12 minutes ago, Andrew P said:

So, they'll be on Flea Bay next week thin Chris!

Nah, but if anyone has the Peco notice boards, is modelling GWR and has access to Excel I’ll send them the file for them to print off themselves

If they have been nice to me 

@Rowsley17D very kindly sent me some odds and bobs of Coopercraft kits, mostly brake gear, which is always useful, but also a pair of solebars and a pair of 4-plank ends, so I've united those with my cut-down O4 sides:

I'd wrecked one of the solebars from the wagon those sides came from (axleguard split beyond repair) and carving all the sheet rail gear off the ends is a bit of a fag, so I'm particularly grateful for these bits. I've done my usual conversion to grease axleboxes. The cut-down sides lack the row of bolt (possibly rivet) heads along the top of the corner plate; as this wagon will be sheeted, I'm not worrying about that. 

As far as I can work out, most 4-plankers were built without any sort of door stop but from the early years of the 20th century, metal spring stops started to be fitted - the Vastern Road Yard photo, and a companion photo of Kings Meadow Yard, show some with and some without, and quite a variety of styles. For this one, I've gone for a pair of short stops well-separated - made from scrap brass strip from the edge of the D418 kit - with square bang plates.  

The way the solebar sprue is laid out, the two buffers are at right angles. There's usually some misalignment between the two halfs of the mould which results in one buffer being mis-registered lengthways - which can be dealt with by filing the buffer face flat - and the other being mis-registered sideways - much harder to deal with. So on this wagon, I've used the two "good" buffers from Rowsley17D's sprues on the near side and two good ones salvaged from the old wagon on the far side.

The Coopercraft kits seem to have been moulded in a variety of colours of plastic. Kits I built as a teenager are brown; the majority of others are a pale grey. Rowsley17D's sprues are all a darker grey, apart from one piece that is off-white. There's a science of kit archaeology here!

On 29/04/2020 at 17:31, Penrhos1920 said:

 

That Birmingham Central Goods photo has another gem in the background.  A GWR V16 van, nothing unusual about that, except it’s not in GWR livery but Rhymney.

I've found a very interesting little article that explains this! The Rhymney seems to have delighted in creating this sort of confusion. The Type 1 van looks at first glance to be a second-hand Midland vehicle that has had SECR-style cupboard doors replace its sliding door, until one starts notching up the differences - not least that it's a foot shorter. 

Continuing with the plank loads, I've added door stops and circular bang plates to the ABS 4-plank and the reconditioned O4 (though I see one door stop has gone adrift):

The circular door stops are slivers of 0.080" / 2 mm diameter Evergreen rod, glued in place then filed thin and flat. The missing door stop evidently pinged off during that process. I really should have thought of doing this before priming the ABS wagon! Now I'm waiting for another sunny, dry day to get the rattle cans out again - might be in with a chance on Friday, otherwise Saturday. We're forecast thundery showers for tomorrow.

I placed an order with Eileen's Emporium a few days ago but the Parkside O11s slipped my mind, so sheet rails are still a little way off. 

On 29/04/2020 at 12:28, wagonman said:

I presume the GWR riveted its wagon under frames as they were steel after all, and also the bodywork of Iron Minks and the various N diagram opens likewise, but the wooden bodied wagons like the O5 were bolted together.

Mine are welded!

Photography under artificial light really doesn't do justice to the warmth of Halfords' red primer:

I've got pretty used to Great Western wagons in red but even so I'm struggling with a red wood-bodied mink - decades of habituation lead me to expect such a wagon to be grey. But these diagram V5 vehicles were built 1902-1904, so must, if we accept the theory that grey only came in with the large G W lettering, have been turned out in red, except perhaps for the final lots. 

Now, while still struggling with this culture shock, we have to go on to consider the question of lettering - paint or cast plates? Again, logic insists on cast plates. These seem to have been absolutely standard on the contemporary O4 opens, and, indeed, on 4-plank wagons from at least Lot 287 onwards - the highest painted number I've seen is 67389 of Lot 191. As we've seen, the cast numberplates remained in use on at least some wagons built after the livery change to large G W initials - O2s up to Lot 522 at least. As for vans, some V6 iron minks of late lots certainly had plates - at least as early as Lot 207. 

So, I suppose the test is: is there any photographic evidence for a wagon of any type built to a lot above about Lot 200 in pre-large G W livery without cast plates? If no such examples can be found, then we have to presume that diagram V5 vans carried plates.