Great Southern Railway (Fictitious) - Signalling the changes...

[Skinnylinny]

The platform building continues, albeit slowly as I wait for each section to fully set before starting on the next one. The two 3D printed SER wagons are now painted and ready for transfers. I've also completely cleared up my own 3D printer, and have the first test print of the LSWR open wagon shown earlier on this page. Still a few minor tweaks, but I think this is a perfectly serviceable layout wagon! Next for this one is making the tarpaulin rail and getting some LSWR wagon brown on it...



I also found one of the Linton Town nameboards and couldn't resist posing this little scene:



Welcome to Linton Town!

Edited July 14, 2020 by Skinnylinny

[Tim Dubya]

Those wagons are fabulous!

[Skinnylinny]

Thank you! The open has moved into the paint shops, but today another parcel arrived.



I've always had a bit of a soft spot for the Hornby footbridge, with its lovely fine latticework. It stands up very well against etched models, in my opinion, but there are two problems with using it for Linton: Its height and width. The width is to be expected, given it's designed to be used over widely-spaced Setrack curves with Mk4s whizzing around at 300mph underneath. I wasn't prepared for the height difference though! Remembering that I'm wanting to mount this on a platform, this is the footbridge placed over the track at ground level:



I suspect some trimming may be in order... 

[Compound2632]

The footbridge is very Midland-looking though I gather the MS&L / GC had some very similar and the design may well have been sipplied to other companies as I believe the manufacture was contracted out - Butterley Co., possibly? I've spent many a happy 5-10 minutes at Waterloo East admiring that firm's cast canopy ironwork. But the Midland connection is helpful for setting the height, since the Midland Railway Study Centre has several drawings available for download - just put "footbridge" into the catalogue search and select the "Drawing" category.

[Skinnylinny]

It does look very Midland-y (especially the vertical balusters contrasting with the latticework elsewhere), but with various tweaks I think it can pass as a generic footbridge (at least rather better than the other old Hornby one with the GWR monogram on it (now sold by Gaugemaster under their Fordhampton range, shown painted in Southern green and cream... still with the moulded-on GWR monogram!).

I was planning to set the bottom of the smoke deflectors about 14' above rail level - actually, thinking about that, could anyone with a Hornby Rocket ( @Edwardian?) please tell me the maximum height above rail level of that model? It is definitely the tallest thing I'd be likely to run into Linton even on "silly days". 

[Edwardian]

2 hours ago, Skinnylinny said:

It does look very Midland-y (especially the vertical balusters contrasting with the latticework elsewhere), but with various tweaks I think it can pass as a generic footbridge (at least rather better than the other old Hornby one with the GWR monogram on it (now sold by Gaugemaster under their Fordhampton range, shown painted in Southern green and cream... still with the moulded-on GWR monogram!).

I was planning to set the bottom of the smoke deflectors about 14' above rail level - actually, thinking about that, could anyone with a Hornby Rocket ( @Edwardian?) please tell me the maximum height above rail level of that model? It is definitely the tallest thing I'd be likely to run into Linton even on "silly days". 

 

60mm above rail height

[Annie]

2 hours ago, Skinnylinny said:

I was planning to set the bottom of the smoke deflectors about 14' above rail level - actually, thinking about that, could anyone with a Hornby Rocket ( @Edwardian?) please tell me the maximum height above rail level of that model? It is definitely the tallest thing I'd be likely to run into Linton even on "silly days". 

With running mid-19th century engines on some of my my digital layouts this was a problem I was always having in that most of the available bridges and footbridges were set up for 1930's loading gauge heights and some of my old engines had impressively tall chimneys.  Careful checking  was always in order during new construction of the line.

 

That Hornby footbridge is certainly very nice and I'd certainly be looking to buy one if I wa still doing 4mm scale modelling.

 

[Compound2632]

Those Midland drawings show a height above rail level to underside of footbridge of 15'0", with a minimum structure gauge of 14'6".

[Skinnylinny]

That's perfect, thank you. Given the height of the Rocket seems to be 15' above rail level, I might tweak that up by another 6" (after all, it won't be a model of a Midland bridge!).

Work has started on narrowing the bridge at least. I've removed about 9'6" in length from the top deck (Would have been 10' but for the plank spacing...). The deck has been reassembled and is sitting hardening. That's already a big change, and I haven't started on the height yet!

