jjnewitt

What a lovely set of photos! The wagons in post 4 look to be GWR Pollens, possibly pollen Bs. You can just about make out the Dean/Churchward brake levers on the second wagon back. The wagon in post 7 looks to be an (ex)LMS type somewhere on the (G)WR. There's a photo of a very similar 24 wheel LMS trolley in one of J.H.Russel's wagon books. The bogies are identical with those distinctive square dampers on the springs. The cradle was slightly different at the ends. A transformer would be about right. It looks as if the wagon has TRANSFORMER K or something very similar written on it. What a sight some of these trains must have been.

The guard's duckets are about 1mm too high (or maybe low can't quite remember) and there's the issue mentioned with the roof but it's still a good starting point. They make up into a nice model with a bit of work. I've got one to go under a Bradwell chassis sometime, when I get around to brakevans.

The sight of D800s at Crewe was an everyday occurance between mid '62 and mid '64. They were the mainstay of the North & West express services between Bristol/Plymouth/Penzance and Crewe/Manchester/Liverpool at this time. The service would have changed engines at Crewe and the Warship wouldn't have got any further.

You're not alone Jon. I have to agree that the way Heljan have done the gloss finish is very good indeed. I brought one of their Gloss maroon Westerns before the Dapol model was announced and I think it's the most realistic finish I've come across on an RTR model. It looks like the real thing does ex-works. It is a bit orange peely but if it could be done a bit better it would be indeed look fantasic. T-cut is great but you have to be careful using it on thin RTR finishes. It does work wonders in bringing the paint to life but it also goes though it if you aren't paying close attention. I gave a Heljan Hymek the T-cut treatment and it came up really well but you had to give it a real polish to get a lovely finish on the paint and I did manage to go through to the plastic around the raised detail area in a number of places which was annoying. Not quite as annoying as the varnish I had to put over the now very soft paint but that's another story.

Perhaps you speak to Precision Paints about this? They supply a paint specifically for the Western roof and they're colour matches are usualy pretty good. They might be able to point you in the right direction. Do Bachmann locos have a sheen to them? I can't say I've noticed. Mind you their paint doesn't tend to stay on my models for long. A vote for gloss here. Please, please, please, please no flat dull paint finishes on locos that are supposed to be ex works it looks completely wrong and you've spent so much time getting this right!

It's a shame that there are no accuarate RTR milk tanks avaliable but there are perhaps reasons for this byond manufacturers simply getting things wrong. There are so many different variations to contend with particularly with regard to GWR and WR ones. The LMS and SR were more consistent but even still there were differences. Swindon issued 24 diagrams for 6 wheel milk tanks and they did this for a reason, they were all different! On top of this there were the Ro-Rail tank trailers and early 4 wheeled tanks that were converted to six wheel. There were two very different types of brakegear, twin tanks, twin compartment tanks, some that were a foot longer than others, different ladder arrangements, a myriad of tanks supports, platforms at the end, platforms in the middle, lots of different valve arrangements on top of the tank.... Which one do you go for? Most of the diagrams were dairy specific so it's not a case of pick one and you can paint it a load of different colours, well not if you want to be accurate. The LMS ones are the more obvious candidates which is perhaps why Dapol have gone for this. I have a long standing ambition to have a model of the Whitland to Kensington as running in the mid 60s and I think I could have legitimately have 20 milk tanks belonging to the various dairies serving South Wales and all of them could be different! Whilst there are no accurate 4mm RTR models David Geen makes a quite lovely kit for the LMS Dia.1994 and GWR Dean-Churchward braked types. This is one of the GWR type I've finished to Dia. O.42 in P4 with some mods along the way: There are some things that you might want to have a look at Dave: As Paul Bartlett has already said the underframe is an issue as it's so open but you already know about that and I saw that it was different on the original CADs you posted on another thread. Brake levers. I'm not sure the LMS ones used lifting links at all. They had simple levers on both sides acting off the same cross shaft which was closer to the outer axle. Tank supports: The larger of the two types looks to slope inwards too much. Most of the larger type that I've seen on LMS tanks have the sides more vertical and are more rectangular in overall shape. More like on my David Geen LMS kit which also illustrates the point made earlier by Paul Bartlett about the underframe and also shows the brake cross shaft: Spring hanger brackets: The LMS ones had longer brackets on the centre axle. See here for a good illustration. No idea why. Hope that's of some help.

Looks lovely Jon. I'd intended to use Heljan sideframes on my class 47 but having seen what the Bachmann ones can look like I might reconsider. The replacement coil springs look much better. It might be dangerous if I did that though I might get tempted to make them work. As if I don't have enough to do! The square plates in front of the secondary suspension springs are a bit odd aren't they. I can't work out what they could be there for. Perhaps someone will enlighten one day. Give the springing kit a go on a rainy day sometime. If you can do all this detailing work you'll be able to put it together. Keep up the great work.

Given Trostre is near Llanelli I suspect that the working was going via Llanwern for some reason and the return working was effectively the same train.

