2mm LMS Vans - A tale of Two Vans
.thumb.jpg.0ce5f953824920f507578ff1c917fdec.jpg){kind=avatar}
Entry posted by John Brenchley
793 views
It’s hard to believe that it’s nearly 5 years since I last wrote a blog on this forum and actually, most of the work I’m about to describe was completed about 9 months ago.
I recently decided that in order to make my wagon fleet more representative of the Big 4, I needed some LMS vans. The Association shop sells 3 plastic body kits that are suitable for my era - a twin pack from the N Scale Society and a single 2mm scale version.
I was concerned that the N Scale versions would look too large in comparison with my other pure 2mm scale wagons but comparison with drawings suggested that the length and height were acceptable; the problem was with the width which was about 1.5mm too wide. I therefore decided to see if I could remove sections from each end to reduce the width to match that of the 2mm scale van.
The N Scale pack has sides and ends to make up into two quite different diagrams, one with horizontal planked sides and corrugated ends that I chose to model as a fitted version of D1897 (10’ wheelbase) and the other with vertical planking and ends that featured cross bracing between two end stanchions that I modelled as an unfitted version of D1664 (9’ wheelbase).
D1897
Looking at the ends of this kit, it seemed that there were two places where I might be able to reduce the width. Firstly, the flat space between the side of the central ventilator and the start of the corrugations seemed too wide and secondly, there looked to be more plain plastic on the edges than seemed to be the case in photographs. This latter problem was easily solved by trimming a bit off each edge with a sharp scalpel. The problem either side of the ventilator would mean cutting the ends into three pieces which I did by scoring heavily almost all the way through from the back with a P cutter and then finishing off the cut with a scalpel.
I then cut and filed the pieces so that the corrugations came much closer to the ventilator, trying to get a nice smooth fit between them.
The ends were reassembled using a thick piece of spare plasticard behind them to strengthen the joins.
Carefully scraping and filing along each corrugation helped to remove any traces of a ridge where the joins had been.
A comparison between the original (left) and altered ends (right) can be seen below. To quote Eric Morecombe (and show my age a bit) “You can’t see the join” (well, hardly).
The picture below shows the assembled wagon but with the area below the solebar still needing to be painted black and with one more buffer needing to be bought from the 2mm shops, followed by some darkening of the roof and overall weathering.
D1664
The end of this style of van looked like being harder to deal with as I did not want to spoil the nicely riveted detail of the cross bracing nor lose the riveted detail on the corner plates. The only solution I could come up with was to replace the three plank sections either side with new ones with the planks scored slightly narrower. Again, I divided the ends into three pieces, cutting just outside the edge of the vertical stanchions. In order to retain the corner plates, I glued the edge pieces to the van sides and only after the glue had set really hard, cut the ends back leaving only the bit of plank that was visible behind each corner plate.
I scribed two new pieces with three 1mm vertical planks and glued these either side of the original N scale centre piece.
After fixing the ends to the sides, extra pieces of plasticard were scribed and fitted to fill in the gaps in the buffer beams.
Below is a view from above to compare the width of the one of the finished vans with an un-altered N Gauge Society van kit.
Finishing Off
To create some variety in both chassis style and colour, I chose to model the vans as follows :-
D1897 - this is modelled as a fitted van with clasp brakes as appears in the photo of number 506818 on page 45 of the 2010 reprint of Essery’s LMS Wagons Vol 1.
D1664 - I decided that this wagon would be unfitted but painted in bauxite livery with 5” lettering. I numbered it 264131 as per the picture of a van in BR livery on page 39 of Essery’s book. Although the photograph shows the ends of this van having slightly different strapping, I hoped these were later additions and also that the van was from one of the unfitted batches as I could not see the brake details from the photograph. Also, there was no evidence that the van would have received the bauxite livery, but I doubt if anyone can prove it one way or the other.
The vans are shown below posed in front of Tavistock’s trainshed, still needing painting of the roofs, weathering and buffers. The left-hand van is from the 2mm Scale Association kit, modelled in LMS grey as an unfitted D1808, number 131391.
-
4
-
11
8 Comments
Recommended Comments
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now