Here's a small project for the Christmas break. A BR 24.5 ton welded steel mineral wagon to diagram 1/115 in P4. I built one of these years ago when I was starting out in P4. It was pretty much pure Parkside with compensated W-irons wedged underneath. Time moves on, and the Rumney Models etched chassis kit designed to sit under the Parkside body offers a much better solution.


I'm building an early 1/115 with 1' 6" spindle buffers, oil axleboxes and single door springs. The kit makes provision for the later 1/118 with double door springs, and alternative buffers and roller bearing axleboxes are available from various suppliers.

One Parkside kit PC04 and one Rumney chassis kit B.21. All the Parkside chassis mouldings go straight in the bin. The end door gets some handles from 0.3mm wire. The moulded features on the underside of the floor are cut off and filed flush. Then the body takes a few minutes to put together. There'll be some detail to add later.

The basic chassis is a simple, accurate fold and solder. The dimensional accuracy comes from the etched parts, not the care taken in positioning parts for assembly. Good design and very easy to get an accurate chassis.


There's a little fettling of the body to fit the body supports on the chassis. Two minutes of minor surgery with a scalpel.

Starting to look the part already.

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A few hours at the workbench today; wheels, bearing carriers, suspension, solebars, door springs and body supports.

A hint when adding the solebar overlays. Be sparing with the solder. You don't want to block up the tiny holes for the locating tabs for components fitted later, like the body supports. I've done this before on a Rumney chassis and it's a pain to rectify. With clear holes and properly fitting tabs it is easy to add all the fiddly little parts.

I'm using Ultrascale wheels with pinpoint axles in this build. I prefer to use the Exactoscale parallel bearing axles these days, but I don't have any, and being impatient I'll use what I've got to hand. The bearing cups are four matching ones from a collection of various bearings accumulated over many years. For something you'd think was a standard component there's a lot of variation. I've chosen bearings that appear to have quite shallow cones as experience suggests that deeper cones require more spacing out of the bearing cups in the bearing carriers. With bearing cups straight into carriers there's too much side play. A single half etched washer, thoughtfully provided on the Rumney fret, under each bearing cup does the trick.

The axles seem to find the right ride height with a straight spring wire, which is merciful as there's no faffing around bending all the wires to match.

A properly sprung chassis for less effort than it takes to fit compensation to the Parkside chassis. Easy.

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Into the more challenging stuff now. Took a good few hours to get the brake linkage together. I appreciate the simplification from the single fold up brake shoe and linkage but l still find it difficult. There are fewer parts but overall it's no easier than the legendary Masokits etched brake gear. Doesn't seem to get any easier the more you do either. Maybe it's just beyond my competence threshold! I deviate from the instructions here. I find it easier to build the brake linkage with the cross shaft in place.

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The dog beast has had his walkies on a bitterly cold morning wrapped in freezing fog. It's not walkies so much as cyclies. He's trained to run with a bike, so I get a few miles of off road cycling and he gets to run free, chase pheasants, jump in every mire in Derbyshire, stick his nose in every hole and finish up with a swim in the river, from which he emerges nearly clean. He loves it, and my duty's done for a while. Dog snoozes in front of stove and I'm back at the workbench.

The brake levers and lifting link go together nicely. It's easier than it looks.

The axle boxes and springs are whitemetal castings from Wizard Models/51L. The prototype seems to have had 8 or 9 leaf springs fitted so I'll need something chunkier than normal. BR split axleboxes BRC019, BR heavy duty wagon springs BRC042. Very clean castings requiring a minimum of fettling to fit the chassis. Incidentally Mr Wizard, thank you for sending them so quickly during the Christmas period - first class service and much appreciated. They are fitted to the chassis with medium viscosity cyano after cleaning the mating surfaces with isopropyl alcohol (IPA). Adhesives really do work better on a clean surface.

Buffers are from Lanarkshire Model Supplies (LMS), 1' 6" spindle buffers, steel buffers and spindles cast into whitemetal housings. LMS whitemetal castings really are of the highest quality. I didn't think you could cast whitemetal as cleanly as this, but these guys can. Nearly as good as an injection moulded part. Hard to believe? Give them a try. Buffers are fitted using a rapid epoxy. That gives a couple of minutes to tweak the buffer alignment as the epoxy sets.

Couldn't resist dropping the body on for a photo.

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Coming next - finishing the chassis, some additions to finish the body, painting and weathering.