Deliberately Old-Fashioned 0 Scale - Chapter 1

[Mark Carne]

They are an excellent reproduction of a badly made cheap tin toy! I believe they were part of a magazine series, the 1920s style London bus that turns up frequently is part of the same series. I think a lot of them entered the UK market via one of the "£1" type shops a few years back.

Edited December 8, 2018 by Mark Carne

[Mark Carne]

Sorted my above post.

Edited December 8, 2018 by Mark Carne

[kernowtim]

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/21-Options-Vintage-Clockwork-Wind-Up-Robot-Car-Carousel-Metal-Tin-Toy-Bag-Filler/192421302738?_trkparms=aid%3D111001%26algo%3DREC.SEED%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D20160908105057%26meid%3D6dadde0212cb49788289223bb3cdfabb%26pid%3D100675%26rk%3D1%26rkt%3D15%26sd%3D192421302738%26itm%3D192421302738&_trksid=p2481888.c100675.m4236&_trkparms=pageci%3A1fbe4e16-fada-11e8-9a9a-74dbd1805049%7Cparentrq%3A8d849d0a1670aa46c336cd26fff5075e%7Ciid%3A1

Ordered one as a (wind-up) birthday present for a relative, it arrived within a week or so from china and cost me £5.87 !!

Edited December 8, 2018 by kernowtim

[Nearholmer]

A few months ago, SkinnyLinny showed a 4mm/ft semi-freelance model of a four-wheel siphon, with the bodywork laser-cut, which I dubbed ‘the condensed milk van’. Well, I persuaded Linny to enlarge the design, and here is the outcome, as a work in progress.

The ‘kit’ consists of Linny's laserwork, a pre-made etched nickel-silver chassis from Derek Strickland (Progress Products) and a tin roof from Tony Funell (Trains Again).

 

Progress thus far in about an hour, parallel-building two at the same time. Its like building an Airfix kit!

 

Things will now slow down, because I need to devise a simple and robust way of dealing with the footboards, and to set about painting.

 

BTW, I think I might have ordered the wrong roofs - this is an 'early' Hornby No.1, whereas I think it actually needs a later No.50 part; will have to check.

 

It is posed with a 1920s Bing work of imagination (unless anyone knows of a GWR vehicle that looked like that).

Edited December 11, 2018 by Nearholmer

[Northroader]

Footboards, what about copper clad fibre glass sleeper strip, 6mm, Marcway, and solder to some .040” brass rod for support, Slaters, pass through holes drilled in that nifty chassis?

[Simond]

Footboards, what about copper clad fibre glass sleeper strip, 6mm, Marcway, and solder to some .040” brass rod for support, Slaters, pass through holes drilled in that nifty chassis?

 

 

Dangerously finescale approach, that, you know...

 

Simon

[Annie]

Linny's kit certainly makes up into a very nice milk van and very much looks the part.  I own a few pre-war coarse scale wagons that were built from wooden kits of parts back in the day and I must admit they are the favourites in my collection.  Linny's milk van would fit in very nicely with them.

 

The GWR Bing luggage van is very appealing.  I know the GWR did have some 4 wheel passenger liveried vans that were vaguely similar during the pre-group era, but without the elegantly shaped roof of the Bing van.  I'll see if I can find a picture.

Edited December 11, 2018 by Annie

[Nearholmer]

Very much the sort of thing i’m Thinking about, but probably brass, rather than copper lad, because I don’t think I’ve got any of the latter. It’s so long since I’ve done any of this sort of modelling that I need to remind myself what my stashes actually contain.

[Northroader]

Ooh ta, it’s a long time since I was last called a lad.

[Metropolitan H]

An interesting looking vehicle, which I look forward to seeing in operation.

 

I haven't got a "copper lad" either, but I'm sure I have some 7mm scale copper-clad fibreglass sleeper strip which can be provided - and if I haven't I need to get some for the rail-ends at layout board joints.

