Strand and its trains

[CarriageShed]

If only that were available in N gauge (someone please let me know that it is!).

[pete_mcfarlane]

On 04/06/2019 at 06:52, Guy Rixon said:

The older kit has a problem in that the slots to represent the louvres in the doors are not etched through and I'm still wondering the best way to fix that..

 

I've fixed problems with partially etched slots by using a slotting file to open them out. You can get these from music supply places, as they seem to be used by guitarists (no idea what for...). How viable this would be on you kit will depend on how many of the slots need filing through.....

 

 

[Guy Rixon]

1 hour ago, pete_mcfarlane said:

 

I've fixed problems with partially etched slots by using a slotting file to open them out. You can get these from music supply places, as they seem to be used by guitarists (no idea what for...). How viable this would be on you kit will depend on how many of the slots need filing through.....

 

 

Thanks. It's a thought, but in this case the etching is only a few grooves in the back and the bars are very fine, very close together. I'd need to saw an initial slot to start the file.

 

If all the louvres were missing, I think I'd cut out all the lower panels and let in printed louvres; but that would not give a good match with the etched louvres. I might make up pseudo-etched louvres by soldering grids of 0.3mm wire to a backing plate. 

[wagonman]

1 hour ago, pete_mcfarlane said:

 

I've fixed problems with partially etched slots by using a slotting file to open them out. You can get these from music supply places, as they seem to be used by guitarists (no idea what for...). How viable this would be on you kit will depend on how many of the slots need filing through.....

 

 

 

Sounds similar to the escapement files used by clock makers...

 

[Regularity]

12 hours ago, pete_mcfarlane said:

 

I've fixed problems with partially etched slots by using a slotting file to open them out. You can get these from music supply places, as they seem to be used by guitarists (no idea what for...). How viable this would be on you kit will depend on how many of the slots need filing through.....

 

 

As a digression, they are used for getting a good fit of the strings at the “nut”, which is at the top of the neck where the strings pass onto the tuning head. And yes, there lots of potential jokes about filing your nut to accommodate your g-string. Please don’t.

Technically, they are a tool for luthiers (correct name for people who make and repair guitars, not those who steal them).

[Guy Rixon]

Model building is on hold as heating engineers have a week-long possession of the house. I am reduced to searching for wagon porn on Pinterest, which has raised this:

I would like to make a model of this one as it's somewhat unusual: a 15' Gloucester wagon of 1904 on a steel underframe. it doesn't match any of the Cambrian kits in detail, so would need to to be scratchbuilt (which is not a problem for me). The livery is black letters, unshaded, on a yellow ground. That means I can plausibly print my own transfers on clear decal-sheet.

 

Erith is a port on the south bank of the Thames, between Woolwich and Dartford. It was a major facility for unloading sea-coal, so it's provisionally plausible that the wagon be seen going north through London while loaded; but I don't know where EAG had their London works.

 

PS: Graces Guide tells me that the premises of Goolden and Co. were Woodfield Works, Harrow Road,  London. That puts them just off the GWR main line and close to the LNWR main line. So it's compelling that EAG receive coal at Erith and move some of it in their own wagon to either Royal Oak or Westbourne Park where they cart it to the works.

 

In layout terms, the wagon would arrive in with a selection of Cory's PO wagons and SECR traffic-coal wagons loaded from Erith, probably worked in a mixed goods to to Bricklayers arms and then the cut of coal round to Strand as a trip. Most of the coal goes into Buckingham Street depot but the EAG wagon is cut out and attached to a GWR trip taking empties back to Acton.

Edited June 14, 2019 by Guy Rixon

[Compound2632]

I have on my to-do list one or two of the batch of Huntley & Palmers wagons from Birmingham C&W Co. that were 10 tons, 6-plank with steel frames, as seen here. In essentials I think the approach I have planned out would work for your wagon. The starting points are Slater's Gloucester 6-plank side-door wagon (ref. 4035) and Cambrian's RCH steel underframe (ref. C35). The latter provides the solebars (with inappropriate details carved off) and headstocks. The wooden end pillars are carved off the Slater's ends, along with the wooden headstocks. Replacement T-iron end pillars made up from microstrip. The Slater's Gloucester axleboxes are spot on for this wagon, so remove them from the molded axleguard/solebar. I'd use MJT axleguards. 

[Argos]

I'm always surprised at how big lumps of coal were back in the day.

Some of those lumps in Huntley & Palmer photo would be more adequately described as slabs!

 

I'm glad I wasn't confronted with any those as a lad when being sent out to the coal store to fill up the scuttle for the fire!

