Honest Tom's Yard - Bashing Hornby's Generic Coaches

[HonestTom]

Hi all. I thought it was about time I started one of these things for my various bashes, repaints, modifications and other such fun things.

 

To start us off, here's something from my current project. It's a Dapol 5-plank wagon painted up into Port of London Authority livery. This is a very low-tech job - the lettering is by hand and the weathering is done using a wash of watercolour, a brown watercolour crayon for the rust and some black eyeshadow from my local pound shop.

 

 

I have a couple more PLA wagons about to be rolled out - I added loads and I'm just waiting for the glue to dry. My current project in the planning stages is a Port of London micro-layout, having been inspired by explorations around the Docklands on foot and by rail, and given impetus by a gift of a PLA-liveried Janus shunter.

 

More to follow shortly...

Edited August 13, 2021 by HonestTom

[HonestTom]

Here’s a quick modification I did. Basically I wanted to see what would happen if I put an old Triang 16 ton mineral wagon body on a newer Hornby chassis and gave it a go with the old paintbrush. I’m actually quite happy with the result. I know the basic model is crude and under scale length, but as my original plan was to use it on a very short micro, the reduced length was a bonus.

[HonestTom]

Alright, time for some freelancing. This was my attempt to turn the old Triang brake van into something a bit fancier.

Modifications consist of a chimney made from styrene tube, handrails made from staples and a few bits of styrene strip just to disguise its origins a bit.

 

LD stands for London and Dockland, the freelance company that, in my fictional universe, was formed from an amalgamation of the North London Railway, the East London Railway and the London and Blackwall Railway.

[coline33]

Tom you could have repainted the Triang brake van into PLA livery and numbered it 1006!   By the way I have found 4mm. resin cast mooring bollards by scalemodelscenery stated as having PLA stamped on them.   Colin. 

[sb67]

Like the look of your PLA wagon Tom, what was the red you used for the livery? I'm building a quayside layout so I'll look forward to seeing your project.

Steve.

[Sandhole]

Here’s a quick modification I did. Basically I wanted to see what would happen if I put an old Triang 16 ton mineral wagon body on a newer Hornby chassis and gave it a go with the old paintbrush. I’m actually quite happy with the result. I know the basic model is crude and under scale length, but as my original plan was to use it on a very short micro, the reduced length was a bonus.

23807EB1-99F1-424E-9C73-597A03A489B8.jpeg

You can just cut the solebar off.

I hve three Triang Hornby 16tonners thay I weathered according to shots I took at Agecroft power station.

Take the solebar off and run them in a train. works.

I am fully aware that I have a'Thing' about my model railway history, but I'd still run 'em!!

Racking round behind a Dub De or an 0-8-0 of numerous railway companies you don't notice!!!!!!

                                                                                               C.

[HonestTom]

Like the look of your PLA wagon Tom, what was the red you used for the livery? I'm building a quayside layout so I'll look forward to seeing your project.

Steve.

 

Hi Steve, many thanks. The red was actually Vallejo orange red (I think? I'll check when I get home). It may be a little light compared with the real livery, but the only contemporary colour images I've been able to find are in this video at about 2 minutes in. I think in reality, the red may have been a little browner, but not quite so brown as the Oxford wagons. I have a few other wagons in the works, so I might experiment with different shades of red. To be honest, though, I tend not to stress too much about getting wagon colours dead-on, as the various effects of age and weathering, lighting conditions, the fact that the works may only have been approximating the shades themselves and the reliability of memory mean that the "correct shade" for wagons seems to have been a largely theoretical concept. If you look at any colour photo of a goods train, you can see a whole variety of greys and browns, even when the wagons are nominally all the same colour. In fact, I recently completed a rake of banana vans where I've deliberately painted them different shades of brown.

[HonestTom]

Actually, here are my banana vans. They’re Dapol, with a paint job by myself. I wasn’t brave enough to do the wagon posters, though, so those are from Sankey Scenics. From normal viewing distance, you can't tell that the lettering doesn't quite say "BANANA" but is generally more along the lines of "BVIVIWI"

Edited August 16, 2018 by HonestTom

[HonestTom]

More from the Port. Here are all the PLA wagons so far. All except the van and the wagon with the tarpaulin-covered load are Dapol, based on photos, many of which were kindly supplied by coline33. The other two wagons are educated guesses. Both are based on preserved ex-PLA stock, but as there were no photos of them in PLA livery that I could find at the time, I made the livery up using photos I did have as a rough guide. If you get close enough, you can also tell that I didn’t have a number for the van.

