Yet another GWR 4-plank! This time in grey livery, and with a load of large casks:

 

 

The wagon itself is a standard Peco kit, which I got on eBay as a 'rescue' wagon - it had been built reasonably well but painted poorly. I scraped most of the paint off the main flat areas, and repaired a partly broken W-iron. I removed the compensated wheel-set in the process, which turned out to be quite useful later on.

 

 

I also upgraded a few parts - firstly the damaged brake lever was replaced with an Ambis etched version. The brake lever guard was made up from nickel silver strip and a ratchet taken from the Ambis etch:

 

 

 

The moulded chains for the door pins were replaced with twisted fuse wire. This is done by taking a 5cm length of fine fuse wire, folding it in half around the shank of a 1.5mm drill, and putting the two ends into a pin chuck. Twizzling the pin chuck twists the wire, and when it is tight, the wire can be slid off the drill, leaving a nice loop for the ring if you need to model that. In this case, I kept the moulded ring, and just replaced the chain, scraping off the moulded version, drilling a fine hole, inserting the twisted wire, and adding a small drop of thin CA glue applied on the end of a piece of fine wire.

 

 

Cleats were added to the end curb rails, and under the side curb rails, using some 0.5mm soft iron wire. This bends to shape easily, and is blackened, reducing the chance of a metallic gleam if the paint is rubbed off.

 

 

The rest of the work on the wagon was pretty standard - painting with a home-brew GWR grey mixed from black and white Vallejo acrylics, lettering with HMRS pressfix, and fairly light weathering with powders.

 

Most of the work in this build was the casks, and simulating the correct method of loading them. The casks themselves are from MiniArt:

 

 

They are nominally 1:35 scale, but the detail is finely moulded, so they pass for larger casks at 1:43.5. In the kit you get 6 sprues, which provide parts for 12 casks, 6 each of two sizes:

 

 

For this wagon load, I chose the larger casks, which are very close to the right length for 'tuns' - a particular size of cask - although they are slightly too large in diameter.

 

The GWR Appendix to the Rule Book, 1936, has instructions for loading casks. Large ones, such as tuns and puncheons, containing wines and spirits, are to be loaded on rope rings, and roped to the side of the wagon. Curiously, the photographs used to illustrate the method show a Midland Railway 3-plank wagon. The photos are poorly reproduced, especially the one that shows the roping, though the one showing the inside is available online online in much better quality, from the Midland Railway archives.

 

My attempts to find a better version of the second photo, are documented in the following thread, together with other discussion of casks, loading, etc, so I won't repeat that information here:

 

 

Researching rope rings, I found some instructions on YouTube for tying a crown knot. I used 1mm diameter rigging thread, from www.cornwallmodelboats.co.uk. I won't give full instructions here, as they are easily found on the internet, but here are the basic steps:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I didn't make a complete ring, as you can only see one side, since the casks are tight to the wagon side on the other.

 

Each part-ring was glued around a plastikard centre, to hold the ring in shape and to give something solid to glue to both the cask and the wagon floor. 

 

 

To get the cask to nestle nicely into the rope ring, I soaked the sides of the ring, where it can't be seen, in thin CA glue to harden the thread, and then filed a shallow depression in the rope and the plastic centre with a half-round file. Holding the ring was made easier by putting a drill in the vice, shank upwards, and putting the ring onto that while filing it:

 

 

The result was a close fit between ring and cask, helping give a sense the cask is heavy, and squashing the ring somewhat:

 

 

I drilled a hole in what would be the bottom of each cask to take a cocktail stick, which acted as a handle for painting, and later to locate the rope ring:

 

 

The first coat of paint was a grey primer, then a warm new-wood cream colour. This was followed by dry brushing in greys and browns:

 

 

And washes of greys, with a touch of brown weathering powder:

 

 

The metal rings were painted with a fine brush using a dark grey, followed by a lighter grey dry-brushing. The crisp moulding of the casks means that though this is a fiddly job, it's perfectly possible to get a neat result.

 

Once I was happy with the casks, the rope rings were glued in place, sliding them up the cocktail sticks, which were trimmed off once the glue was set.

 

 

The GWR rules appendix doesn't refer to any packing between the casks and the wagon side, though it firmly forbids the use of straw rings under the casks - only a rope ring will do. The equivalent section of the BR rules says straw pads should be used to "prevent chafage". I decided to add knots of straw (made from plumbers' hemp) as packing, glued to the sides of the casks:

 

 

The casks were then glued into position, ready for the roping. In the absence of a better photo, I did the best I could with the picture in the GWR rules appendix:

 

 

As far as I could tell from this picture, the ropes go something like this:

 

 

A GWR 4-plank has different available tying-off points compared to a MR 3-plank, so I had to adapt things a little. In particular, I was able to use the holes in the solebar - and at this point it was an advantage that I had removed the compensated axle unit as part of my repairs to the already-built kit. To ensure the ropes looped through the solebar hole did not foul the movement of the compensated axleguards, I cut away the back of the solebar a little, making a slot for the thread to sit in.

 

The prototype ropes were 75 feet long, or 525mm in 7mm scale. I used 0.5mm diameter rigging thread, which is almost exactly the right size, cut to length and given a diluted wash in India ink. On each side, one rope does the first two casks, and a second rope does the third, and runs back along the side to tension the verticals:

 

 

And there it is. As it turns out, with the straw packing between the sides and the casks, the space between the casks along the centre of the wagon is so narrow it is almost impossible to see the rope rings, but you can glimpse them if you look at the right angle and in the right light. I haven't yet decided what to do with the smaller casks, but they would have a larger gap if I decide to do a similar load, or I could do a part load with casks on one side and something else on the other, so the rings are visible.

 

Although my wagon 'roadmap' has eight GWR 4-plankers, they will all have different combinations of details and loads, sparing me from too much monotony. I am greatly enjoying modelling the loads, based on research and in particular the correct methods of loading as shown in the rules book appendix. They also say something about the role of the railways, and life in general, in Edwardian Britain.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nick.