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S7 scratch building


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Well ten sets of wheels aren't any good in there packets so I will have put them to use !

 

These bolster wagons are a mixed lot on the N.S.R. They seem to be different varieties of styles and with only so much information available, so there will be some guess work involved. I was going to do this one with a small body like the previous one but looking at the photos in G.W.R wagon loads were there are several photos showing flush tops to a couple of them. So I modified this body by inserting individual planks which is a first for me. I took the opportunity to make them all slightly different .

 

I cut the runners out of 60 thou plastic with a set of dividers. The first ring of plastic was too thin so I cut out a second attempt which was better with a ring of 10 thou for the steel rubbing strip. 

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16 hours ago, wagonman said:

 

That's being naughty. In this case it was making up a jolly threesome. You know the saying: two's company, three's a derailment.

 

Definitely, if you don't follow the instructions. Hopefully not, if you do, but I think the bolsters need to swivel freely, being chained to the load, and the trucks not taking the load probably need to be well weighted. Continuing to work on this myself.

 

The good news is, you can make up to five trucks without needing to make more than two bolsters.

 

That might be bad news though, if you are particularly into making the bolsters - an Mike's are works of art.

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I wish you'd stop it Mike - every time I see one of your creations it makes me want to emulate your work and then I think, "I don't imagine  I'll live long enough!"

 

Those bolsters are superb.

 

Dave

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Dave, I think we are are in the same boat. I am working as fast as I can before the inevitable happens. 

 

I am not sure about works of art ! Do you think The Turner Gallery would like to buy them at vastly inflated prices. 

 

Its coming together now with the brake gear and the V-irons placed on to check the fitting. I didn't have any V-irons long enough so I had to cut out a pair from a couple of bits of nickel soldered together. 

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I am surprised I didn't get pulled up over the Turner Gallery, it is of course the Tait Gallery and the Turner prize. 

Mistakes like that are common in our house because my wife is from Salford and talks like Hilda Baker, so most things are backward.

 

I have fixed the brake gear with the V-irons and it has worked out fine. The pins holding the V-irons push through the solebar and the brake gear which clips in between several bits of Evergreen. It all comes apart for painting.

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Amazing work. Even ‘cruel enlargements’ aren’t cruel. 
Forgive me if this has been answered somewhere else but what do you weight your wagons with? And how much weight do you aim for? 

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36 minutes ago, airnimal said:

Richard, I put lead sheet in pockets under the floor. I don't glue them in after the problems other people have had with boiler explosions when the lead reacted with the various glues being used. I don't really have an ideal weight, I just put what feels right and see how they work around various test tracks. I have just put one on the kitchen scales and it was about 3 oz . I am not sure our scales are correct but when I have run a train of 10 or 12 wagons they have all behaved well without any derailments. It's probably because of other people's good track work rather than my wagons being built right.

 

Getting near the end on my bolster wagon I have put some resin bolts on the outside of the headstock. On the other side I wanted some coach bolts made from plastic rather than the resin ones from MasterClub. The reason I wanted plastic is ease of use when glueing the tiny coach bolts in. When I glue the MasterClub resin ones I use superglue but with very small parts in confirmed spaces I tend to glue myself to everthing else. 

 

So so I had to make some plastic coach bolts myself. 

I have a little jig to make them with which consists of a strip of nickel glued to a wooden sleeper with lots of holes drilled to take Slaters 20 thou brown plastic rod. I place this on another piece of nickel but and raise it up with a couple of strip of 30 thou plastic and load the holes with the plastic rod. I then cut the rod down flush with the top surface and remove the packing to leave the rod sitting proud by 30 thou. 

I the run a match above the rod and watch all the sticking up bits of rod melt in to tiny coach bolts all the same size.

I turn the jig over any and all the bolts fall out. Simple. 

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Just brilliant.

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95% complete !

 

Just needs a tidy up and a few bits adding and then a good clean before painting. I don't think this will be for a couple of days because of the rain. I don't have a paint booth so I have to paint outside. 

 

I hope people liked the coach bolts / rivets idea. Melting the brown rod was not my idea because I had seen it in a very early MRJ but the jig to make them all the  same size was. If you need to make them with bigger heads you just increase the size of the packing underneath. This allows the bits of brown rod to be longer so increases the head size.

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Mike,

 

I do like the appearance of the wooden floor.  If I try I can feel the dampness on a couple of the planks to the right hand end in the photo above.

 

A really nice looking wagon.

 

regards, Graham

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What's your problem with the painted floor? It look right to me. The less-weathered planks are fine. The split plank looks like wood that split and has started to decay along the split. The darkest plank looks like one that has warped lower than its neighbours, rot has started where the rain collects. The only part that look even slightly painted on is alongside the central ironwork.

 

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Speaking not as a modeller but as someone with some professional familiarity with woods in varying stages of use, damp and rot:

 

Best untreated timber I've ever seen. 

 

No question. Stick a black and white filter on one of those photos and stick it in a line up - nobody could spot it as the odd one out. I'd be happy to describe how each plank would feel under hand and respond to pressure, identify likely causes of the damage and suggest fixes as if it were the real thing. Really is that convincing.

 

Just sayin' :)

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Problem with weathering is that it is more a question of when to stop. There's a fine line between looking used and looking fit for the scrapyard which unfortunately seems to be often overlooked in some cases. Your wooden floor planks look used but not to a point where they clash with the standard of the rest of the model. 

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Since Mike is trying to optimise these models, we might consider three points of fine detail.

 

1. Given that the planks look like they're starting to decay, are they perhaps a little too yellow? My eye reads the colour as plausible, but my mind suggests that wood that old might be greyer.

 

2. How much decay would the railway tolerate in floor planks before replacing them? Bear in mind that most of the floor planks in bolster wagons carry no load other then railwaymen climbing aboard while loading.

 

3. The sheeting and flooring of wagons is sometimes specified as "red deal". Does this imply an actual red shade to the timber before it weathers to grey?

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