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More Pre-Grouping Wagons in 4mm - the D299 appreciation thread.


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33 minutes ago, Worsdell forever said:

my single plank example

Correct, that's like my MAJ and David Geen 10'6" and 12' wheelbase kits. The one thing I discovered coming from the MR world - is there any other? - is the multiplicity of brake and wheelbase options the L&Y had in a much smaller wagon fleet.

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1 hour ago, MR Chuffer said:

the L&Y had in a much smaller wagon fleet.

 

To be fair, at around 38,000 wagons in 1921, a bit over 40% the size of the LNWR and GWR fleets, so not to be sneezed at. Of English companies, in roughly joint sixth place with the Great Central, the Great Northern being in fifth place by a small margin. And the L&Y had gone in for larger capacity wagons, such as they types illustrated above, so a straight headcount isn't an entirely fair measure.

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17 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

larger capacity

You say that but a lot of their longer wheelbase wagons, e.g. dia.73 and dia.76 12'wb 10T covered goods and 12' wb 10T "fruit" opens, take up loads of extra trackage in trains, sidings and the fiddle yard compared to an equivalent MR train.

 

The covered goods wagons in particular dwarf MR 10' wb covered wagons, typically D.360 and upwards, and as for the earlier 8T ones, positively diminutive next to them. Most disconcerting....

Edited by MR Chuffer
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50 minutes ago, MR Chuffer said:

You say that but a lot of their longer wheelbase wagons, e.g. dia.73 and dia.76 12'wb 10T covered goods and 12' wb 10T "fruit" opens, take up loads of extra trackage in trains, sidings and the fiddle yard compared to an equivalent MR train.

 

The covered goods wagons in particular dwarf MR 10' wb covered wagons, typically D.360 and upwards, and as for the earlier 8T ones, positively diminutive next to them. Most disconcerting....

 

Yes, I was thinking in terms of capacity by volume, not by weight - so a L&Y 10 ton van would be capable of carrying more goods by volume than the smaller Midland 10 ton van; the sort of goods conveyed by van was, I think, on the whole bulky rather than heavy.

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Don't forget that the LYR was heavily involved in moving cotton (and wool) from the Liverpool docks to the Lancashire mills so high capacity (volume) wagons were in more demand than on other railways.  Sure there would be 'smalls' traffic but that would be a smaller percentage of overall tonnage.  Just look at all those pics of overloaded drays departing from their goods depots!

 

Tony

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19 hours ago, MR Chuffer said:

From the several MAJ kits I have acquired, there has always been brake rigging for the 12' and the 10.6' wheelbases irrespective of the actual diagram, have you been short changed?

 

Thanks, Mr Chuffer, I didn't realize that there were two sizes of brake gear, when I looked at the sprue I thought they were the same and just cut out the easiest one. I have now fitted it. I have had to make a new reversing linkage, as the one on the sprue broke as I was cutting it out and one bit pinged off, as a sacrifice to the carpet monster.

 

1071594804_LYwagon4.png.d77d536d71a3d90685853301d7bd7ee0.png

 

Hopefully it won't look too awful, once painted.

 

 

 

 

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Going off on another tangent...

 

At the Uckfield show yesterday, I picked up a couple of old Slater's kits for the Midland 16'6" covered goods wagon - D362 / D363 - at a bargain price; thanks to @queensquare who had spotted them first and put me on to them. I've been mulling over the possibility of converting one to a Tariff Van, D382, 250 of which were built to Lot 433 raised in February 1898. These vans supplemented the earlier Tariff Brake Vans, D382A, or perhaps superseded them. (I've still not completed my model of one of those...) They had folding doors in place of the usual sliding door - apart from some details of the ends (widows, ventilators) the body is identical to that of the vans built to Lot 369 a couple of years earlier for the S&DJR, where they were classed as Road Vans, the first 125 of the Midland's Banana Van fleet, D365, Lot 608 raised April 1905 and part of Lot 649 raised August 1906, and subsequent Banana Vans built with flush-fitting sliding doors. 

 

As is well-known, the 5'0"-wide door opening of the standard sliding-door covered goods wagons was off-centre, so the framing of the sides is asymmetrical. This feature originated with the 14'11"-long covered goods wagons, D353 et seq., where the asymmetry enabled the sliding door runners to be long enough for the door to be fully opened without projecting beyond the end of the wagon - the short section to the left of the door being 4'0" long and hence the section to the right, 5'11" from door opening to the outside of the end pillar. The latter dimension was retained for the 16'6" wagons built from 1893, so the left-hand section became 19" longer, at 5'7"; the door opening was thus offset by from the centre of the wagon by 2". 

