I have just finished making an LNWR 4-plank open, to diagram 84. This was meant to be a "quickie", as a relaxing diversion following the complexities of the horsebox and before getting my teeth into a brake van. However, it has taken three months - partly due to a lack of modelling time recently, and partly because it turned out to be a bit more involved than I had expected.

The starting point was the ABS whitemetal kit. My first impression was - it's enormous. The prototype was 18 feet over headstocks, and for a moment when getting the kit out of the box I thought I might have got a 1 Gauge version by mistake...

 

The kit is, as is generally the case with ABS, excellent - the castings are clean, detailed and precise. It would be perfectly possible to build the kit as intended, and have a very nice model at the end of it. Inevitably, though, I made some changes, adding compensation, a few missing details, backdating features to suit my 1908 period, and of course adding the LNWR wagon sheet.

 

 

The build started by making some modifications to accommodate the Ambis compensation units. The axleguards are supplied as separate castings, and these were cut off below the springs and soldered in place with low-melt:

 

 

 

The back was then filed flat to remove the remaining axleguard behind the spring, and provide clearance for the etched axleguard:

 

 

Once cleaned up I had good-looking springs attached to the solebars:

 

 

Buffers were fitted - in this case, not the supplied ones, as the early examples of diagram 84 wagons had the older type of LNWR buffers, with 3 bolts. Luckily the old ABS parts were still available from David Parkins. The buffer guides were drilled out to take a set of Peco sprung heads; I find it easier to ensure the drill is going in straight with the guides attached to the wagon ends, but before assembling the wagon.

 

I soldered the sides and ends together - it's worth putting in the time to make sure the four corners fit together well, as this is a slight weakness of the kit. A bit of fettling though will get the corner square in all planes. A plasticard floor gave me something to fix things to, though of course no detailing was needed as the inside was to be hidden by the sheet.

 

 

 

The Ambis axleguard units were made up, after chemically blackening the visible parts to help the paint cover, and to reduce the chance of missing bits and getting glints of metal.

 

 

 

 

 

The Ambis etch includes a 'spine' that spaces the axleguards to give the required wheelbase. However, the D84s had an unusual wheelbase of 9'9", so I had to do a 'cut and shut' to get the correct spacing:

 

 

The fold-up parts at either end position and hold the axleguard assemblies, with one rocking on a pivot rod, and the other fixed.

 

A trial assembly revealed there was quite a gap between the back of the springs and the axleguards. This was partly due to the solebars being very slightly too far apart, and the springs not being thick enough. I increased the spring thickness with 20 thou plasticard cut out roughly after tracing the shape:

 

 

I glued them on the back of the springs, and then trimmed the excess with a sharp scalpel blade:

 

 

Pieces of plasticard glued to the floor ensured accurate positioning of the axleguard assembly, which itself was glued on once I was happy everything was positioned correctly.

 

 

The hole in the headstocks for the coupling hook was too large for the Peco couplings I wanted to use, so I filed of the cast detailing and glued on some etched replacements:

 

 

The two holes in this picture in the headstock between the end stanchions and the the buffers are for the rings used to tie off the sheet. The rings were made from fine fuse wire wrapped around the shank of a suitably-sized drill. I try to plan out details like this and drill the holes early in the build, but only fit the details later, when there is less chance they will get damaged.

 

It is always a nice moment when you get the wagon 'on its feet' - it feels like real progress. You can also see in this picture I have replaced the cast horse hook with brass wire. I filled some very slight gaps where the ends and sides meet, though as the corners are almost completely concealed by the sheet, I needn't have bothered.

 

 

I often replace cast or plastic vee hangers with etched items, but in this case I used the ones provided in the kit. The are finely cast, with chamfered back edges to hide the thickness of the material. The double vee hanger arrangement lends strength, and this was supposed to be a quick build, after all...

 

 

Also in this picture you can see I added a pair of L-brackets to the solebar below where the side knees are. They were made from plastic strip. Also visible is the tie-off point next to the door spring, made from wire. I struggled to find a clear photo of these, but they appear to be L-shaped, coming down from the underside of the curb rail and turning back towards the solebar, but not quite meeting it. There are five each side.

 

The brake gear made use of the kit castings, packed up with plasticard to get the shoes aligned with the wheel centres. I used a piece of brass tube to make the cross-shaft, as this makes attaching the brake lever easy later on - a piece of wire can be soldered through a hole in the end of lever, and slid into the tube at the final assembly stage.

 

 

 

The axleboxes were a change from the kit ones, to be the correct type for early D84s; they again came from David Parkins. The wagon was physically complete at this point, apart from brake levers and guards, and the buffers and couplings which I always do after painting:

 

 

The brake levers and guards were from Ambis parts (I didn't take a picture of the levers):

 

 

A coat of etch primer reveals just how good the castings are:

 

 

The top coat was a 50/50 mix of black and white Vallejo acrylic paint, brushed on. Only the underframe and bottom of the body needed painting, as the rest would be hidden by the sheet. The tare number on the solebar and the end numbers came from a sheet of LMS Pressfix transfers from the HMRS, as I didn't have the official LNWR ones in stock. They seem to be passable to my GWR-trained eye!