 

I will have a look at the weekend.

 

Regards

Chris H

 

P.S. - I wonder if we can get a set of the laser cut parts adapted to fit a Darstaed 6-wheeler underframe? - And then we need a set of parts created to make a SR PLV, to fit the adapted Darstaed u/f.

 

CH

[GRASinBothell]

Is SkinnyLinny someone on this forum who made the parts for you as a favour, or a regular purveyor of kits?

Regarding the SR PLV, there was an Ace/Wright version (overlay on a standard 6-wheel coach).

 

Gordon

[Annie]

Ah here we are...... a little bullion van.  Picture found here; -  https://srmg.org.uk/recent-kitbuilds/

 

[Northroader]

GWR didn’t have them, but some of those very short vans were (gasp) corpse vans!

[Skinnylinny]

Is SkinnyLinny someone on this forum who made the parts for you as a favour, or a regular purveyor of kits?

Regarding the SR PLV, there was an Ace/Wright version (overlay on a standard 6-wheel coach).

 

Gordon

That'd be me. Hi! *waves* I produce some kits, usually in 4mm scale, though as Nearholmer suggests, I can scale my kits up or down. The milk van was a very simple kit in 4mm, so fairly easy to tweak to fit a Progress Products chassis.

 

P.S. - I wonder if we can get a set of the laser cut parts adapted to fit a Darstaed 6-wheeler underframe? - And then we need a set of parts created to make a SR PLV, to fit the adapted Darstaed u/f.

 

CH

If you can provide the dimensions, I could certainly make something that would fit the Darstaed underframe. The tricky bit would be the roof, as I don't have metal-curving facilities. If you're able to produce your own roof, though, it'd certainly be possible to produce a 6-wheel siphon.

[Mark Carne]

The Great Western lettering on the Bing van is a later addition, Bing very considerately didn't actually apply company lettering to it, so I run mine with my 4 Bing Pullman cars, as a Pullman pup.

[Metropolitan H]

That'd be me. Hi! *waves* I produce some kits, usually in 4mm scale, though as Nearholmer suggests, I can scale my kits up or down. The milk van was a very simple kit in 4mm, so fairly easy to tweak to fit a Progress Products chassis.

 

If you can provide the dimensions, I could certainly make something that would fit the Darstaed underframe. The tricky bit would be the roof, as I don't have metal-curving facilities. If you're able to produce your own roof, though, it'd certainly be possible to produce a 6-wheel siphon.

Thanks for the positive response, I'm a bit busy with a few other things at the moment but I will respond more fully with details of the available underframe units in the next couple of weeks.

 

Regards

Chris Holmes

[Metropolitan H]

Is SkinnyLinny someone on this forum who made the parts for you as a favour, or a regular purveyor of kits?

Regarding the SR PLV, there was an Ace/Wright version (overlay on a standard 6-wheel coach).

 

Gordon

Gordon,

 

I am aware of the ACE / Wright overlay version of the PLV - which was good, but it has a tumble-home on the sides - while the original was straight sided - and the PLV could do with some 3D representation of the various lumpy bits on the vehicle sides. Finally the PLVs were (are) definitely 4 wheelers - and I have a modified Darstaed u/f which still runs well on 2ft radius curves. I know I'm being picky, but I like the vehicle to look about right.

 

As an example the attached shows my version of the ACE / Wright kit for the palethorpes van with a custom made body to give the vertical sides and an Ice-hatch on the roof, Hope you approve.

 

 

Regards

Chris H

Edited December 12, 2018 by Metropolitan H

[Nearholmer]

Mark

 

Funny you should mention Pups, because that was exactly what it called to my mind, and now that I've got all four Pullmans ....... I hadn't realised that the lettering was an "add on" though, I was going to turn a blind eye to it when in Pullman use, and use it with GWR coaches too. 

