??? posted on Mon Apr 20, 2009 1:26 am

 

A few more wagons finished tonight. I've also been playing with my camea to try and get better results. These were all taken on long exposures, with the lights turned off and a handheld torch as the main light source.

 

The LMS lows are all done - Chivers kits for the long lows and scratchbuilt 10' wheelbase ones.

 

 

 

 

 

The one in LMS bauxite is intended as a runner for a rake of wagons carrying timber. I've made a start on loading these, using thin wood strip from Sainsbury's camembert boxes (idea pinched from one of Geoff Kent's books). I know these should be roped down, but I can't see a way of doing this and still have the load removable. This work is going slowly as I don't want to get fat from eating loads of cheese

 

 

The scratchbuilt BR built GWR plywood van is now complete and has turned out pretty well.

 

There are one or two places where the sticky labels have come away slightly from the plasticard body, but these aren't obvious in photos. I'm wondering if printing on to thin paper and then attaching this to the plastic by flooding it with solvent would be a cheaper and more durable way of getting the printed drawings to the plastic. More experimentation is needed.

 

The bolt heads on this and the two LMS lows are Archer transfers. These have turned out well and are a lot easier than using little bits of 5 thou plastic!

 

Lastly, a Bachmann mineral repainted in to early 1970s grot to match a Paul Bartlett photo. It has been partially replated, and the new bits painted freight brown and the rest left in rusty grey. I used the salt weathering technique for the rusty bits, which were then masked off and the rest of the body painted brown.

 

 

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Comment posted by timlewis on Tue Apr 21, 2009 9:04 pm

 

Very nice selection of wagons: you certainly get through making them at a rate of knots! You must have quite a train (or trains) by now.

Experiments with the camera seem to have paid off too: later pictures are noticeably better than earlier ones.

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Comment posted by Pennine MC on Tue Apr 21, 2009 10:25 pm

 

Pete, if it's this shot, then I think the new platework is actually reddish rust; I'm not saying replated wagons were never patched with Freight Brown but I dont think it would have been common. Dont want to sound like I'm picking fault here tho, I love this thread

 

BTW I've seen much mention of these Archer rivet transfers - where would I get some from?

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??? posted on Wed Apr 22, 2009 12:00 am

 

That's the one I used - it hadn't occurred to me that early 1970s workmanship was so dodgy that they left steel mineral wagons unpainted. Good thing they don't carry anything corrosive...

 

I got the transfers direct from Archer http://www.archertransfers.com/catSurfaceDetails.html. Paid with Paypal and they took about 5 days to come from the States. I think the postage was about $2

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Comment posted by Fat Controller on Wed Apr 22, 2009 8:33 am

 

This replacement of lower sides and end doors was the norm for unfitted mineral wagons of the period- it was done as quickly and cheaply as possible, usually at small wagon-repair facilities, as the wagons were going to be scrapped within the next few years anyway. Sometimes the vehicles were properly primed and painted, more often they weren't, but the paint BR used for wagons at the period was often pretty useless anyway. The coal, most notably stuff like anthracite duff, was fairly corrosive, especially where it stuck at the bottoms of the sides- towards the end of this period, Coedbach was using straw to line the bottom of the sides and doors to try and avoid most of the load being lost.

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Comment posted by Pennine MC on Sat May 09, 2009 6:19 am

 

Thanks Pete, I've only just remembered I asked you that

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??? posted on Sun May 31, 2009 5:50 pm

 

A while back I mentioned that I was short of containers. I've since started to build some to make up for this.

 

I had problems with this Parkside FM container as I couldn't find a decent close up photo to copy, so a bit of guesswork was needed.

 

 

The lettering is from a Modelmaster sheet, although strangely all of the made up numbers seemed (if I've read Don Rowland's book correctly) to be for the plywood version rather than matchboarded as per the kit.

 

 

These are Parkside (the longer type BD) and Cambrian (type A) and were built straight from the kits, although the Cambrian ones needed quite a bit of filing of the corners to get them to go together properly. Now waiting painting.

 

I've also restarted work on a couple of Maunsell coaches that have been sitting around for years waiting to be finished. The first is one of the later open thirds with sliding vents. It started out as a Phoenix kit which was pretty horrible. I replaced the roof with a Kirk one to lose the strange pressed rainstring, reprofiled the ends (which seemed to be a GWR type that sloped in towards the top) and built a new underframe. The windows were carefully filed to reduce the thickness of the ventilator frames. Underframe details and bogies are Comet (these later Maunsell ones had the same battery boxes/dynamos as Bulleid coaches) and door details are NNK.

 

 

It looks OK but I'm not 100% happy with it. I'm not sure if there's an easier way to build one of these. It will go in the centre of a rake, which is why the paper gangways extend out so far in this picture.

 

A lot easier was this Roxey Nondescript brake, although it too has had a lot of work on the underframe, and some Comet bogies. I thought the original Roxey underframe detail looked a bit weedy, and replacing it ensured that all of my coaches had a consistent look.