 

My next concern is shortening the sides such that I don't have too obvious a gap in the latticework. I might use the Airfix footbridge cheat and cover the join with some adverts - as has been pointed out, the Edwardians seemed to be even more fond of advertising everywhere than the modern day, and that's saying something!

[Skinnylinny]

So, some good news, and some bad news. 

The good news is that both the stairs and the top latticework cut beautifully, and the latticework aligns on the join. 



The bad news is that the green plastic is very slippery and isn't touched by:
- Revell poly cement
- EMA Plastic Weld
- Araldite Rapid
- Poundland superglue
- Loctite liquid superglue
- Loctite superglue gel (this *felt* like it was sticking, but came apart very easily, under the parts' own weight, leaving an H-shaped blob of dried glue which had wrapped around, but completely failed to stick to, the plastic)
- Acetone

The acetone was a surprise suggestion from the internet, as I'd come to the conclusion by this point that the plastic was either polyethylene or polypropylene. Lovely and flexible, and perfect for a clip-fit kit... until you start chopping the clip-together lugs off... 

Polyethylene dissolves in acetone so I considered that I might be able to use some nail varnish remover as a solvent. Unfortunately I might as well have been trying to glue it with water! So my thought at the moment is that it's been moulded in polypropylene, and I've had to order special glue for it. This will hopefully arrive next week. 

All this being said, though, removing a chunk or three from the deck has definitely changed the character of the bridge, as has reducing its height. It looks a lot less like the Hornby R076 footbridge kit of the 1960s (from what I can gather!) while still retaining all the charm of it.

[Annie]

I used to use a superglue type plastic glue that had a primer that needed to be wiped onto the joint surfaces first before applying the glue.  I found that it could join any plastic I tried including some soft plastic wargaming figures that no other glue had ever worked on.  The resulting joint was very strong and gave no problems.  The brand I used was made in Australia so I guess it wouldn't be available in the Uk, but I would emagine there should be a local equivalent available.

[Skinnylinny]

That sounds like the stuff I've ordered - Loctite branded "All-plastic" superglue with a primer. It's marketed as being able to bond even the awkward PE and PP plastics, and had good reviews on Amazon. Good to hear that I might be on the right track! 

[Annie]

Yes that sounds like the kind of glue I was using Linny.  After I started using it I never bothered with any other kind of plastic glue again.  Yes it's a bit more expensive, but I considered it well worth the money.

[Skinnylinny]

Well, I needed something to do while waiting for the super-duper-fancy glue to arrive, so the CAD software got opened again.

 

The LSWR open is now fully painted and awaiting transfers, so I had a flick through some books and found a sketch diagram of a lovely private owner wagon, with dumb buffers, rounded ends (my favourite!) and two-shoe brakes. Lovely! Apart from one tweak (It had been drawn to only be 6' wide!), the basics of the wagon were all there, and I've been adding various details based on how I imagine the wagon having been put together. There is only one (very grainy) photograph of said wagon, but as it will likely be getting lettered as a fictional private owner, I'm not too concerned about getting everything absolutely perfect, just believable.



All that's left to do for the private owner is the floor planking and the brake lever:

Edited July 18, 2020 by Skinnylinny

[Compound2632]

Dumb buffers usually had a recess carved into the timber so that the iron hoop was flush with the timber - except at the corners, where the timber was square but the iron hoop rounded. The hoop was no more than 0.5 in from the end, the buffer being chamfered at 45 degrees. All this was to stop the wood splitting of course.

 

Have you had a look at @airnimal's builds - they may provide some inspiration for constructional details. Internal side knees are essential!

 

Despite reading Bixley et al., Southern Wagons Vol. 1 pp 13-23 several times, I'm still confused about the build dates for four and five plank round-ended opens. Either seem appropriate for c. 1902, as withnessed by a couple of Huntley & Palmers photos, showing 4-plank and 5-plank examples. But is the 5-planker you've done appropriate to my time-frame?

Edited July 18, 2020 by Compound2632

[Skinnylinny]

13 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

Dumb buffers usually had a recess carved into the timber so that the iron hoop was flush with the timber - except at the corners, where the timber was square but the iron hoop rounded. The hoop was no more than 0.5 in from the end, the buffer being chamfered at 45 degrees. All this was to stop the wood splitting of course.