 

The folding-door vans were free from this design constraint, so their 4'9" door opening was plumb centre, with the framing on both sides 5'10½" wide from opening to outside of end pillars. (The visible with over the doors was 4'10" since they sat in a ½" rebate in the door pillars.)

 

With reference to copies of Drawings 1032 "Covered Goods Wagon" and 1088 "Covered Goods Wagon S&DJR" in the collection of the Midland Railway Study Centre, I've sketched up the two framing arrangements:

 

1129448126_Midland16ft6invansides.jpg.a02bb480d42001b249831dd52defaa86.jpg

When @Mikkel built an S&DJR Road Van, he scratch-built new sides but I'm thinking that with only ½" difference (0.17 mm at 4 mm/ft scale), it should possible to get away with using the right-hand end of the kit's sides for the right-hand end of a folding-door van. Can I even get away with using the right-hand ends of the sides from the second kit for the left hand ends, leaving just the doors to build from scratch?

Edited by Compound2632
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1 hour ago, Siberian Snooper said:

one bit pinged

That's the problem with MAJ kits, plastic tending towards brittleness, but we'd be much poorer for L&Y core wagons. As I've said previously, I've learnt a lot from the various brake and underframe configurations such that I can now scratch build my own 9' wheelbase with various L&Y brake options from a basic Cambrian chassis.

Edited by MR Chuffer
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28 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

...it should possible to get away with using the right-hand end of the kit's sides for the right-hand end of a folding-door van. Can I even get away with using the right-hand ends of the sides from the second kit for the left hand ends, leaving just the doors to build from scratch?

 

Long time reader, first time writer... I've had a folding door van in the 'mulling over' list for a while after spotting one in a prototype picture where you can just make out the difference in doors between it and the vans alongside.

 

Current plan is to cut off the right hand end of a Slaters van (found either cheap or a tatty doner), create a mould and use resin to  duplicate, removing the door runners when used for the left hand sides and scratch building the doors, scribing the backing to match the kit planking.

 

The remaining left hand end can then be used as a practice to see if I can carefully enough remove the diagonal framing and replace in the style of the D363 lots 938 &941, i.e.  /I/ X \I\ for another variation.  That just leaves getting another set of ends and a chassis...

 

 

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49 minutes ago, 41516 said:

in the style of the D363 lots 938 &941, i.e.  /I/ X \I\ for another variation.  

 

That reminds me of a thing that should amuse @jamie92208. On Drg. 1088 (the S&DJR van) one can see where the draughtsman first drew the diagonal framing as an inverted V: I/I\I ; then rubbed out the diagonals and drew them the correct way round: I\I/I - a prototype for sticking the side on the wrong way up?

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55 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

That reminds me of a thing that should amuse @jamie92208. On Drg. 1088 (the S&DJR van) one can see where the draughtsman first drew the diagonal framing as an inverted V: I/I\I ; then rubbed out the diagonals and drew them the correct way round: I\I/I - a prototype for sticking the side on the wrong way up?

So there is a prototype for everything for my van with the upside down sides.

 

Jamie

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2 hours ago, 41516 said:

Current plan is to cut off the right hand end of a Slaters van (found either cheap or a tatty doner), create a mould and use resin to  duplicate, removing the door runners when used for the left hand sides and scratch building the doors, scribing the backing to match the kit planking.

 

The remaining left hand end can then be used as a practice to see if I can carefully enough remove the diagonal framing and replace in the style of the D363 lots 938 &941, i.e.  /I/ X \I\ for another variation.  

 

I'll look forward to seeing how you get on!

 

2 hours ago, 41516 said:

That just leaves getting another set of ends and a chassis...

 

Well now, my idea of using two sets of sides leaves me with two ends and an underframe...

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That folding door option is an interesting variant, good idea.

 

4 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

Can I even get away with using the right-hand ends of the sides from the second kit for the left hand ends, leaving just the doors to build from scratch?

 

Sounds feasible. The advantage of having both sides look exactly the same is worth it, I would think (compared to one scratch built and one kit end, which might catch the eye).