 

Hard work, but when I started on these we didn't have a decent RTR Maunsell coach to pinch the underframe from. Now being painted. And partially stripped down and repainted after I gave it a coat of SR freight brown by mistake instead of green (the joys of red/green colour blindness )

 

 

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??? posted on Tue Jun 09, 2009 3:30 pm

 

Sorry about the slightly iffy quality of some of the following photos. My trusty 7 year old Kodak camera packed up, and I'm still getting the hang of the replacement. My old one was a lot easier to use - such is progress in the never ending quest to make technology more difficult to use than it actually needs to be.

 

Speaking of old, I bought this Dapol 5 plank open with my pocket money at the Grantham rail show in 1988 (when it used to be at the Town hall). It's been dug out, fitted with a new MJT/ABS/Evergreen channel chassis and some body detailing, and is now a Southern built LNER 5 plank wagon.

 

 

I bought some Parkside parcels vans as part of one of their cheap show deals about 5 years back, and now I've nearly finished one! An LMS CCT, which I've compensated with MJT inside bearings. The chassis detail on the kit was a bit sketchy, so I've replaced the brake shoes with MJT ones, linkages from bits of wire and the J hangers with some nice castings from Comet which are a bit more heavy duty. Buffers are Gibson sprung, which will be fitted with MJT heads to represent the strange squared off oval buffers the real thing had. I forget who came up with this idea, but I read it on the forum I've since fixed the wonky cross bar between the brake shoes

 

 

The next two are both from Cambrian and belong to the LMS. The D1667 open was a doddle, and has the usual underframe refinements.

 

 

The D1664 was a lot more "fun". The ends were about 1mm too short, and had to be extended downwards so that the bottom of the buffer beam lined up with the bottom of the solebar. The lower end detail had to be replaced to hide the extension. I also added triangular corner plates at the lower corners (these seem to have been added fairly soon after building), the brackets between the solebar and the sides and made the end strapping deeper by adding plastic strip (it looked too shallow compared to photos). The roof was a bit thick, so I made a new one from tinplate covered in some self adhesive fabric from Crafty Computer paper http://www.craftycomputerpaper.co.uk/ProductDetail.asp?ProductID=9&CatID=10 which when painted gives a slightly rough canvas finish.

 

 

Despite (or perhaps because of) all this extra work, I did quite enjoy building this kit.

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??? posted on Tue Jun 09, 2009 10:18 pm

 

And some more! This LNER Extra Long CCT is from the same batch of Parkside kits I bought ages ago. Pretty much as per the basic kit except for MJT inside bering compensation and their sprung buffers (with the heads filed down to get the cut off type used by these vehicles). I also glazed it before the final coat of matt varnish, to try and get the effect of filthy windows.

 

 

The LBSC car truck is finished as well - in early BR condition and loaded with a Classix Austin. The car had it's windows masked off with maskol and a couple of coats of matt varnish to stop it looking shiny and toy like. It should really be roped down but I wanted it to be removable. Or was too lazy depending on your point of view.....

 

 

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??? posted on Fri Jun 19, 2009 11:28 pm

 

I've been clearing out some of the long term lurkers on my work bench.

 

This is an LMS DX type open container. It's based on the Parkside kit, which is sold as an LNER design but it's actually an RCH standard type. It need two main modifications:

- Replace the securing rings on the side with fuse wire rings.

- Replace the fragile plastic hoops with some more robust metal ones. This was a real pain, and the new ones are slightly wonky even after some tweaking. They are a lot more robust though, which is good.

 

 

The next container is a scratchbuilt LMS FM insulated one - based on a plan in LMS wagons volume 2, and a photo in Vol 3 of the 4mm wagon. There's a little bit of guesswork in places (the drawing is a bit vague and the one in the photo was loaded in to a 3 plank wagon so the lower parts is obscured) but I'm happy with the result. The projections on the roof are for the lifting shackles, which will be fitted after painting.

 

 

Lastly an LSWR stone block wagon. Converted from a Cambrian 1 plank PO wagon as per a suggestion on their web site. It has deeper solebars (plastic strip) and new running gear. I cut the ABS axleboxes and springs from their W iron casting and mounted them on MJT etched W irons - this looks a lot better, and I think I'll do this on all LSWR wagons in future.

 

 

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??? posted on Tue Jun 23, 2009 1:23 pm

 

Finally finished the LMS Plywood van It took ages to paint as the matt humbrol varnish I used kept drying with whitee patches. Now I know why this normallly happens (moisture in the atmosphere or insufficient mixing of the matting agent) but other stuff spayed at the same time (and often in the same pass of the can) was OK. It's done now anyway and I'm pleased with how much better it now looks compared to the standard Parkside kit.

It's a bit rough in places because of all the hacking about, but passes the two foot test. There's another one of these in the pipeline which shoulldd be a bit more refined.

 

 

The two cambrian LMS wagons are now painted as well.

 

 

 

I'm quite pleased with the way these have turned out.

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Comment posted by lbsc123 on Thu Jun 25, 2009 3:21 pm

 

Looks good Pete!

 

Love the look of the cartruck it looks far better than many kits I've built.