[wagonman]

6 hours ago, Guy Rixon said:

Model building is on hold as heating engineers have a week-long possession of the house. I am reduced to searching for wagon porn on Pinterest, which has raised this:

I would like to make a model of this one as it's somewhat unusual: a 15' Gloucester wagon of 1904 on a steel underframe. it doesn't match any of the Cambrian kits in detail, so would need to to be scratchbuilt (which is not a problem for me). The livery is black letters, unshaded, on a yellow ground. That means I can plausibly print my own transfers on clear decal-sheet.

 

Erith is a port on the south bank of the Thames, between Woolwich and Dartford. It was a major facility for unloading sea-coal, so it's provisionally plausible that the wagon be seen going north through London while loaded; but I don't know where EAG had their London works.

 

PS: Graces Guide tells me that the premises of Goolden and Co. were Woodfield Works, Harrow Road,  London. That puts them just off the GWR main line and close to the LNWR main line. So it's compelling that EAG receive coal at Erith and move some of it in their own wagon to either Royal Oak or Westbourne Park where they cart it to the works.

 

In layout terms, the wagon would arrive in with a selection of Cory's PO wagons and SECR traffic-coal wagons loaded from Erith, probably worked in a mixed goods to to Bricklayers arms and then the cut of coal round to Strand as a trip. Most of the coal goes into Buckingham Street depot but the EAG wagon is cut out and attached to a GWR trip taking empties back to Acton.

 

Interesting! The wagon was built in 1892 (24090 in the Glos stock list) and sold on 7 years deferred terms to W T Goolden & Co, and registered by the GWR (11485) in December 1892, though my transcription says W J Goolden & Co – easy enough to confuse a 'J' with a 'T'. It was photographed in July 1894 presumably after a repaint into the new livery following the reconstruction of E&A in 1894-5 – Grace's Guide again. Whether the wagon (there was only the one) was still running around in the same livery 10 years later I know not. There is no sign of a renewed repair contract under EA&G in 1899 so they probably chose a more conveniently located repairer.

[Guy Rixon]

The LSWR PLV is in hiatus while I work out what to do about its brakes. The kit provides etched brake-yokes, which lack pins to engage the blocks and cast block-hanger assemblies which are clunky , over-scale and which don't reach down to the brass base of the axleguard assemblies, so can't easily be fixed. It's utter rubbish.

 

I had hoped to replace this trash with an etche for LMS AVB wagon-brakes, by Mainly Trains (currently sold by Wizard). These are for 3'1" wheels instead of 3'6", so need to be modified. Making up the block-hanger assemblies when well, but when I tried to mount them on wire and to add the Mallard brake-yokes as decoration they came out horribly misaligned, even using a jig to set them. There 12 degrees of freedom to be aligned in the assembly for each wheel, and this is officially Too Hard for me to do a good job of it. I beat the first assembly roughly into alignment and offered it up to the brake rigging ... and it couldn't go into proper position, so the rigging (from the kit, as designed) must be wrong. Further, the hangers were visibly too long: they put the centre of the blocks below the centre of the wheels.

 

I now plan to print brakes for this van. I can't see another way that works for limited skills. I will make the gear for each axle as one unit that can be fixed (screwed?) on  from underneath, after the wheels are fitted, and this will cure all the alignment problem plus allow the below-axle parts to be modelled. When I've done this special one for the LSWR's mutant brakes I may do others for other vehicles, or for generic use. Suggestions for subjects are invited and any detailed drawings of LSWR carriage brakes would be helpful. 

[Guy Rixon]

Second check this week is the buffers for my siphon. I need to print some. Does anybody have detailed drawings or dimensions for the buffers of GWR NPCS built in the 1880s and 1890s?

 

I'd bought MJT 24" 'coach-style' buffers for this van, but they are unworkable. The rams have been turned too short and the guides bored out too deep, so the springs don't work; and I do want sprung buffers on this model. I could probably mend them with bushes, or with sleeves over the tails of the rams, but frankly it's easier just to print my own...if I have the dimensions.

[Edwardian]

4 hours ago, Guy Rixon said:

Suggestions for subjects are invited and any detailed drawings of LSWR carriage brakes would be helpful. 

 

I only have such drawings as are in Weddell.  I assume you have these? As 4mm modellers' drawings, I fear they will not be detailed enough.

 

4 hours ago, Guy Rixon said:

Second check this week is the buffers for my siphon. I need to print some. Does anybody have detailed drawings or dimensions for the buffers of GWR NPCS built in the 1880s and 1890s?

 

 

 

Similar point with these, the Slinn and Clarke volume has 7mm scale drawins that show the buffers of the 4-wheel sipon and the O1/2/3 and O4 vehicles.

