Entry posted by Ian Smith
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This entry is the result of my Christmas project... I still has one GWR Iron Mink kit that I purchased from the 2mm Scale Association several years ago. The kit comprises 2 identical sprues each having a floor, an end and a side.
The first step was to prepare the floor, the centre was established, then the axle centres established from that datum (each was lightly scribed into the plastic), I also drilled vent holes for the fumes of the solvent to escape. The V-Iron was bent up along with the Colin Waite axle guards (I decided to use 2 fixed axle guards for this build – compensated wagons in 2mm scale seem a little pointless to me, but I’m prepared to be shot down).
The axle guards and V-Iron were super glued to the floor making sure that the axles when fitted will be parallel to each other and perpendicular to the edge of the floor, I made use of the little holes in the axle guards through which I could see the previously scribed lines.
The brake gear was super glued to a small piece of 40 thou styrene, to make fitting to the floor easier, and when fitting the end of my tapered broach was used to align the brake gear to the V-Iron :
The kit wagon sides were prepared by filing off the hinges on each of the doors, then the centre 3 planks of each door were carefully filed back to a depth of about 20 thou. The top and bottom rails of each door were then added with small strips of 20 thou styrene, one edge of the strip was slightly bevelled (this may not be visible in the photos). Doing this allows retention of the door handle and locking mechanism. I also drilled out the horse hook holes in the solebar as per the prototype at this stage too.
(The body is shown below assembled around one of the floors, and with the cast white metal buffers (again from the 2mm Scale Association – although now replaced by brass turnings)
The next stage was to fit the floor unit into the wagon – had I not built up the body previously this could be done now around the floor. My reasoning behind making up the body and chassis as separate units was to aid getting the buffer height correct, as the floor unit can be slid up and down within the body until the correct height is achieved, then secured with solvent (obviously for this to be possible, the floor unit needs to be a tight interference fit within the body cavity :
The next phase of the operation was to prepare some new hinges for the doors (12 will be required, 3 on each door), a slim length of 5 thou styrene was taped to a piece of tufnol (although anything that would allow separation later would do), with a length of 10 thou plastic rod positioned down it’s centre (once dried, I allowed it to set overnight), individual hinges could be cut from the length (I happened to have some 10 thou rod in my box, although if necessary some can be made by gently warming a piece of sprue a few centimetres above a candle flame to soften it, then gently draw apart to create a thin filament of plastic) :
Once the hinges had dried, the cast axle guards were added (again these are old 2mm Scale Association components that have now been replaced – by etchings I think)
The next stage was to fit the roof – I decided to use 10 thou styrene sheet for this (35mm x 17mm), which was given a bit of a curve by rolling over it on the back of a mouse mat with the round handle of an x-acto knife, and the corners rounded off on a piece of fine grade emery paper. Because this material is quite delicate, I decided to fit a central spine to the inside of the wagon for additional support. Once the roof had been fitted and allowed to dry off, the roof joining strips were added with narrow strips of 5 thou styrene :
After everything had dried, the roof strips were trimmed to length and the brake handle added and soldered to the L shaped 0.2 mm phosphor bronze wire that I used to represent the vertical rod that substituted for an internal V-Iron on the prototype. The completed wagon can be seen below :
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