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Yet more wagon matters and a Siphon C

JDaniels

Entry posted by JDaniels

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It's been a long time since I last updated my blog. Weather has been too good to sit at my workbench.

 

I think I mentioned that I acquired a Coopercraft 04 open wagon kit at a railway fair at Horsted Keynes. I've now constructed this but comparison with photos of the prototype does underline the shortcomings of the brake gear. These wagons were fitted with Dean Churchward brake gear and whilst plastic kits include the actual brake gear assembly and the operating levers at the end, there are no parts to actually connect these components.This would certainly give your model shunter a shock! The book on the subject, A History of GWR Goods Wagons, gives a diagram of the brake gear, interestingly the rod between the brake gear assembly and the operating levers on the DC1 version actually passes between the wheel and the axleguard.

 

Mainly Trains do an etch of GWR brake gear which includes the toothed quadrant amongst other items (this also omitted on all plastic kits). As I had broken the operating levers on the kit trying to cut them from the sprue, I also used the etched brass levers from the Mainly Trains kit. The operating rod, actually a bar, could have been a problem as this was elegantly curved but I found in my metal scrap box a very fine piece of etch sprue that I was able to bend.

 

I've now completed, painted and lettered the kit, a photo is attached. My apologies for the very poor reproduction. I have put a piece of white card behind the wagon to show the brake gear more clearly. The film round the lettering also shows up far more than it does when viewed normally.

 

This exercise has been a little dispiriting as it now brings into sharp focus the inaccuracies in these models. The brake gear was very prominent as the photo shows and whilst the bodywork is generally excellent on these kits, the compromises made with the brake gear mean that to produce an accurate model not a little further time and expense is required. I will though try and update my other wagons with the correct DC brake gear as time allows. I'm not sure that later versions had the rod between the wheel and axleguard, it may have passed along the centre line of the wagon.

 

The wagon will have a tarpaulin but those commercially available to my mind don't capture the appearance of a sheet. Thinking on this I wondered whether a small piece of black dustbin liner would work as it would recreate the folds of a sheet. To my surprise PC Pressfix transfers work on this thin and very flexible plastic although only time will tell if they stay in place. The dustbin liner also has a slight sheen which the tarpaulins also seemed to have. I will report back with a photo of the Open with a tarpaulin.

 

Finally, in my scrapbox I had a completed K's kit of the Siphon F (?) which someone had given to me. As many others have done I have started converting this to the more useful Siphon C. However the usual route of using the Ratio 4 wheel coach underframe didn't appeal as there are too many compromises involved, most notably the springs which are too long. Mainly Trains again (what a great range of products) do an etch of detailing parts for GWR brown vehicles including brake gear and W irons one pair of which is compensated. The axleguards with 4 ft 6in springs which look closer to the prototype came from Dart Castings. Progress is very slow as to get the ride height right correct I had to cut out the floor, only finding this out of course once I'd cemented the axle assemblies in place. The brake gear is also quite complex with operating levers at either end although the etch provides all of this. I have also found that a hopefuly readily available brass section matches the footboards exactly so I'll use this in place of the fragile plastic footboards from the Ratio underframe. I have some of this brass section but not enough.

 

When finished I'll do another blog entry with a photo but it may be a while. The exercise has been more time consuming than I'd hoped and with the benefit of hindsight I'm not sure I'd have started this. It is no exaggeration to say that an etched kit, if one was available, would have been quicker and more accurate. Thewinter exercise, three etched chassis kits with two etched sides for the GWR four wheelers are still in a box. I haven't even looked at the instructions so I'm definitely not going to be bored this winter!

 

Hope this is of interest to GWR fans.

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Mikkel
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Hello John, good to see progress. I haven't seen the Mainly Trains brake gear applied and up close before. Looks good.

 

I look forward to seeing the Siphon C. The K's kit is supposedly a Siphon F as you suggest, but if you compare it with drawings of an actual "F" it is, as far as I remember, in fact too long. But it's not a bad donor body for the C, in my humble opinion.

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JDaniels

Hello John, good to see progress. I haven't seen the Mainly Trains brake gear applied and up close before. Looks good.

 

I look forward to seeing the Siphon C. The K's kit is supposedly a Siphon F as you suggest, but if you compare it with drawings of an actual "F" it is, as far as I remember, in fact too long. But it's not a bad donor body for the C, in my humble opinion.

Hi Mikkel,

 

Good to hear from you again.

 

The brake gear fret was designed by Iain Rice. Whilst mainly intended for vacuum braked vehicles, some parts, such as the quadrant with the ratchet (the curved part just behind the brake lever) are useful for all vehicles. What the photo doesn't show so clearly is the operating rod which curves up in front of the wheel. It is surprising that plastic kits don't include these features which are quite prominent. 

 

Some news on the tarpaulin. I experimented with black dustbin liner and to my mind this looks better than paper, at least when compared with the prototype tarpaulin shown in GWW page 95. The problem was lettering, reasonably "sticky" (i.e. not old) Pressfix transfers worked reasonably well until I came to fold the tarpaulin over the wagon. Also there isn't a suitable size for the numbers (was there a standard?) but the large ones for the brown vehicles look right but need to be overrpainted white. Eventually I decided that this was taking far too long and the lettering peeled off if I folded the sheet to much so used the paper tarpaulins. I do think though that the dustbin liner looked better as the folds seemed more natural. Maybe someone with more patience than me might like to have a go.

 

The Siphon C! Well some progress has been made and the axleboxes and spring assembly fixed in place. I'm now looking at the brake gear, there were handbrakes at each end and I'm using parts of that Mainly Trains etch for this. After that I still need to do the tie rods and queen posts (?) footboards, a few lamp brackets and the roof (with associated gas piping). There was an article about converting the Siphon F to a Siphon C in the January 1983 MRC. As you say, the Siphon F was too long and the centre panels were slightly wider than the others, I think I read somewhere this was done so they could use the roof from another K's kit (maybe the 40ft PBV). By cutting down the centre line of the two pairs of doors and discarding the centre section you remove this inaccuracy. Once this has been done as you say it's a good representation of the Siphon C, the only slight inaccuracy being the the "C" was slightly taller than the "F." You also need to make sure you select the "C" from diagram O8, the O9's were slightly wider.

 

On to track, I have just collected a batch of Peco code 75 FB rail. I want to experiment with this and ply sleepers to see if I can get a better representation of light railway track secured directly to sleepers with spikes. To my mind the code 83FB track with copper clad sleepers looks a little too heavy. I have a few ideas in mind as to how I'm going to construct the overall track layout, one thing I'm keen to avoid is building the track and points separately, I want to see if they can all be built in situ. I'll keep everyone advised of progress.

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