 

 

 

The wagon sheet

 

The sheet was made using my usual method, described in previous blog posts. The artwork is printed onto paper, which is then backed with adhesive aluminium tape. For the LNWR sheet, however, I needed to create my own artwork, and there doesn't seem to be a single authoritative source of information on the design - rather, there are fragments of information, which sometimes conflicts. I have put some references and links at the end of this post for those who are interested.

 

Based on what I could find, I created the artwork in Affinity Designer. This software enabled me to use an existing font for the letters and numbers, and then convert the font outlines into 'paths' which can then be edited. I could therefore use fonts that were close to what was required, but then modify the letter and number forms to get as close as possible to what I could see in photos.

I have made the artwork available for anyone who wants to use it:

 

 

 

Here is a trial print of the incomplete artwork, to see how it fits onto the wagon:

 

 

Part of the challenge of fitting the sheet is that the wagon is 18 feet long, and in my 1908 period, LNWR sheets were a non-standard 19'6" X 15'5". This left only a scale 9" overhang at each end, but enough at the sides to hang right down to the curb rails:

 

 

The problem with the sheet hanging down so far is that it isn't possible to tension it properly with the ties along the long edges attaching to the tie-off points under the curb rail. I suspect the LNWR changed the sheet size from 1910 for exactly these reasons - with the increasing numbers of 18' long wagons, the old size of sheet was no longer suitable.

 

I decided to place the sheet on the wagon with a slight offset. On one side the sheet hangs down less far, and can be tied off in the usual way. On the other side, the sheet is tucked up, held in place by ties attached to the triangular flaps that were sewn into the first seam (sheets were generally made from five strips of fabric sewn together).

 

I made the flaps from triangles of paper, glued in place. You can see them here just above the "381" number and below the line of the "LNWR" letters:

 

 

As I was modelling the sheet covering a (presumed) load below the height of the wagon sides, I wanted it to dip in the centre. To keep the sheet in the required shape, I made a former in plasticard, to run as a spine along the centre of the wagon:

 

 

I glued this under the sheet before attaching it to the wagon:

 

 

You can also see here the ties, made from EZ Line (a very thin elastic thread), glued to the back of the sheet and fed through holes where the prototype's eyelets would be.

 

I attached the sheet onto the wagon, starting by gluing it to the top edges of the sides and ends. Then the overhangs at the sides and ends could be glued into place, teasing the sheet into shape with the aim of making it look like a flexible material hanging under its own weight. I had already done some initial weathering of the wagon, using weathering powders and water-soluble artist's oil paints.

 

 

One problem I had which I have not experienced with this technique for making the sheets before was the separation of the foil backing from the paper top surface around the sheet edges. I suspect this was down to the amount of handling of the sheet, trying to manipulate it into shape, as well as the short overhangs at the ends. The short overhangs means the sheet is being bent through 90 degrees very close to its edge, and this may have put too much stress on the aluminium tape's adhesive.

 

After replenishing the swear box a few times, and trying both UHU and cyanoacrylate glues, I managed to get the sheet into shape and fix the separation of the sheet layers. I followed this by retouching the paint on the sheet. I alway paint over the black print, as the laser printer print looks too much like what it is. However, with the amount of handling the sheet gets when fixing it, there is always quite a lot of touching up to do. Once the sheet was fettled, the ties were wrapped around the tie-off points and held in place with a touch of thin CA glue applied with the end of a bit of wire.

 

I added number plates printed on ordinary paper with a laser printer and cut out. The artwork was based on that provided by Stephen Lea:

 

 

And that was pretty much it - final assembly of the brake lever and guard, and the buffers and couplings, a last touch up of paint and weathering, and the wagon was ready for a photo session.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The lettering on the sheet is best seen from a modeller's-eye view:

 

 

And a brutal close-up of the sheet artwork:

 

 

To make the point about the size of these wagons, here it is alongside a GWR 2-plank:

 

 

Acknowledgements

 

Thank you to all those who have helped me as I learned about LNWR wagons, particularly those who contributed to the following threads:

 

 

 

 

References and links regarding LNWR wagon sheets

 

There is a drawing of the LNWR sheet design, although it shows the sheet number painted on the ends as well as the sides of the sheet, which I have not seen in photos: http://igg.org.uk/rail/9-loads/9-tarps.htm

 

Sheets were discussed in some detail here, but the images have been lost which makes it hard to follow some of the discussion now, unfortunately:

 

 

Further discussion took place in the D299 thread:

 

LNWR number plate artwork:

 

 

You can find my artwork here:

 

Nick.