Yet again my day saw little activity on my part, something to do with get up unusually late and punctuated by a visit to homebase and Halfords.

However the van SC630 progresses. The planks for the other two doors were fitted, a time consuming job. Then, while one pair fitted, the other doors would not due to a mistake on my part, the changeable nature of wood, a miscalculation of about a mm and the fact the door frame was ever so slightly askew Oops.

Anyway after some gentle persuasion (dont worry no hammer involved!) the doors now fit and do not give any visual impact of my butchery! Oh the forgiving nature of wood!

Dreadnoughts

If i asked you what you thought of when i said dreadnoughts, views would differ. Some of a mindset would think of the massive battleships of the WW1 era, others of a greater mindset would go to the Great westerns massive 70ft express coaches. Other would look at me blankly! However mine and others who have an interest in the met would go the Met railways 'Main line stock' often known as dreadnoughts due to their massive bulk, comparitively to previous stock. However they are only 51ft long which in coach terms are tiddlers. (it also means they are just over 4.5ft long in 5 inch gauge and a perfect fit for an Erde 142 car trailer!)

What follows is entirely to my dads credit, which he probably hasn't received enough of in this blog!

Recent activity has focused on the bogies, a completed example being shown below

Hes building his last two coaches to complete the 5 coach set, and they are now reaching assemly point. the bogies are now complete, save wheels on one which he is waiting on. The frames are just receiving final details such as vacum cylinders and battery boxes as well as dynamos and footboards.

Bodys are made from frames of marine ply (available from all good hardware stores) and Birch ply, routed to form windows and panelling (not available at all good hardware stores)

Bogies are aluminium plate and angle milled to the correct profile to resemble Fox pattern 7ft bogies (they may well be familiar to southern railway modellers as well)

Axle boxes are our own casting, rapid protoyped from drawings from pictures of surviving vehicles. The preserved examples on the Keighley and worth are on different pattern bogies, having been swapped when the originals cracked. the boxes are based ona surviving pair on a 1905 underground trailer car at acton LT museum depot.

Springs are made from one layer of spring steel and several more of packing crate banding steel which is ideal for wagon and coach springs.

Someone asked about wheels last post, these are CNC machined steel by a contractor who does favourable rates for 'hobbyists'.

Before anyone asks yes there are seats but no the doors dont open. you wont beleive the amount of people who ask.

Hooks are laser cut but severely cleaned up, then safety chains as fitted to all Met passenger rated stock were made up. It severely annoyed him to find four laser cut safety chain hooks just after he had hand filed four and got them cleaned up! Ah well, such is life!

So like i said, little credit where its due, my dads taught me the vast majority of what i know and his work is far better than mine! Hopefully few projects time I'll give him a run for his money, but he'll have moved on to greater things, so hey.

Hope you enjoy. will try and get a video uploaded for next time, few pics of acton depot show. Wagon progress will slow again as i need to get on a cnc router for my roof arches.

Hope you enjoy, any questions, please ask

Cheers,

Mark