Penrhyn Railway wagons in 7/8" scale

[PGH]

I have a particular interest in the Penrhyn Railway because many years ago I had a return trip on the railway in one of the quarrymen's coaches.  In the late 1950's to early 1960's some of the school summer holiday was spent with a like minded school friend exploring the railways of North Wales, travelling on many of the BR lines closed by Beeching, visiting quarries still using narrow gauge railways or walking long abandoned quarry tramways.  On a visit to Port Penrhyn we were told that a school party would be travelling up the railway to the quarry later that day and we could travel with them.  The date was in August 1958, long before I started making proper notes or taking photographs, and only recorded because at the quarry we were taken through the mills on Red Lion Level to see the production of slates and were each given a slate as a souvenir on which I scratched the date of the visit.  I made more than a dozen more visits to the quarry, some official others rather less so, before the rail system finished completely in 1967.

 

My involvement in 7/8" scale began with the acquisition of two Accucraft Quarry Hunslets and these were modified as required to represent the Penrhyn Quarry locos HUGH NAPIER and EDWARD SHOLTO.

 

 

To accompany these locos David Bailey produced a number of Penrhyn wagon kits and I built four of these - 2 slate wagons, a fullersite wagon and a coal wagon. 

 

 

Unfortunately these kits didn't sell as well as expected but before they were finally discontinued I managed to purchase another four slate wagon and two fullersite wagon kits.

 

 

The slate wagon kits comprised a brass etching for the sides, ends and underframe; cast axleboxes - originally whitemetal but brass in the later kits; ready shaped floor planks,; cast whitemetal buffers and cast brass couplings.  To complete the kits Slaters wheels were required and the correct pattern were available, produced I believe specially for these kits.

 

 

[PGH]

There were several different types of slate wagon on the Penrhyn Railway but these are two examples that closely resemble the kit:

 

 

 

Slate Wagon No.389 photographed on Red Lion Level in 1964, this is similar to the kit except it has brakes.  You can just about pick out the difference between the light grey body colour and the weathered black of the underframe.  The corner angles are grey down to the bottom but the intermediate slats are black below the top of the underframe.  In the original photo from which this is cropped there are 10 wagons visible on the two tracks and no less than 5 are equipped with brakes.

 

 

 

Slate Wagon No.219 - this is a blow up from the corner of a photo of LINDA about to leave Coed-y-Parc so excuse the quality.  This also has a black underframe but on this example the corner angles appear to be black below the top of the underframe.

 

 

 

[PGH]

 

The slate wagon kits are intended to be assembled with 1/16" diameter rivets.  The heads of these are well over scale so I reduced the size of the heads by turning them all down.  With 4 kits and  80 rivets per kit that was a total of 320 !  The sides and ends were all soldered so the rivets served to locate the parts and were then cut off on the inside so that no actual riveting took place.

 

 

 

There was a limit to the amount the rivet heads could be reduced in diameter without dropping through the holes, but in retrospect I think I could have managed a little more reduction.

 

 

 

The hook and shackle coupling castings by Talisman are very nice and clean up well with the loop on the hook closed with silver solder.  New pins fixing the shackles to the buffers were provided as the full size ones on the Penrhyn wagons have a tapered head.

 

 

 

On the full size wagons they are fixed only by a split pin but I did provide a washer.  The couplings were chemically blackened which gave them a dark brown finish.

 

 

 

The model couplings look OK but in actual fact are smaller than the real thing, which to me look too large and the bottom of the hook when uncoupled is below rail level.

Edited April 29, 2018 by PGH

[PGH]

 

The axleboxes supplied with the last production of slate wagon kits were brass castings rather the previous whitemetal.  I would have preferred the latter as there was some shrinkage in the brass castings and they required a fair amount of work.  The small pivoted oil cover had to be removed with a piercing saw so that the front of the box could be flattened.  I did wonder whether to pivot it like the earlier whitemetal ones but thought it would be less bother just to solder it back in place.  The 8BA bolts supplied for attaching the axleboxes to the frames were retained but I used 10BA nuts drilled out and tapped 8BA.

 

 

 

A finished wagon apart from weathering, which it may get later.  The brass was grit blasted and then primed with an etch primer.  The slate wagons were painted light grey so I used Humbrol No.64 matt enamel.  The frames were painted matt black.

 

 

 

The completed set of 4 slate wagons

[PGH]

Fullersite is slate waste ground to a fine powder and has various uses as a filler material.  The fullersite wagons were used for taking this material in sacks from the plant on Red Lion Level to Port Penrhyn and either had lift out sides or hinged sides.  Some wagons were provided with eyelets for fixing tarpaulins over the sacks in wet weather. 

 

 

 

Two wagons adjacent to the fullersite plant in 1963, the first with hinged sides the second with lift out sides.

 

 

 

Fullersite wagon on Red Level  in 1964.  In the background is Red Lion Loco Shed

 

 

 

Wagon No.77 at Penrhyn Castle Museum.  Several of these wagons have been preserved but in the latter days at Penrhyn Quarry paint seemed to be absent with rusty ironwork and unpainted weathered timber.  Possibly when built the ironwork was originally painted black.