 

[source: https://hmrs.org.uk/photographs/rhys-richards-merthyr-dare-10t-6-plank-end-no-50-op-f3r-spoked-wheels-dmbuf-one-end-ssdbk-builders-no-7692-gwr-reg-5578.html]

That's useful information, thank you. I couldn't get any close-up photos of the wagon in question, so I went to the HMRS photographs website, and found one photo (which is much-cropped!) posted above on which the buffer ring is quite visible  I must have found an atypical one. The majority of kit-build dumb-buffered wagons I saw when searching Google Images for "Dumb buffer wagon" had the hoop raised, presumably for ease of painting. I agree that the tapered end to the buffer was rather overdone though, and that has since been tweaked, thank you!

 

13 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

Have you had a look at @airnimal's builds - they may provide some inspiration for constructional details. Internal side knees are essential!

I have been following that thread indeed - some gorgeous scratchbuilding! I must ask though, what *are* inside knees (and, come to that, knees in general?) I've seen the term used before but never quite been able to narrow it down. Are they the L-profile plates to be seen on the corners of wagons (and thus, for example, missing from one end of end-door wagons)?

 

13 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

Despite reading Bixley et al., Southern Wagons Vol. 1 pp 13-23 several times, I'm still confused about the build dates for four and five plank round-ended opens. Either seem appropriate for c. 1902, as withnessed by a couple of Huntley & Palmers photos, showing 4-plank and 5-plank examples. But is the 5-planker you've done appropriate to my time-frame?

I don't have my copy to hand just now, but I will double-check (and cross-reference with Weddell LSWR Carriages vol. 4) when I get home on Monday. I think from memory that the pressed-steel underframe type (only produced as a 5-plank version) is suitable for the entirety of my time period (1900-1910) so would suit 1902, but don't quote me on that! They may originally have had Panter either-sided brakes, or that may have been the wooden-framed version. Unfortunately, like the LB&SCR, the LSWR had a nasty habit of using the same drawing number to cover a multitude of variations with which I can't keep up!

Edited July 19, 2020 by Skinnylinny

[Caley Jim]

3 hours ago, Skinnylinny said:

 what *are* inside knees (and, come to that, knees in general?) I've seen the term used before but never quite been able to narrow it down. Are they the L-profile plates to be seen on the corners of wagons (and thus, for example, missing from one end of end-door wagons)?

Inside knees are cast brackets attached to the cross members of the wagon underframe and support the sides. They are usually flush with the floor but can be clearly seen projecting on the inside of the sides. For details of wagon construction there was an excellent series of articles by Chris Crofts in early MRJ's. 

 

Jim 

[Skinnylinny]

Thanks Jim - I'm struggling to find any photos of wooden-bodied wagon interiors online and I'm unfortunately far away from my books right now. I did manage to find this section from one of my scans of drawings for another wagon (a carriage truck) though:

Would these be taller on a taller-sided wagon? I also note that this wagon sketch doesn't include any horse hooks... I imagine these would have been on the buffer part of the solebar, usually at the left end (to avoid the rope becoming entangled on the brake lever)?

[Caley Jim]

2 hours ago, Skinnylinny said:

 

Would these be taller on a taller-sided wagon? I also note that this wagon sketch doesn't include any horse hooks... I imagine these would have been on the buffer part of the solebar, usually at the left end (to avoid the rope becoming entangled on the brake lever)?

Yes, they would come up to a similar level from the top, depending on the height of the wagon. 

On CR wagons, horse hooks were either on the dumb buffer or, on spindle buffered wagons, attached above the left hand wheel. 'T' shaped ones in place of the top bolt of the half moon washer plate or 'U' shaped ones replacing the two lower bolts. 

 

Jim

[Skinnylinny]

Ah, that makes sense - so would the knees be on the inside face, in line with the outer washer plates? In which case, I assume the knees would be here?

 

[Compound2632]

1 hour ago, Skinnylinny said:

Ah, that makes sense - so would the knees be on the inside face, in line with the outer washer plates? In which case, I assume the knees would be here?

 

Only at the centre, not the ends (except for an end-door wagon). For most open wagons, the body is attached to the frame by the side knees and the end pillars or stanchions, with the corner plates chiefly bracing the side planks (sheeting) to the end planks.