 

Do you by any chance have a layout to run all this lovely stock on?

 

Cheers,

 

Will

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??? posted on Thu Jun 25, 2009 3:36 pm

 

Not yet I'm currently living in a rented flat with no space for a layout, so I'm concentrating on building stock. The plan is to build a layout based on a freelance location somewhere on the Kent/Sussex border where the LBSC and SER meet. Period will be from mid-1930s to 1970, which lets me use a wide range of stock on the same layout (as large parts of the Southern seemed to avoid any infrastructure changes during this time - even keeping their Southern railway signs).

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??? posted on Thu Jul 09, 2009 8:19 pm

 

I've finished painting the Southern built LNER 5 plank wagon, in 1940s unpainted condition. I'm quite pleased with this, especially as it started out as a fairly crude Dapol model

 

 

The first of the containers is now done - a Parkside BD in 1960s tatty bauxite.

 

 

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??? posted on Sat Jul 25, 2009 9:14 am

 

Somehow I forgot to take a picture of this GWR Felix Pole 20T coal wagon before painting it.

 

 

It started off as a Colin Ashby kit - bought just before he retired and the kits went in to limbo. The body was very good - nice thin sides are quite unusual on plastic kits of steel mineral wagons. The chassis was poor due to knackered tooling, so I replaced the solebars with plastic section and used MJT axleboxes/W-irons. There then followed much fun making all of the brackets that attach the body to the chassis I used the salt weathering method again, but very lightly to give the impression of lots of little patches of rust.

 

This Southern Maunsell corridor first is one of the first Hornby models, repainted in to post-war Malachite green and with a bit of detailing. Well, mostly "undetailing" as I removed the alarm gear from one end (it had it at both), the extra set of door hinges on one of the doors (?!?!?) and the horrible metal steps from the corners of the chassis. The latter were massively over scale and badly assembled. These were frankly bizarre - they are presumably overscale for strength but could easily have been left off. Scale replacements would have been too fragile and the coach looks OK without them.

 

 

 

 

The BR totems on the windows were scratched off with a fingernail and replaced with HMRS transfers. I couldn't remove the Hornby door handles in a way that they ccould be re-attached after painting, so I ended up replacing them with etched Roxey ones. And I added the cream patches on the corridor partition using bits of sticky label painted the right colour.

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??? posted on Fri Jul 31, 2009 11:05 pm

 

I'm now clearing all the half built wagons from my workbench with a vengance!

 

An Airfix lowmac I had as a kid. The moulding for attaching a lorry were carefully removed and filled and scale wheels fitted. It's had a few extra details on the ends, but I chickened out of replacing the over thick axleguards.

 

 

This Coopercraft GWR 7 plank wagon has been modified to match one pictured in "Pre-nationalisation fright wagons on BR" which has different ironwork around the doors and steel channel replacing the lower planks on the ends. The latter modification isn't a good idea on Coopercraft wagons, as the floor is about 3mm too high so the inside looks a bit odd. A canvas sheet will hide this.

 

 

Another Banana van, this time a Dapol body on a Red Panda body. I was impressed with the quality of the body - it's a 50 year old Hornby-Dublo tooling and it put some of the iffy models coming out of China these days to shame. The chassis had to go as it was totally wrong, and as for the livery....

 

Some minor modifications to the ends, and I've added the chalk boards to the sides. The Red Panda brake shoes looked a bit weedy and were replaced with 51L cast ones. These may be a bit on the chunky side, but look OK. They were moulded in pairs lengthwise accross the wagon so you can use them with rocking W Irons (nice idea) and needed cutting down for OO (a minutes work)

 

 

A real dogs dinner - Ratio body mouldings, with a spare Parkside CCT roof (much more accurate than the ratio roof) and a parkside chassis. It represents one of these vans towards the end of their lives after it had aquired vacuum brakes.

 

 

Another Parkside LMS Plywood van rebuilt with a set of Ratio ends.

 

 

A couple of Airfix BR cattle wagons, picked up new and untouched a few years ago before the Bachmann ones were announced. They were fantastically well moulded and yet managed to be nightmares to build.

 

Even fitting modern scale wheels was a pain, but I managed it in the end so they run a bit better than the one I built when I was 10, which had the 2 part plastic wheels

 

They needed a lot of work around the doors to replace the toy like opening ones. The one on the right has had it's diagonal strapping replaced to represent the alternate pattern used on some of the 8 ton vans. The one on the right has new axleboxes cut from a spare Parkside chassis.

 

 

Lastly, these two Parkside LNER vans were much easier and needed virtually nothing doing except for a few detail changes to match the examples I chose to model. Fantastic kits!

 

 

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Comment posted by Pennine MC on Sat Aug 01, 2009 6:09 pm

 

Intersting selection as ever, Pete. I also came to the conclusion that a Parkside roof was the way to go with the Ratio SR van; I found it doesnt fit perfectly but the gaps are so small as not to notice - and yet the improvement in shape is so significant. I'm very much with you on the 'nana van also - for my money, it's easily the best of the old HD SD series

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