Edited April 30, 2018 by PGH

[PGH]

The fullersite wagon kits included laser cut ply for the frames; ready cut wood door planks; one piece brass floor and ends; cast whitemetal strapping, axleboxes and hinges and cast brass couplings and door catches.

 

The prospect of painting the whitemetal "ironwork" without touching the wood after assembly was quite daunting so I decided to paint it before assembly, this would leave only the screws, nuts and any chipped paint to be touched up at the end.  There are a total of 32 whitemetal parts in each wagon and the prospect of holding and brush painting each part was also quite off-putting. I therefore attached the parts to pieces of scrap timber with holes, double sided tape or wires as appropriate - an example of the set up for pieces of strapping is shown below.

 

 

This took some time, but once done the painting was a simple matter of a series of 5 minute spray jobs - primer and 2 coats of paint.

 

The frames went together very well and just needed some minor adjustments at the corner joints to get them to lie perfectly flat on a glass sheet.  When gluing them together I didn't follow the instructions which advise fixing the frame to the brass floor.  Instead after checking they were square I left them overnight under weights on the glass sheet.  On the first of the two wagons the axlebox fixing screws had been soldered into the floor with the heads filed flat and fitting the floor on to the frame then required some adjustments - enlarging the holes in the frame and even slightly bending some of the screws - but after the axleboxes and wheels were finally fitted I was relieved to find that all 4 wheels sat perfectly flat, all touching the glass sheet.

 

 

The brass sheet forming the floor and ends had a slight but noticeable difference in height across the ends.  This could have been levelled by filing but would then have left the ends too low.  So on the first wagon I removed the ends from the floor and provided new ends from similar thickness brass sheet. 

 

 

The second wagon was done slightly different in that I replaced the floor with a new 0.7 mm thick brass sheet.  New ends were then provided as on the first wagon.  The axlebox fixing screws were fixed directly into the frame.  On both wagons the floor was fixed to the frame by epoxy and a series of 9 steel pins along the edge of each side.

 

 

 

The prototype wagons have 2½" angle along the bottom and sides of the ends and this was provided with 4½ mm brass angle.

 

 

 

The couplings were fitted before fixing the floor, not after as described in the instructions, as the countersunk screw heads are under the floor.   The prototype wagons have a ½" thick steel buffing plate so I used 1mm thick brass strip.

 

 

 

The brass floor and ends were grit blasted and painted, and the frames painted and stained before assembly. Just the doors to fit now.

[coachmann]

As often as I call and as often as you tell me what you are doing, it is only now on seeing these pictures that I fully appreciate what you have been doing. 

[PGH]

The kit instructions advise fixing the strapping to the doors and then fixing the brass cotter pins for holding the doors shut to the ends.  However as the position of the cotter pins are fixed horizontally (fore and aft) by the ends I was worried that they may not line up exactly with the holes in the curved end strapping if that was fixed first.  So I decided to fix the cotter pins first and then adjust the strapping to suit.

 

 

 

The door planks and strapping held temporarily in position while the cotter pins are fixed

 

 

 

With the tops of the end strapping now fixed on the cotter pins the strapping and bottom plank are adjusted and fixed with 12BA bolts.  The holes for the pins in the top plank were then marked and drilled and that also fixed in place.

 

 

 

The interior strapping at the end of the doors just cleared the 4½ mm angle on the end plate.  12BA Hex head bolts were used to fix the planks and cotter pins with the heads thinned down instead of the 10BA round head bolts provided in the kit.  The fullersite would have been carried in thick paper sacks so presumably the bolt heads were thinned down to avoid damage to the sacks during loading and on the journey down to Port Penrhyn. 

 

 

 

No chain was provided for the cotter pin wedges but fortunately I had some suitable in stock, which has approximately 20 links per inch.

 

 

 

It was chemically blackened before fixing in place.

 

 

 

The finished result

 

I am quite pleased with the results from these kits and I think the extra work was worthwhile.  7/8" scale is great for detail - "just like the real thing" - especially if you like small locos and small wagons, but not so good if you have ambitions to build a layout (which I haven't) unless of course you have a suitable large garden (which I haven't got either).  However they do get an occasional airing at layouts of local members of the 16mm Narrow Gauge Modellers Association.  Now I seem to vaguely recall that I have a 7mm scale layout on the go     I must blow the dust off that sometime.

 

 

 

[Quarryscapes]

Excellent work! It's a shame there isn't more of this sort of high fidelity modelling going on in the larger scales,  it really is staggering how accurate not just in terms of appearance but construction methods and functionality you can build stuff in 16mm and 7/8ths. 

[Giles]

What a lovely job! A superb build of the wagons!

[Andrew Young]

Exquisite modelling. Perfect use of the larger scale to give more realistic results.

 

Andrew

[James Hilton]

Only just found this whilst looking for something else, lovely build on the wagons. Full of character.