Today hasnt seen a huge amount of activity so i'd thought i'd do an introduction to part of my current project.

When my dad first started with the wagon building a few years back, his first wagon was a brake van seen previously. then came four wagons then the outside framed box van. My first were the rail wagons and i am currently working on a follow up, two open ballast wagons and a much smaller box van. The van presents more challenge than the wagons so that has been the focus of recent work. These are all Ex metropolitan railway stock, in London transport livery ( post 1933 and possibly even only post 1948)

First a history lesson. Very little details of the wagon later known as SC(stores car) 630 are left. it was thought to have been rebuilt from an early ballast wagon built somewhere between 1866 and 1882 by the Metropolitan railway. But the origin of these short wheelbase 2 plank open wagons is unclear, so the Met probably bought them second hand. At any rate, one was converted at an unknown date to a short box van. Despite the vast majority of Met goods van not be passed to London transport in 1933, this one did and ran in various stres train including the Lillie Bridge Ealing common train i beleive, being numbered SC630. Interestingly, one of my other wagons is the next in sequence, SC631 Anyway, details are sketchy, though one thing that is not is the bodywork. All of our drawings are taken from James Snowdon's book Metropolitan railway rolling stock, whom we are greatly indebted to!

At the start of the week i started with a pile of small section wood supplied from a dolls house supplier. Any small section wood will do, preferably soft woods but this time round all i could get was obeche, which is actually very nice and easy to work with.

after matching wood sizes to a scale drawing, the corner and door posts were let in or rebated using a combination of a sharp stanley knife and a carefully set milling machine. This allowed planks to sit at a required depth and strong joints to be made.

The frame was glued together with ordinary exterior wood glue. Unlike previous construction, they were dowelled together for alignment and then glued, being left over night to dry.

16mm wide planks were then cut from 1.5mm birch ply, being careful to ensure the grain ran the correct way. These could then be glued in place, each one was given a chamfered top edge that act as a rain run off on the fullsize to stop water rotting the edge of the planks.

Diagonal body frame bracing was then fitted. these milled down to the correct width (nothing appropriate being available) and were cut using a razor saw to shape

Door post were then cut to length and the other pieces in the door frame were also cut. again these were dowelled together. Being a lazy person i couldnt be bothered to rebate the door frame so glued bits of ply running against the planks to simulate a rebate.

Finally planks were cut for the doors and glued, and that is how things stand currently.

So next job is to start adding various bits of strapping and platework, make the hinges and fit the doors, before making the ends, assembling the body and making a rood, sometime by next week.

So until i find something else to write about.

Hope you find it interesting. Its really not that big a leap from model railways to this. I did it.

Cheers

Mark