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Building an old Toad (part 3)

Gingerbread

Entry posted by Gingerbread

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The smooth progress of the earlier sessions came to an end here - nothing monumental, just a string of things that didn't quite go right. Some have been re-worked to my satisfaction, some still need a bit more effort to fix (or work around). Mostly a problem with my limited soldering skills, abetted by lack of alignment aids in the latter part of the build.

 

Anyway, back to the main story.

 

Next I tackled the various ends to the body, and their overlays. The outer part of the verandah is fairly easy to locate, with a couple of alignment holes in the attached tabs (optional use of top-hat bearings here), though the outer layers are very flimsy and need to be treated with care. The inside end of the verandah has only one overlay, and this needs a bit of filing of the lower edge, otherwise it sits too high after folding up the main layer. The non-verandah end is also lacking in any alignment aids, but seems to go together fairly well with a bit of care.

 

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Attaching the non-verandah end of the body to the underframe should be easy, with a couple of aligment holes available if needed. It was at this point that I started to struggle - soldering took several attempt (my suspicion, looking back on it, is that I needed to apply more heat, as I was working with rather larger chunks of metal to solder together than previously), but eventually it was fixed, and correctly placed. Similar problems were encountered with the verandah end - it's difficult to find a way to clip the pieces together here, and there is no easy alignment aid. After several attempts I finally soldered it firmly in place, only to discover that it wasn't quite centrally positioned - it's firm against the end, but slightly to one side.

 

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It's also fairly challenging to solder the sides onto the ends - there's no obvious way to clip the two parts together while soldering. The corners seem to have aligned fairly well, and solderered reasonably neatly, though I don't think the inner end of the verandah has soldered properly, so I will revisit that later.

 

The sides appear slightly high, leaving a thin layer of daylight visible between body and underframe. I think the alignment with the ends is correct, and the ends appear firmly seated to the underframe, so I suspect that I should have located the outer solebars slightly higher to avoid the gap. This suggests a radical rethink of the order of construction - perhaps complete the body parts first, solder them to the underframe while it is flat, then bend up the underframe and attach the outer solebars later so they can be adjusted to fit against the body..

 

Minor problem with the buffers - the holes in the buffer beams, even after reaming out , weren't really large enough to take my preferred buffers, or more accurately there wasn't enough room because of solebars/floor to thread the buffers through and still keep them straight. So I cut the buffers off short, just long enough to go through the buffer beam, and soldered them like that. One is slightly crooked, so I need to straighten that.

 

I suspect that the best method to attach the handrail would be to drill the van sides, insert loco handrail holders, and thread the handrail through them. However, the outside framing of the van means that soldering the wire direct to the outside frames leaves it standing well clear of most of the sides, giving a 3-d effect with much less effort and skill required, so I chose the easy way. It took a few attempts to position the vertical sections correctly, and I've not split the wire at the doors (maybe later, but it looks good enough for now).

 

I usually attach my DG couplings by soldering, but after my earlier problems, and without the usual fold-up box to form a base for the couplings I weakened and glued a couple of strips of styrene to the underframe and glued the couplings to that. Perhaps I should probably have attached them earlier, when there was better access to clip them in place, but I was reluctant to add styrene until the soldering was finished.

 

The chimney hole in the roof is wrongly positioned for the example I am attempting to follow -it is positioned in the middle of the whole length, whereas both photographs and drawing show it in the centre of the enclosed section - so I drilled a new hole in the right place.

 

This is what it looks like at the current stage - needs a bit of tidying up, adding the brake standard and chimney (and filling the old chimney hole), then painting, transfers, and weathering. That will take a while (particularly the transfers), so this part of the thread will lie dormant for a while. Note that the roof is still loose at this point, and probably crooked in the photos - I intend to fix it in place after I have installed the brake standard to the verandah.

 

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In the meantime, the next picture also includes some mostly-completed cattle wagons, which I intend to cover in the next post to the blog.

