Right, after the first attempt at making the hinges to go at the bottom of the door, I had to abandon this first effort and start again in the other side...! Best laid plans and all that. The first side will be glued back in place. Basically to spare you all the sad details, I tried to make the hinges from very thin-walled brass tube with bits of wire soldered to them; so far so good. Then I foolishly thought I could drill holes at an angle into the sides and glue them in. Where this excellent theory fell down was not being able to drill consistently and also once I had actually managed to sort-of fix them in, they didn't protrude out enough which would have meant the door wouldn't drop! Fundamental to the plan really. So, I started again on the second side and made a few alterations as follows: I didn't cut off quite as much detail from the side once it was separated from the rest of the body. I drilled very carefully directly into the bottom edge of the side, as this photo.
Next, I soldered 4 'prongs' to the side of thicker-walled tubing. These prongs fit into the holes and mean that they hopefully stand out far enough to allow the door to drop.
This last photo isn't particularly clear but is meant to show one of the prongs tried in a hole to see if it fits. It does, and I think protrudes forward enough, although the bottom rail on the wagon will need to be cut away to clear the prong.
Until next time, when all being well, I will have the door working, and can commence other detailing bits and bobs...
This blog will chart the progress of making the water tower for Monk's Gate. It is a combined water tower and engine shed similar to the one that was at Olney. Construction of the base follows conventional methods of a ply/mdf box. One face, end and inside opposite face will be seen so this cuts down the amount of brickwork to scribe into Das modelling clay! I'm not sure how construction of the panels for the water tank itself will pan out.
These first two photos show the position and progress made so far. The windows have just been roughly drawn on the sides to see how they look.
This next photo shows the tank panels which I have drawn on Autocad, printed out and stuck on to see how they look.
At the moment my thinking is to transfer the drawings onto plasticard using the nail varnish remover method to then act as a guide to build up the detail of the panels again using plasticard. I imagine this will be quite tedious...! I am also giving a bit of thought to the windows. In various photos these appear to be of the 'Crittal' style metal windows. The frames of these are actually quite deep and will need to be made from something thicker than paper or plasticard strip. We shall see...
I took this photo looking through the water tower, and now I'm wondering about a fully detailed interior... is this possible, am I mad and any ideas where prototype info might be had...?!
So, this is the first entry in my new blog. I have decided to create this blog to run along side my forum subject 'Midland in London' (although it's in Birmingham - long story!). I hope to be able to chart the progress of various projects in the on-going build of Monk's Gate and have chosen this little 3-Plank open to start with. I bought the model already built from EBay. The standard of build was quite low but this suited me fine as there is to be a bit of butchering going on. The plan is to be able to lower one side and position the wagon from time to time in the loading dock and show it being either loaded or un-loaded, and then be able to fix the side back up for running in a train. I'm not too sure yet how I will do this quite so this blog will entail a bit of suck it and see.
So this first photo is of the wagon pretty much as it came to me. I've removed the wheels and sawn off the side.
Next, planks have been scribed and end detail scribed onto the side and ends of the wagon. All redundant detail of the catches has also been removed. Next job will be to represent the hinges. I anticipate making these from brass tube and wire and pinning them into the side for strength.