Thanks Paul. I wondered just how many out of that lot were built with vacuum brakes. I've only ever seen two photos of fitted 1/109s, the one on your site and there's one of B261662 in 'Wagons of the Middle British Railways Era' by David Larkin. My model is a composite of the two. B261662 had self contained buffers but you can't tell what type of end door it had and I liked the pressed steel door on B261650 so I combined the bits that I liked out of the two. I wonder what BR was doing with a lot of the wagons it built in the fifties and early sixties! There seemed to be an awful lot of muddled thinking going on. Take the clasp braked 16T minerals. A couple of hundred riveted examples for no reason in particular and a couple of thousand 1/108s and 1/117s that were built without vacuum cylinders or pipes. Expensive brakegear for an unfitted mineral. I also can't figure out the 1/114 conversions that appear on your website. They were built unfitted with two shoe Morton brakes in 1951 yet someone saw fit (presumably in the late fifties) to go to the expense of converting them to clasp brakes and fitting vacuum cylinders and pipes when BR had the afformentioned 1/108s and 1/117s already with the clasp brakes. Was there something special about the 1/114s? Just seems a bit odd!

Thanks Michael. The body isn't totally square and I managed to file off some detail when I was shaping the corner plates whilst I wasn't concentrating but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. It should look even better once it's been painted and weathered.

Here's something for the thread that's recently rolled off the workbench (not onto the floor though!). It needs painting but has since been primed. A 16T rarity, one of the few vacuum fitted rivetted examples built by Cambrian Wagon Works as part of lot 2806 in the late fifties. The basis is the Parkside kit and is to P4 standards with Exactoscale wheels, Masokits sprung W-Irons and screw couplings, modified Masokits brakegear and levers, homemade 2'0 1/2" Self Contained buffers, ABS vacuum cylinders (I know they should be different sizes but I got lazy), vacuum pipes made from wound guitar wire and 0.035" plastic rod as well as other added details. Some more detail can be found here.

There were four different types of Folwer or 'old standard' tender. Flush riveted (note not welded), riveted beaded, riveted unbeaded and then there were 10 modifed with high straight sides (this is the one you're thinking of Nick). The last type came up in this section of the forum recently. I don't think they're ugly at all, just different! They all were 3500 Gallon capacity. They did indeed find their way behind 8Fs, at least 53 of them. They swaped their Stanier 4000 gallon tenders for Folwer ones with Jubilees in the late fifties/early sixties. There is a list in LMS Locomotive Profiles No.8 of which ones had the Folwer tender and which of the types they had. There was only on 8F that recieved the high straight sided type and that was 48600 between 1958 and 1964. There are also lists of Folwler tender allocations in 'The Book of the Jubilees' and 'The Book of the Patriots' both by Irwell Press. All 'unrebuilt' Patriots had Fowler tenders and a large number of Jubilees. Both classes used all four types.

An 8400 0-6-0PT would be better. You could use the boiler and fittings from a Finney 2251! Those Princesses do look rather good. They're a bit out of my area but they have me itching to get back to my steam locos.

Tease. I'll look forward to it when you do publish that list.

Nothing to be sorry about! They look as if they'll be pretty straightforward to put together and set up. I'll look forward to your blog entries on how you you get on with them. If there anything like mine you wont be disapointed.

You really should try it sometime. The results are great and it's not as hard as it might look. Dive in at the deep end. You'll swim!

It will be by the time I've finished with it!

I seem to remember reading somewhere that the crests were only applied to those coaches that were to be used in named express trains. Coaches destined for other formations didn't have them. Of course coaches got swaped about between rakes so those with crests could end up anywhere. Edit: According to Keith Parkin's Book on the Mk 1 the crests were in fact applied completely at random though the WR did try and assemble sets either with or without. It seems then that there was no rhyme or reason as to which coaches got the crest and some didn't get it at all.

Perhaps they should be called Swamp Dragons. I've always thought that they looked a little like them but didn't think that they'd share the same propensity to self combust when over excited. Seems I might have been wrong! I think Freightliner should pack them all up and send them off into the care of Lady Sybil Vimes at the Sunshine Sanctury before the rest of them go up in smoke! Note: For anyone who hasn't read the discworld novels that wont make any sense but still it must be a worry for Freightliner that there new toys keep combusting. Hope they can get the problems sorted before any more get "over excited".

I've noticed that they've been mentioned a few times so I thought I'd shed some light on the B4 bogies. The prototype bogies appeared as early as 1956 but the first short production batch went under 'The Bristolian' and 'Red Dragon' trainsets. Parkin's tome on the MK1 coach doesn't state exactly when this was but there are photos in the book of them in service in 1962 (under a chocolate and cream liveried BCK behind a very clean Collett 4000 gallon tender and under an FO again in chocolate and cream) so it would obviously be by then. The only newbuild MK1 coaches to have B4 bogies were those in the XP64 set but others were rebogied with priority given to sleeping and catering cars. Steam and B4 bogies were no strangers. Personally I find the end of steam on BR fasinating and to me there is a certain morbid attraction to all the 'grot' of the period which exudes 'atmosphere'. My modelling exploits are centred on South Wales circa 1964/5 so very much end of steam on the Western Region but a bit too early for the corperate image.

I agree with you Craig the most important thing is getting an accurate bodyshell. It's looking good so far. I think Heljan bogies could be a good idea for a basic P4 convesion with their A1A-A1A arrangement. It'll be interesting to see what the drivetrains on the Western will be like. Don't think it will take too long for mine to be in bits! I have some Heljan drivetrains waiting in the wings if the Dapol examples prove top be too much trouble for use in a set of sprung bogies. The split frame arrangement might be an issue.