 

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David

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  • RMweb Gold
Donw
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Seems to be going together well. I see what you mean about the roof. I have a model of one in 0 gauge. Poor quality photo attached (light not good) it may be of use to you.

 

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Gingerbread

Thanks for the comments Don.

 

Unfortunately your photo is currently not visible - I presume it is lost somewhere in the RMweb system. From what I recall before it disappeared, you were modelling the same version (i.e. with grease axleboxes and 4 black wagon style brakes), but in later livery than I am intending to use - mostly white handrails, letters of either 16" or 25" for "GW" rather than the grey handrails and 5" "G.W.R" that I intend. One interesting minor difference was that your version had vertical handrails on both sides of the verandah doors, whilst I am fairly sure the photograph I am using as a reference (RWA fig 83) has only one, on the right hand side. It is possible that the two sides of the prototype differed - RWA showed the opposite side to yours, I think.

 

I have to say that your handrails look better than mine - I presume you drilled the body, and bent the handrails and inserted the ends into those holes in the body. I felt that was rather too fiddly to tackle in 2mm, but perhaps next time...

 

David

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richbrummitt

Nice work and I find that improving skills are a continual development. (Why is it that humans learn from mistakes - so frustrating when you have to make something wrong to do a good job of the model second time around!)

 

Looking forward to the cattle wagon instalment. I bought the chassis recently having given up waiting for the roof etch to become and was pleasantly surprised that the original style doors are in the chassis etch and not the roof etch as I originally though.

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Gingerbread

Richard

 

Thanks for the compliment - my skills have improved substantially over the last year or so, but from time to time events like this remind me that there's still a long way to go.

 

Yes, that's the core of the GWR cattle wagon secret - get the BR cattle wagon body, add the 11'6" GWR DC underframe, swap the doors, and you have a GWR cattle wagon. And in the absence of the GWR roof etches, I find LMS ones are an acceptable substitute. For my earlier era, I need a couple of extra modifications unfortunately.

 

David

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richbrummitt

I just read your latest posting. I think that whatever roof is the right length is fine. I'm sure I used an LMS/SDJR cattle wagon roof for a GER passneger cattle box recently. I'm not even sure why I had the roof in the first place? If you haven't got anything to hand ensure you have some 0.005" nickel silver sheet to cut to size.

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Ian Smith

David,

 

I've managed to locate an article by John Lewis all about GWR outside framed Brake Vans (I knew I had one somewhere), it was published in British Railway Journal No. 17 (way back in 1987!! - God I feel old sometimes :-) )

 

All of the photographs bar one do show the stove pipe exitting the roof in the middle of the Guards enclosed area along the centre line of the roof. Indeed the original engineering drawing of the van shows the same. The "bar one" is shows a van converted to an Engineers van (no. 80913 originally 8768) in 1926.

 

The photograph of one of these vans involved in an accident with 3 Iron Mink shows Brake Van no. 17986, branded Didcot, in newly painted condition with small 5" G.W.R so presumably the photograph dates 1897 - 1903. The verandah end clearly shows a cupboard the full width of the wagon (with what I assume is the sandbox operating handle in the middle of it).

 

I hope this is of use.

 

Ian

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Gingerbread

Ian -

Thanks for the update.

 

I think I will finish the first one to match the reference in Atkins/RWA, namely four wagon-type brakes, no sand pipes.

 

The second has also been built with four wagon-style brakes, so I probably won't convert them to 8 clasp brakes, but the addition of sand pipes (and the corresponding fittings in the verandah) sounds a plausible alteration for that one.

 

I will check the various references given, including yours, and see whether they inspire me to add a third alternative (presumably with the 8 clasp brakes).

 

I have already moved the first stove pipe to the middle of the enclosed non-verandah area. I think your confirmation means I will do the same with the other(s) - unless I decide to add a departmental version, and I don't plan that at present.

 

David

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