 

Chris & Linny

 

A six-wheeled Siphon would be excellent, but it will take a bit of choosing, because there seem to be multiple flavours. I think the easiest might be the very earliest ones, Diagram O1 I think, which have  framework that goes X-doors-X-doors-X and a plain arc roof. Later ones had compound curved roofs, and later still framework that goes \-doors-X-doors-X-doors-/ , which I think is what the Slaters kit is like.

 

Two things to think about if you do purpose design a kit for 0:

 

- it would be worth making the side overlays a gnat's crochet longer than the inner sides, so that they can be fitted, then sanded back flush with the ends, reducing the chances of a tiny gap, which occurs with the current design and is probably a function of 4mm to 7mm enlargement; or,

 

- consider designing the overlaps on the end and side overlays to work the other way, so that the sides overlap the ends, and making the ends a gnat's over-width to allow for sanding; and,

 

- make the vehicle scale height and width. the Condensed Milk Van I think we sized to match a Hornby No.1 van, and I think it comes out very slightly tall and thin in comparison with real Siphons.

 

These points aren't criticisms of the CMV; I'm really enjoying building it.

 

Kevin

 

-

Edited December 12, 2018 by Nearholmer

[GRASinBothell]

Chris,

That Palethorpe's van is very nice. At the time, I decided not to go for one of those, but I did go for the SR van. I was aware both of the tumblehome (I think my Ace/Wright bogie van has the same issue) and the fact that the SR had no six-wheel ones, but decided that on a tinplate railway I could live with both issues (and the fact that it was flat; a defect it shares with all my other tinplate wagons whose prototypes had external framing). I have an ETS champagne van with a long wheelbase, and it doesn't do well on the one Atlas turnout (O-54, I think) that I've tried it on, so having a 6-wheel Cleminson chassis is probably an acceptable compromise for the SR van anyway. The one defect I don't like (and which I can do something about eventually) is its white roof!

Linny,

Thanks for the explanation. I'm tempted by that kit... Just wondering if it will stand out amongst all those flat tinplate wagons...

Incidentally, one thing that 4-wheel syphon reminded me of was the kind of goods van (aka covered wagon) built by the LSWR. A quick trawl through "An Illustrated History of Southern Wagons" Volume 1 (covering LSWR and SDJR wagons) revealed a number of such vans with very similar diagonal framing, usually with either a sliding door (also with diagonal framing) or a 3-door arrangement, but there was also a banana van (in an official BR photo taken just after nationalisation) with doors just like the ones in your kit. Obviously, the planking is different, but the overlays would work as is. Hmm... Food for thought...

Gordon

[Nearholmer]

Food indeed.

 

I have a ‘spare’ set of CMV parts, and readers may be interested to see the LSWR vehicle that will (in the fullness of time) be concocted using them.

Edited December 13, 2018 by Nearholmer

[Donw]

I have both 4 wheel and 6 wheel siphons. The 6 wheelers came in two different heights ( at least!)   Russell's GWR coaches 1 has a drawing of the 4 wheeler (and probably the others) . The laser cut parts look very nice. 

 

Don

[Nearholmer]

The four-wheelers certainly weren’t all the same either. There were two different door arrangements, and looking at photos I think there were different underframes too.

 

I’m hoping that somebody else will obtain a book that describes siphons, because I got rid of all my GWR books when we moved house, and don’t want to start acquiring again ...... I need to loose books, not get more!

[brianusa]

............................., because I got rid of all my GWR books when we moved house, and don’t want to start acquiring again ..............................

 

       Brian.

[Nearholmer]

Don't worry Brian: I didn't pulp them or burn them; I'm sure that, even as I type, somebody, somewhere, is poring over the very copy of "Names, Numbers, Types, and Classes" that was formerly on my shelf.

[Nearholmer]

Interesting pictures, especially the early 6W Siphon in the picture of Malmesbury. http://www.gwr.org.uk/nochurns.html