 

If you do want any of these scanned, let me know.

[Guy Rixon]

23 hours ago, Edwardian said:

 

I only have such drawings as are in Weddell.  I assume you have these? As 4mm modellers' drawings, I fear they will not be detailed enough.

 

 

Similar point with these, the Slinn and Clarke volume has 7mm scale drawins that show the buffers of the 4-wheel sipon and the O1/2/3 and O4 vehicles.

 

If you do want any of these scanned, let me know.

Thanks for the offer, but I have the Weddell volume for the PLVs (it surfaced this morning in a crate of etc.) and a copy of Slinn & Clarke.

 

I can get approximate sizes from what I have, and it will do for now. I just though that if anybody has component drawings to share the prints could be made a little better.

[Guy Rixon]

Due to work commitments and family disasters, I've made almost nothing physical since last autumn. Here's the warm-up exercise for getting started again:

This is a POWsides/Slaters kit with RFM chassis-plate and brakes, Bill Bedford springing, Exactoscale wheels, brake Vs and brake lever, and 51L brake-guard. It's the 6-plank wagon from the Slaters range and this time I took slightly more care when replacing the rubbish moulding for the end-door hinge-bar.

 

Building this took a lot longer than I'd have liked. So much has to be added or modified or replaced and it all adds up. I am considering a printed upgrade-pack for this kit, to include end-door hinges, interior ironwork (self-jigging) and a complete new chassis (one piece with solebars and brakes; just add BB axleguards and wheels). Not sure if it would be worth the design time, but it would knock the build time in half.

[Compound2632]

1 hour ago, Guy Rixon said:

This is a POWsides/Slaters kit with RFM chassis-plate and brakes, Bill Bedford springing, Exactoscale wheels, brake Vs and brake lever, and 51L brake-guard.

 

All the bells and whistles, but that wagons don't have such!

 

1 hour ago, Guy Rixon said:

Not sure if it would be worth the design time, but it would knock the build time in half.

 

So, depends how many wagons you intend to build - which ought to be lots.

 

But if it gets too easy, mass-production leads to loss of interest and starting something else...

[Guy Rixon]

I don't need too many more mineral wagons, but a few more colliery wagons (of the right pits) would be good and there's a few specifically local ones to do. Problem is, in respect of upgrades to specific kits, it's the 6-plank end-door kit that most needs the upgrade and that's the less-appropriate one. Six-planked 10-ton wagons seem to have been most common in the Forest of Dean, which is not the target coalfield.

 

However, I personally get much satisfaction out of simple, quick builds with good results. So maybe...

[Compound2632]

1 hour ago, Guy Rixon said:

Six-planked 10-ton wagons seem to have been most common in the Forest of Dean, which is not the target coalfield.

 

I suspect sample bias here. Forest of Dean PO wagons are well-documented, thanks to Ian Pope, and also, Gloucester RC&W Co. PO wagons are well-documented, thanks to the survival of that company's photographic archive. The 6-plank wagon was a typical Gloucester product from 1887 to the end of the century but I think it is neither exclusive to the Gloucester Co. or to the Forest of Dean. I've found them cropping up quite often, including e.g. Birmingham RC&W Co. built ones, for a range of customers.

[Guy Rixon]

Another wagon (almost) finished. This is an ex-SER coal wagon of the "1864" type, from the Prickley Pair kit. I bought this at Scaleforum last year, built most of it quickly and then stalled while I worked out what to do about the buffers.

 

Nile of this parish built one of these months ago, so see his thread for how it looks when done properly. I would only add a few notes.

• I drilled out the buffer holes to less than the diameter of the buffer castings (4.5mm hole IIRC), then turned down the back of the buffers -- minidrill and file, not lathe -- to fit. This saves having to drill a 5.05mm hole in a buffer mount 5.00mm wide.
• The spring-assisted suspension in the kit actually seems to work, without much body-wobble. Hooray! Needs a proper test on a real layout.
• The suspension gets in the way of the brake hanger. Boo! I made a new one in brass and actually hung it from the brake shaft. The cast hanger is too narrow to drill out for this.
• The spring/axlebox castings are neat but if the backs of the boxes are against the axleguards then the spring shoes are inside the solebars. Somethings is dimensionally quite wrong here. Since I needed to cut the shoes from the springs to let the suspension work, I ended up with a sort of Vision-on illusion where everything lines up in a broadside view but looks weird from any other angle. Best not to look too closely.

It still needs external weathering and capping strips (and couplings, but none of my stock has autocouplers yet).

