Modelling Grain Wagons Dia 1/271
Entry posted by LHW
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Hi All,
I have no idea what I'm doing here, so will probably be a bit of a learning curve as i go 
, anyhow here goes, sorry if dont work first time.
Hopefully this entry will be a step by step article about modelling the BR unfitted grain hopper wagon, using the Dapol model as the basis of my project. For prototypical shots the first obvious place is Paul Bartlett's excellent site http://gallery6801.fotopic.net/c1477752.html which is a modellers heaven for people who like their wagons, the next stops been the various books available, D. Larkin and G. Gamble/Chenoa been just a couple too mention. Also drawings of dia 1/271 and the fitted dia 1/275 were done by Colin Craig, of which copies were reproduced in the Santona publication "Modelling the British Rail Era", of which the authors are well known to this group.
I'm sure this has been covered many a time and been done in various ways. Geoff Kent's book "The 4mm Wagon Part 1" has an excellent article on scratchbuilding these and other versions. While also at one time Jim Harris done a 7mm version in etched brass for the Burton group, which was also available in a downscaled kit for 4mm modellers and as i have found although the downsized 4mm version was a bit fiddly to put together it would make up into a very nice model once completed.
Anyhow back to this article and my way of making the model using the Dapol wagon, of which to be honest the only part you use is the grain hopper body itself, the rest is unneeded and redundant and even the hopper body is nearly 10mm too short itself, so the first job is to cut n shut the body so it becomes the correct length of 86mm.
This article involves using four bodies to reproduce three new wagons, I could of gone the route of cutting each body and filling the required gap with plasticard, this would of saved wasting a body but i felt the extra work and time fiddling around was not worth the saving in my mind.
The body as it comes
The next four images show where to make the various cuts on each wagon
Whilst the next three show which parts need gluing back together, a little sanding may be required to get them as near to the overall length of 86mm.
And the wasted ends
The next stage is to glue the two halfs back together, i found using the top as a guide it help lined every thing up, at this time you only want to glue the two halves, hence the masking tape to stop gluing the top at this stage. The plastic used by Dapol is much like the type used in plastic kits and so is very easy to work with and easy to glue, a quick brush with Mekpak was all that is needed.
The next stage is the top or roof of which you will have now noticed is too short, we have four tops but only require three, so the fourth i have removed and sanded the hatches along with any other detail and this one will be cut into small sections to fill the gaps, also the post which is used to screw it all together is not needed so i cut this off flush.
The next job requires cutting the roof in two halves as we need to put an extra section in between the two halves, which was cut from the roof I had sanded all the detail from earlier , when cutting the roof in half I did the cut slightly off halfway, so as to miss trying to cut through the plastic reinforcing web. The roof parts are now fitted into place and Mekpak run around the joints, making the body one piece.
This was then all left overnight to let all the glued parts set properly, then the next job is too remove all the detail from the sides of the hopper body as it is all in the wrong place, this will later be replaced in its correct place with Evergreen/Plastruct plastic section.
Next job will see a bit of filling and sanding to hopefully discise all the joins.
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