 

This crop from Derby C&W drawing 550 (from the Midland Railway Study Centre website) shows the profile of a typical side knee. (Not an ideal drawing, since it is a section on the transverse centre line of the wagon, so the door ironwork is in the foreground.) Like a bracket from B&Q, it is thickest at the corner, tapering towards the ends. It is attached to the middle bearer - one of the two substantial timbers crossways between the solebars - by a couple of bolts (not shown). The side sheeting is bolted to it, the vertical washer plate on the outside spreading the load of the nuts, so that the timber is not damaged (this is obscured by the door hinge ironwork). The floor blanks are shaped to sit smoothly over the knees, so the vertical part is all that is visible inside the wagon.

 

Also visible are the washer plates on the inside of the corner plate.

 

 

This photograph, which I used recently, shows what should be visible inside the wagon:

 

 

And this photo gives some more details of some fairly typical pre-RCH 1887 specification PO wagons, broadly similar to yours:

 

 

NRM DY 1043 and DY 4064, released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0) licence by the National Railway Museum.

[Skinnylinny]

That's fantastically helpful, thank you @Compound2632. Both the PO and the LSWR open have been amended now - I note the countersunk screws in your drawing so I haven't included visible bolt heads on either wagon. I also note the complete lack of inside knees on the Cambrian LSWR open!

 

As for the question of build dates of the LSWR D1309, the batch built with the pressed-steel underframes were built between 1893 and 1897, so suited to your 1902 period.

[Compound2632]

2 hours ago, Skinnylinny said:

That's fantastically helpful, thank you @Compound2632. Both the PO and the LSWR open have been amended now - I note the countersunk screws in your drawing so I haven't included visible bolt heads on either wagon. I also note the complete lack of inside knees on the Cambrian LSWR open!

 

Correct inside detail is pretty rare on kit wagons. It gets in the way if you want to model the wagon fully loaded!

 

Those countersunk bolts on the D299 are somewhat controversial - I've upset a couple of people by pointing out that their laboriously modelled bolt heads were a waste of time and effort. But that was by no means universal practice - I was looking at a photo of some early 20th century PO wagons earlier and noting the visible bolt heads on the inside. The D299 was a goods and mineral wagon; the bolt heads don't matter much for coal, I presume, but for merchandise they could, I imagine, be a nuisance - snagging sacks or scraping crates. Good overhead photos of merchandise wagons are a bit hard to come by. In LNWR Wagons Vol. 1, the original GAs for the D4/D9/D84 4-plank open merchandise wagons show countersunk bolts for the side knees but no other internal ironwork, just individual bolt heads; from photographs these seem to be flush with the woodwork, so they are presumably countersunk-headed bolts too. But the LNWR often did things in its own idiosyncratic way, possibly perpetuating practices that originated on the Grand Junction!

 

For these 4/5-plank LSWR opens, looking at Southern Wagons Vol. 1 Plate 21, there's a nice selection of unusual angles. Examining wagon No. 272, it looks as if in this case the boltheads are not countersunk.

 

In earlier days, it wasn't unusual for the side knees to be on the outside of the wagon. That seems to be the case for some of these LSWR wagons - see Plates 18, 19, 20, 21 (the wagon behind the group of men), 22, 23, 25 (with steel u/f), 26, 27. The tell-tale is that the "strapping" is unusually think towards the bottom and curves under.

Edited July 20, 2020 by Compound2632

[Skinnylinny]

Hmmmm. I note the caption on Plate 21, in fact, which implies that the wagon is unusual for an LSWR wagon in having inside side knees. The only drawings of any LSWR opens that I can find that show them (in Weddell vol.4) show outside side knees. Maybe I should remove them again! 

As for the counter-sunk vs carriage bolts, now it really does feel like we're rivet-counting! I'll keep them flush for the LSWR goods wagon, but have them protruding for the mineral PO wagon. That feels like best practice. Plus, the PO wagon is working with limited data anyway so I'm less concerned about that one. If it looks right, it is right.

[Compound2632]

2 minutes ago, Skinnylinny said:

As for the counter-sunk vs carriage bolts, now it really does feel like we're rivet-counting! 

 

No! no! no! They're bolts not rivets!* Common misunderstanding...

 

*Except for the corner plates of LNWR wagons up to 1903. These were riveted.