I have a few quiet days, so I thought I’d have a go at a couple of wagons, in this case CR diagram 3 wagons from the “True lines Models “ kit. TLM kits are the result of a lot of good work by Tony Brenchley and Mike Williams, details of which can be found on the CRA forum. Produced in small batches cast in resin they are a one piece body together with some castings, as ever the modeller supplies the other parts to suit their own diverse requirements. At this point some folk would say “Usual disclaimer” . I am going to do exactly the opposite and say many thanks to Tony for producing these, and many thanks to all the CRA members who have produced a great magazine, first class books and a forum full of fascinating discussions.

I think I’m going to build both of these as the CR version, though the design was shared through Drummond with the NB. Historical notes can be found in “ Caledonian Railway Wagons” by Mike Williams.

Ok, so preamble over, lets have a look at the body.

It has very fine detail, but like most thin sided resin sections shows a slight bowing inwards towards the top of the sides. Very light of course, and resin needs to be handled carefully. I have drilled out the handrail holes at the end and the solebars for the horse shunting loops. If you are fitting etched W irons then some packing is always required under the floor to establish the correct buffer height. My preference is to establish the thickness needed right at the start. I knew I was going to use a copperclad sub chassis, so I made up some 51 L pre-group W irons and cut some packing strips.



There it is just sitting on the track next to my buffer height gauge. Now, its a home made one, 30 years old. It might even be reasonably accurate, but what matters is that everything I have built is gauged from it, so all my buffers buff.
Anyway, 40 thou of packing needed to have things sat at the right height.

These are the subchassis. I used 1mm single sided fibreglass copperclad. You can just stick all the stuff to the bottom of the floor, but the coppeclad gives it all strength and provides pads for soldering the W Irons and the AJ couplings. Far easier to get it square on the flat than between solebars. Note that I have cut through the copper to electrically isolate the different parts. Years ago I had a weird short circuit when certain wagons were coupled together, traced eventually to two different shorts between tyres and body, then a short through the AJs. Pre tinning them on the flat makes life easier later.

One of the big advantages of copperclad is that it is easy to solder to the copper with not much heat, and the fibreglass is a good thermal insulator so the heat doesn’t get through to the plastic.

I bet you thought I could get through a whole blog without mentioning the silhouette. Oh well. Whilst I was doing that it was happily cutting out all the internal bracing. The little square on the bottom edge is so they all get laminated the right way round.



Roofs next.