[Guy Rixon]

I'm currently building two kits for SER ballast-wagons from TS Designs.  I want a train of at least eight of these eventually, so, contrary to my usual practice, I'm limiting the after-market bits I add: just wheels, bearings, brake-levers and guards. There will be no springing or compensation, such being deemed avoidable in P4 if the wagon be put together square. It will be interesting to see if the design makes this easy.

 

So far, about 2.5 hours into the build, I have the bodies and axleguards prepared and painted (but not yet lettered) .

 

Preparation involved cutting parts away from the supports without breaking them and this is not easy. I managed to break two out of 10 axleguards (TS had included two spares, for which I'm very grateful) and one of the brake hangers (for which I can easily make a replacement so no worries). Snapping the supports from the parts with fingers, as in the instructional video, doesn't work reliably for me. It's possible that the green resin used for the production run is more brittle than the orange resin used for the prototype. In the end, I carefully cut away the supports with sprue cutters. This took longer, but no more parts were broken. It would have been easier with a little more space between the parts.

 

After priming, I found a number of blemishes that needed filling. I used Tamiya white putty for this. It's very fine and dries much, much faster than most putties.

 

Lettering these is going to be fun. Apparently they have to have Engineering Dept along the top plank on each side and (of course) nobody does transfers for that. I shall have to make up the words from individual letters. I plan to use spare lettering from an HMRS GWR sheet; Dept can come from Signal Dept and the rest from the various depot names of brake vans. Wish me luck...

[Guy Rixon]

A major set-back with the ballast wagons: the printed axleguards don't accept P4 wheels. There simply isn't enough clearance between the tyres and the structure of the axleguard that fits behind the solebar. I tried filing it very thin, and using Exactoscale wheels which have narrower tyres than other makes, but this still leaves me a quarter-millimetre or so short of a running fit.

 

Therefore, back to brass axleguards. I have some old D&S ones that will probably do for a rigid wagon. I also have one set of castings for the early, SER kind of axlebox, but the other wagon will have to have D-type boxes with whatever springs I can find in the spares tub.

 

To get the axleguards to fit, I'll have to cut rebates in the solebars as the latter are only 23.5mm between inside faces.   

[webbcompound]

Good to know this about the ballast wagons. I was considering them, but I think it sounds like too much work for P4 so I think I will give them a miss.

 

[Compound2632]

10 minutes ago, webbcompound said:

sounds like too much work for P4

 

Why not approach Tom @TurboSnail to see if he would be willing to produce a version with the necessary rebate in the solebars (and without the axleguard units) - if between you you want enough of these wagons it would I suspect be worth his while. I believe the appropriate axleboxes and springs are in @5&9Models' range of whitemetal castings.

[TurboSnail]

Guy - sorry to hear these have turned out a little awkward to convert to P4. Everything I make has been designed to run on my own layout in OO, so I don't have access to any P4 parts to measure up. If you do want more of the ballast wagon (or any others) I'm happy to implement a few modifications to make your life a bit easier!

Edited April 5, 2020 by TurboSnail

[Compound2632]

51 minutes ago, TurboSnail said:

Guy - sorry to hear these have turned out a little awkward to convert to P4. Everything I make has been designed to run on my own layout in OO, so I don't have access to any P4 parts to measure up. If you do want more of the ballast wagon (or any others) I'm happy to implement a few modifications to make your life a bit easier!

 

@TurboSnail, it has been pointed out to me that the standard distance between the inside faces of etched axleguards is 24.0 mm, so allowing for 0.015" brass, that gives a width over the outside faces of 24.6 mm.

[Guy Rixon]

Some thoughts.

 

First off, I'm not complaining about the non-P4 compatibility of these wagons. I'm just documenting the current situation and what I plan to do about my first two ballast wagons.

 

This level of modification is routine for me, and it's not particularly difficult. The kits are so cheap that I'd probably pay the asking price for just the bodies. If I do buy a load more, I may produce the early axlebox and spring as an after-market part from RFM. In any case, I think these wagons would have had the leather flaps over the axleboxes, so the axlebox details are hidden.

 

However, if the kits can be made P4-friendly that's a win for everybody. I'll measure the width over front face for the various P4 wheels I have in stock and post it later in this thread. It may be that the kit could be modified to suit. I don't know how thin the solebars could be made before warping, but it seems to me that they could be rebated to less than prototypical thickness where the axleguards fit. 

 

Finally, I'm not sure that there's an exact standard, with tolerances, for model axleguards. They seem to vary a lot. There should have been strict standards for the widths (interfaces to both solebars and flanges of bearings) and for the dimensions of bearings, but none such exist AFAIK.