 

The wagon with the packing cases is painted with a darker shade of red than the others - Citadel’s Khorne Red. I do not know what a khorne is, but apparently it’s darker than Vallejo’s orange red. If I do any more PLA wagons, which I almost certainly will, I may well come back to this colour.

[sb67]

Thanks Tom, your wagons look great. I'm in the process of building my quayside and when I get on to the rolling stock I'll have to look for the Dapol wagons but I'm guessing any 4 or 5 plank wagons could be re painted. I like the van as well. Great stuff.

Steve.

[coline33]

Tom, the wagons look great.   Appreciate the van was a guess but put a one in front of the number as after the brake van numbering at 1006 came the covered vans through to the 2000s including those used by the engineers.   When are you going to start on kits and kit-bashing?   It looks as though you have a LMS 4F so attached is your entry into passenger trains!!!   All the best, Colin.   

[HonestTom]

LMS 4210 S Side, KGV Royals - PLA.jpgTom, the wagons look great.   Appreciate the van was a guess but put a one in front of the number as after the brake van numbering at 1006 came the covered vans through to the 2000s including those used by the engineers.   When are you going to start on kits and kit-bashing?   It looks as though you have a LMS 4F so attached is your entry into passenger trains!!!   All the best, Colin.   

Many thanks, fortunately a 1 is an easy number to add...

 

Re kitbashing, there are plans afoot. I was thinking I'd have a go at cutting one of those Hornby Toad Bs up when it comes out to represent a PLA brake van, and it looks to me from the footage mentioned above like they had at least one ex-LSWR road van, so I think Smallbrook Studio is going to be getting some of my hard-earned dosh. In the long run, I'd like to do more of the vans, but I want to get a bit more confident before I tackle them. The next PLA wagons in line will be some of those timber-carrying flat wagons, which look to be little more than a deck laid on top of a wooden underframe.

 

Other plans for this layout include a short train of fruit vans, one of meat vans, one of grain hoppers and a bashed Triang trestrol. The latter will be carrying one of the larger, more cumbersome loads that would have gone through the docks (perhaps a bridge girder). It strikes me that the docks are a great excuse to include all sorts of unusual wagons and loads. When I mentioned my plans to my brother, he did say "So how big are you actually planning this layout to be?" It's fair to say that I already have far more wagons than I can fit on the planned micro, but I just really enjoy wagon painting.

 

Thanks for that photo - it does appear in a couple of books I own, but too small to make out the detail on the loco, which looks to me like one of the ones modified for the LTSR lines. Your post is much better.

 

Thanks Tom, your wagons look great. I'm in the process of building my quayside and when I get on to the rolling stock I'll have to look for the Dapol wagons but I'm guessing any 4 or 5 plank wagons could be re painted. I like the van as well. Great stuff.

Steve.

 

Ta. Based on my research (which admittedly has been carried out mostly using the esteemed experts at Google Image Search), it seems to me that the vast majority of wagons seen on these systems would be main line ones. In London, ex-LNER vans (such as those Bachmann produce) seem to be very prominent.

 

If you're specifically doing the PLA, the reason I selected the wagons I did was because they were ones I got from photos or that I knew were definitely on the PLA. In general, dock companies seem to have just got whatever they could get cheap, so any old pre-Grouping-looking wagon would do.

 

What are conspicuous by their absence among my rolling stock are vans, due to the fact that there are so few suitable prototypes available ready to run. In reality, the PLA had an awful lot of vans for transfer of cargo. However, if you're planning to freelance it, you could get away with the old Hornby Hull & Barnsley van or the Triang closed van repainted.

[coline33]

Now for some flat and van pictures taken by PLA staff.   The brake van 1005 is of the Toad B type.   Now get bashing!!!

[sb67]

Now for some flat and van pictures taken by PLA staff.   The brake van 1005 is of the Toad B type.   Now get bashing!!!

Fantastic set of photo's Colin, thanks for posting.

Steve.

[coline33]

I see that I accidentally included a view of a Victorian built flat at Millwall being '(2)'.   This is not one for Tom to try unless he wants to be a 'scratcher'!   PLA inherited the Millwall Dock Co. flats which were low height on inside framed wheels and dumb buffers.   Many of these survived to the very end of I&M rail.

