careful not to damage the planking detail. Hooks were made out of thin copper wire from the inside of single core electrical wire. This is the same stuff I used to make the lamp irons on my pug project. The wire was bent around a small screwdriver then it down in length. They are a bit fiddly to make but look quite good I think. A drop of super glue and fiddly around with them got all the lamp irons fastened in place on the brake van. It would be much easier if I had one of those little hand turned drills so I will have to add one to my shopping list. That's all the progress so far. Next time with this project it will be painting and weathering it. I'm planning on a very heavy dirty weathering with washes which should be fun and look really good as the grime soaks into the planking details.

[Guest Bishoptrains]

Luke nice job on the brake van can't wait to see your weathering of the brake van.

[luke the train spotter]

Got some more progress done. I had been intending to have this online earlier but internet problems intervened. Never mind though. Right so on with the brake van. The brake van has had a semi coat of primer. I used auto grey primer from poundland which is definitely good value for money. Unfortunately my can ran out half way through priming the model so I didn't get a very good coverage but I didn't mind because I would be brush painting with enamels. To keep the brake van looking similar to a midland railway one (which is where I got the inspiration for this project) I went out and bought a light grey colour. I though that humbrol enamel number 64 was a good match. This was then applied with 2 coats on the brake van with a brush. So the basic body has been painted grey but I am still to paint the under frames black before giving the brake van a good weathering. I'm not planning to put any transfers onto the brake van to keep the location and heritage of drum lane purely fictitious. As you might have seen I have started another micro layout on rmweb so my modeling focus has been on that not drum lane. That project will be finished soon though so my full modeling attention can be turned back to drum lane. Thanks for looking everyone and happy modeling!

[luke the train spotter]

Progress is slow and irregular but I got a little bit more work done on the brake van today. The underframes and buffer beams have received a coat of black acrylic paint. Nothing fancy but its cheap and it works. The dummy chain link coupling has been picked out with a fine brush using humbrol acrylic number 11 left over from an airfix kit. Note that the little window in the guards duckets have been picked out with the black paint. I did think about removing the plastic and glazing it but it didnt seem worth the fuss. Anyway, here's a picture of of the work so far. I've got all the stuff for the weathering its just putting it all together and actually doing that. Saying that I will probably get round to weathering it and some other stock in a day or two. Until next time, happy modeling!

[Huggy]

Good work Luke, and without a lot of spending involved   Guess you have pretty good eyesight mate, doing those couplings!