Thursday 17th March

I think I'll return to the long ignored buffers. The body to chassis union can wait a bit longer. Chemically blacken the buffers. The buffer heads should be 1' 6" from the headstock, or 10.5mm in 7mm. The springs seem a bit stiff again with too much preload at the correct buffer length. With no experience of 7mm I'm guessing of course. Ages ago I bought one of those bags of 200 assorted springs, and by luck I have 4 matching springs that fit and have a lower spring rate. A quick experiment gives an acceptable result, so that's what I'll use. Getting the right length and soldering the retaining washer on without soldering everything solid will be a challenge. It would be handy to put a thread on the end of the buffer shank and use a small nut to secure the buffer. That would give adjustment for length, be easily fixed with thread lock, and removable if required. Alternatively I could drill through the shank 0.5mm at the right location (22.8mm from the buffer head) and use a wire pin to secure the buffer. Whatever you use to secure the buffer will run very close to the inside of the W iron. If it snags the W iron the buffer won't compress. Hmmm....

1 hour of faffing, measuring and pondering. Not a buffer fixed.

Total 84 hours.
-------------
Friday 18th March

Preparing the buffer housing castings. A bit of cleaning up and filing on the back to make them sit flat on the headstocks. Gently countersinking the holes in the headstocks helps. I'll fix the buffers to the chassis after the body is fixed to the chassis.

The small tabs on the end of the stanchions don't quite line up across the width of the chassis. They're about half a thickness out. Not much, but enough to prevent the body sitting perfectly flat on the chassis. Almost certainly due to variation in my folding and fixing of the stanchions. Not a problem though, just file the tabs off flush with the end of the stanchions along one side of the body. Sits perfectly now. I'm going to solder the chassis to the body using the top flange of the stanchion support brackets on chassis part 1. I'll use the RSU to do this, otherwise there's a lot of brass to heat up with a soldering iron. The whole thing fits together so neatly there are no gaps between chassis and body or at the base of the stanchions.

Now I can fit the lower door hinge supports to body and chassis. Side doors fitted. Looking the part now. Ultrasonic bath to purge the grubbiness, and that'll do for tonight.

2 hours. Total 86 hours.
----------
Saturday 19th March

There's not much left to do now. A lot of little complete and tidy up jobs. Probably time to do a finishing list.

I'm thinking that cutting a screw thread on the end of the buffer shank and using a small nut is the right way to go. I've ordered a BA die for the purpose, so while I wait impatiently for that I'll turn my attention to the axle boxes.

There's a choice of axle boxes, cast steel and fabricated. The impression I have is that cast steel were the more common type, but fabricated axle boxes were certainly not uncommon. They were interchangeable and tended to be replaced and mixed indiscriminately during repairs. I'm going for the classic cast steel type. There naturally follows the compulsory chore of making a hole in the back of the axle box casting to accommodate the axle bearing. You have to wonder why they are not available with a hole cast in. Working in 7mm brings you closer to the detail of things. As a wagon geek I've always appreciated that there's a huge variety of axle box designs and that they are an important part of the character of a wagon. Comparatively few are available from the trade (so far as I can tell), and some of those are 'representative' at best. I'm waiting to get some 4mm spring and axle box units 3D printed by Modelu, and if they turn out OK then I might consider modelling and printing some of the often seen but rarely modelled types in 7mm. Anyway, a blob of 5 minute epoxy fixes the castings to the spring carriers. Incidentally, a good way of mixing and applying epoxy is with a cocktail stick and a beer bottle top. Both disposable. And you get green credits for reusing the beer bottle top. Of course, buying beer to get the bottle tops leaves me with the occasional problem of how to dispose of quantities of beer.

Since starting this build I've been oscillating between 0F standards and S7. In 4mm I work to P4 standards; I prefer the look of the track and wheels, certainly compared with 00. The difference doesn't seem so obvious in 7mm, and I thought that going 0F would give me reasonable prototype appearance without having to pull on the hair shirt of authenticity and suffer from tight tolerances, locos that don't go round curves and availability of parts. There seems to be good support for S7 from the trade so maybe that's not a problem these days. I started with Slaters 0F wheels for this project, but I never quite settled. I recently ordered a set of S7 wheels, just to compare, and when I placed them alongside the 0F wheels my mind was made up. It will be S7. That leaves me with one potential problem. A long time ago I acquired an MMP 9F kit, and a set of excellent AGH wheels in 0F. I wonder if they can be reprofiled to S7?

Virtually complete and on wheels it weighs in at 108g. With a target weight of 125g that leaves 27g to add. Rectangles of lead flashing cut to fit neatly in the pockets in the centre of the chassis inside the frame channels, and fixed with epoxy.

End door hinge blocks fettled and manoeuvred into place. Hinge bar cut to length and threaded through the hinges. Since this will not be a working end door it can all be fixed in place with three tiny drops of low viscosity cyano.

Side door catches fettled, split with a scalpel, fed into the brackets from each end and secured with a drop of low viscosity cyano.

Tiny parts 79, 80 at the bottom of the end stanchions. That's another part of 1/108 I'd never noticed before.

Make up the axle box keepers 29, 30. End of shift tonight. In the cleaner and tidy up.

I'm getting close to the end of the build now, really just the buffers to install before it all goes together. Thoughts turn to painting and finishing. Usually when I'm painting and weathering wagons I work from a photo. It helps me to capture then distinctive patterns of use and dirt. Random, made up rust and muck rarely convinces. I guess it is even more necessary in 7mm, it's quite an intimate portrait of the wagon at that size. On this one I'm looking for a wagon that's seen some use (1957 to 1965 ish) but hasn't reached the state of decrepitude common later in the life of a 1/108. There will still be more paint than rust! Ive seen some impressive paint over corrosion effects on military models created by a salt weathering method. There's plenty of You Tube tuition available. So I guess the order of work will be - etch primer undercoat, rust colour base coat, salt deposition in rusty areas, top coat, and then removal of salt to reveal rust. While there's a pause in the build I'll paint up a trial panel to practice salt weathering.

5.5 hours. Total 91.5 hours.