[HonestTom]

As Monty Python would say, “And now for something entirely dissimilar.” Here’s a Lancashire and Yorkshire wagon that I painted up as an experiment to see if I could. The donor is a Hornby 3-plank dropside.

 

Basically, I saw a photo of a similar wagon on the L&Y society website, and having a suitable wagon with no plans for it, I decided to go for it. People complain about the lack of pre-grouping stock, but it’s not that hard to produce your own.

 

Underground Ernie seethes in the background, bitter that his railcar is to be dismantled for spares.

[HonestTom]

I’m gearing up for some proper bashes, but in the meantime, here’s a project I’ve been wanting to do for a while. Possibly my favourite pre-Grouping company is the Metropolitan Railway, so here’s my attempt at a couple of their ballast wagons. M and E are surprisingly difficult letters to do freehand, and 241 is a guess - in none of my books on the railway could I find details of wagon numbering.

Edited August 31, 2018 by HonestTom

[sb67]

They look great Tom, I really like your thread, it's inspiring me to try a bit of kit bashing myself, especially the PLA stuff. I admire your lettering, I could never do that freehand so I'm hoping I can find some suitable transfers.

Just got to get my layout to a place where I can start kitbuilding.

Steve.

[coline33]

Back home so have gone through my PLA packet to see if I can find any more on that red colour!   Only reasonable one is attached so hope it helps.   

[coline33]

Tom, on another thread I came across your interest in 'pre-grouping' wagons.   Thus I thought of you with the attached views of Tilbury Docks 1910/1911!!!   The PLA grouping had just commenced.   In 'trackwork 3' you will see that Tilbury was even handling container trains then.   Yes, that is a container export bound on a flat.   In those days the shippers referred to a container as a 'shipping box'.   Colin.

[coline33]

Now for a bit of caption fun.   This is Tilbury docks February, 1957, when the PLA engineers were relaying the foreground track to Nos.2 and 3 Berths.   "No, you're not off-loading these trucks off the Lowmacs till we are ready.   To make sure we've parked the Dock Manager's car on the ramp!"   I do recall a number of pranks played by the engineering staff in my 1970s days at Tilbury and this caption may not be far off!

[cypherman]

How about

"Typical army manouvers , Dump the trucks and sod off to the Naffi"

[sb67]

Now for a bit of caption fun.   This is Tilbury docks February, 1957, when the PLA engineers were relaying the foreground track to Nos.2 and 3 Berths.   "No, you're not off-loading these trucks off the Lowmacs till we are ready.   To make sure we've parked the Dock Manager's car on the ramp!"   I do recall a number of pranks played by the engineering staff in my 1970s days at Tilbury and this caption may not be far off!

 

 

Now for a bit of caption fun.   This is Tilbury docks February, 1957, when the PLA engineers were relaying the foreground track to Nos.2 and 3 Berths.   "No, you're not off-loading these trucks off the Lowmacs till we are ready.   To make sure we've parked the Dock Manager's car on the ramp!"   I do recall a number of pranks played by the engineering staff in my 1970s days at Tilbury and this caption may not be far off!

 

 

Tom, on another thread I came across your interest in 'pre-grouping' wagons.   Thus I thought of you with the attached views of Tilbury Docks 1910/1911!!!   The PLA grouping had just commenced.   In 'trackwork 3' you will see that Tilbury was even handling container trains then.   Yes, that is a container export bound on a flat.   In those days the shippers referred to a container as a 'shipping box'.   Colin.

 

 

More fantastic photo's Colin, I love them :-)

Steve.

[coline33]

Tom, I trust you are putting in a scissors crossover in your Yard?   Like the pair of them that can be seen in the G&K sheds 1911 view in my post yesterday.   Each set of tracks went either side of the centrally placed building being the Dock Manager's Office in which I spent the whole of the 1970s!   In the attached 1950s view in the opposite direction from the upper level foot-way, the scissors still remained.   Now that is a challenge for you!   Colin.

[HonestTom]

Hey hey, all. Things have been a little quiet on the modelling front, but this is the latest bash. I found a Hornby van and I thought maybe it would make a neat addition to my collection of pre-grouping wagons. Here it is on a new chassis.

I’m currently trying to find out more info about the prototype, but it’s quite sparse online.

 

EDIT: That's a really bad photo. I'll try to get a better one where you can, you know, actually see the chassis.

Edited September 14, 2018 by HonestTom