 

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1 hour ago, Regularity said:

Be funny if you arranged a swap, only to discover one of you worked in 4mm scale and the other in 7mm…

 

I suppose that happens at certain clubs on occasion. 

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11 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

I'll look forward to seeing how you get on!

 

 

Well now, my idea of using two sets of sides leaves me with two ends and an underframe...

 

I'm sure if you ever commit razor saw to plastic, some exchange of goods could be investigated, I'd have to have a rummage and see if I have anything suitable.

 

11 hours ago, Regularity said:

Be funny if you arranged a swap, only to discover one of you worked in 4mm scale and the other in 7mm…

 

Only the gentleman's scale, rather than the senior scale for me at the moment!

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Continuing with the South Walian theme:

 

There's been some discussion of POWSides pre-printed kits recently:

and I've also been pondering a discussion I had with @wenlock at the very last show I went to before lockdown - Basingstoke in March 2020 - about techniques for distressing the Powsides dry transfers. As it's been a while since I've tried the kits (as opposed to using the dry transfers on my scratchbuilt / kit-bashed wagons) I thought I'd do something about my long-held desire to include some anthracite wagons, travelling via the Midland route from the western valleys to Birmingham - or passing through Brum on their way to the Burton breweries.

 

The four I've got are all based on Gloucester prototypes, illustrated in Keith Montague's book and also in J. Miles et al., The Swansea Vale Railway (Lightmoor Press, 2017); two of them are also in Keith Turton's Fourth Collection, which gives the fullest information. They're all seven-plank side and end door wagons, using Slater's kit 4059.

 

My first move was to detach the sides, give the transfers a bit more of a rub-down around the ironwork, especially the door catches, and give them a protective coat of Humbrol rattle-can matt varnish:

 

1185867773_SwanseaValePOwagonssidesvarnished.JPG.3b9ea517cd4993cbb375433df1aca7eb.JPG

 

The next task is to carve off the axleboxes from the solebar moulding and replace with MJT Gloucester 4S boxes. The Slater's moulding has the earlier round-bottomed Gloucester type 4 axleboxes that were in vogue in the early-mid 1890s; these four wagons are from c. 1900 onwards. (That has implications for the degree of weathering. In fact one of these wagons were still a twinkle in the Gloucester order book's eye in 1902/3.) I also moved the registration plate on the Cann & Glass wagon's solebars (parts are being kept in their separate, labelled, packets!):

 

1088395161_SwanseaValePOwagonsMJTaxleboxes.JPG.d5d5373771454bd79860c14c9e720508.JPG

 

Four down, four to go.

 

Scraping off the moulded axlebox leaves just the hole in the axleguard for the bearing; I put that in from behind and glue the axlebox onto it, sandwiching the plastic axleguard. I'm not cutting off the unwanted brake V-hanger until the very last moment, for fear of assembling the brakes the wrong way round to the body - on these wagons, the brake lever is always at the fixed end. (I've blundered on the Ocean wagon in the previous post.)

 

Edited by Compound2632
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The following is taken from a book Bygone Days in the Amman Valley. It's Brynamman looking north west across the sidings of Panytcelyn colliery The date is early 20th century. The reason for posting? These are Cann and Glass wagons. Cann and Glass were coal factors and it would seem that at this time they had the contract for transporting Pantycelyn's anthracite. Brynamman Midland station is in the middle distance.. Apologies for the poor quality.

 

 

pantycelyn.jpg

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8 minutes ago, John-Miles said:

The following is taken from a book Bygone Days in the Amman Valley. It's Brynamman looking north west across the sidings of Panytcelyn colliery The date is early 20th century. The reason for posting? These are Cann and Glass wagons. Cann and Glass were coal factors and it would seem that at this time they had the contract for transporting Pantycelyn's anthracite. Brynamman Midland station is in the middle distance.. Apologies for the poor quality.

 

Plenty of greenhouses and churches in need of heating in the Birmingham area.

 

Now, a large proportion of the output of the Swansea Vale quarries went down to Swansea for shipping - hence the local preference for end-door wagons. But I'm supposing that a not insubstantial amount was worked north for industrial and domestic use - Turton mentions contracts with Burton breweries; Bass using coal from Gwaun-cae-Gurwen up until the 1950s. But the question niggling away is: was this traffic handled in the collieries' wagons, or in those of factors such as Cann & Glass?

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