Tank or gas holder, cylindrical

[relaxinghobby]

So who made this accesory? A wooden cylindrical tank. 4mm or 00 I assume.

I picked it up at a swapmeet, no one there knew what it was meant to be a model of. When I saw it I thought it would make a good small round tank for a nineteenth century tanker. I could not scratch build that sort of detail of the end caps.

Perhaps mount it on a wagon chassis frame with some heavy timber supports and bingo a tar tank or hemp seed oil carrier for a linoleum factory?

 

 

Here It is resting on an old metal Hornby one plank wagon modernised with Bachmann couplings and wheels. The tank shape is made of wood, see the grain and the ends are white metal castings.

Does it jog a memory?

It is    65 mm long and 16  mm in diameter.

[BernardTPM]

I wonder if there were any lithos made for this?

[APOLLO]

 I think you have one tank from a twin tank gas wagon kit, made by Wills many years ago, a GWR wagon I think. Cast white metal chassis with 2 wood dowel tanks and white metal fittings. More info here

 

Brit15

 

 

[Il Grifone]

It's definitely one of the tanks from the early version of the Wills gas tank wagon. Early ones have dowel rod for the tanks; I believe later ones are metal . The box showed 'M & GN', but I have never been able to find any details of a prototype. It's not a GWR wagon AFAIK. The dowel rod was slightly too large for the end caps, as can be seen in the photo. Mine still has the scars from my youthful attempt to reduce the diameter.

 

The GWR did have some twin gas tanks, but they were a different design from this one.

 

https://www.google.com/search?q=GWR+CORDON&client=firefox-b-d&sxsrf=ACYBGNTr3KDcydrPcaNWsEGdIoHhbCJHgQ:1581369014016&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjch9vS8sfnAhURY8AKHVPNDL0Q_AUoAXoECAwQAw&biw=1304&bih=666

[Prometheus]

That’s right: the end caps give it away. I binned the dowels in favour of some plastic tube. The end caps were a poor fit and required a lot of adjustment. It made up into a pleasing model but required a fair bit of additional detail.

 

Tony

[hayfield]

Dave at Southeastern Finecast is happy to sell parts. The kit is FW004 and describes as a Gas Tank Wagon priced at £12.50, whether its worth buying replacement parts, as you only seem to have one tank or just scratch building a new set of  tanks and fittings, might be worth buying a new kit with a few missing bits you require to make up a second, or buy a kit and add the tank to it as a triple tank

 

Googling GWR Gas Tank wagons provides plenty of photos

https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1CHBF_en-GBGB833GB833&q=gwr+gas+tank+wagons&tbm=isch&source=univ&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj3k5XjocnnAhWSmFwKHSyAD1EQsAR6BAgKEAE&biw=1920&bih=937

 

Swansea Rail Modelling group has a very interesting piece about building older kits one being the Wills gas tank (scroll down quite a bit as its near the bottom)

 

https://srmg.org.uk/recent-kitbuilds

 

Mine is still in bits (may even have 2) also have quite a few of the kits in the article. Just got a Wills Bullion van in a bit of a sorry state which came in a miscellaneous job lot of parts, very much a freeby as it was never in what made me interested in buying the lot.

[relaxinghobby]

Thanks for the feedback on the wooden tank.

Here is another puzzle or do you remember these sort of question

Some wagon wheels.

 

Some 2nd hand wagon kits I'm getting ready for my layout. In 4mm I think they are Slaters kits. Those rectangles behind the buffer beams are for gluing on Bachmann type couplings.

The wheels are a mystery to me, they seem to be EM gauge quite large flanges and very narrow tyres, compare them to the Hornby ones on the left. I've re-gauged the one in the middle and it runs through PECO code 75 point frogs OK with only a slight drop on crossing the gap.

Obviously a now defunct design left behind by more modern scale wheels but probably considered scale in their day.

Anyone know who made them?

 

 

Re-gauge is a grand term for putting the axle point onto a green cutting mat and pressing the wheel firmly with two thumbs, you can slowly edge the wheels along the axle towards the middle.

 

Edited March 21, 2020 by relaxinghobby
spelling

[Il Grifone]

I have a few sets of these, but I've no idea who is responsible for them (or where I acquired the things). I think they were intended for P4 but the flange is rather thick. They run OK on my EM track (bullhead SMP rail on PCB strip for pointwork and SMP plastic base plain track - if they'll run on my handiwork they'll run on anything!), but wide flangeways might give problems.

 

I usually gently* twist the wheels on the axle to regauge wheelsets to avoid pressing them out of true.

 

* Brute force is needed some times (Hornby for example).

Edited March 22, 2020 by Il Grifone

[laurenceb]

There was a short lived wheel maker in the 70's called (iirc) MGW who did plastic centred wheels. Have these got steel tyres?

[Edley]

On 11/02/2020 at 07:47, BernardTPM said:

I wonder if there were any lithos made for this?

 Probably not lithos these days , but cylinders can be screen printed.one of our club members has  a factory that screen prints on bottles [f say, shampoo etc He has dome the Bassett Lowke  boilers and we are pretty happy with the result.Limitations are getting tubeof the size you want . The BL boiler being O gauge, there was aluminium tubing available extremely close to the original . And we were thinking of Carrette boilers which are larger and this is available in stainless steel thin wall.

Likewise we are running off   some boiler sin OO  and once again alloy tubing is available. 

If I took a guess perhaps the OO boiler tubing size would be  about right for O gauge gas cylinders. The boilers just have flush ends but there may be  core plugs available in a size that would work as over lapping ends as shown in the pics of the silver  wagon Otherwise the rivet detail would need a casting and someone to make  a master.

[Il Grifone]

10 hours ago, laurenceb said:

There was a short lived wheel maker in the 70's called (iirc) MGW who did plastic centred wheels. Have these got steel tyres?

 

From the distant past (I have some but I'm not certain what they're fitted to*), I'd say that MGW are steel tyres.

 

* I'll see if I can find some to confirm.

[laurenceb]

I had an 3H LNER open that came with them

Edited March 24, 2020 by laurenceb
added kit maker

[kevinlms]

On 23/03/2020 at 09:18, laurenceb said:

There was a short lived wheel maker in the 70's called (iirc) MGW who did plastic centred wheels. Have these got steel tyres?

The G in MGW was Alan Gibson who ended up making wheels and many other items under his own name.

[Il Grifone]

I've found some wagons with wheels that I think* are MGW (plastic centres with a fairly thick metal tyre). Two wagons have rusty tyres so are obviously steel and another two have tyres that respond to a magnet so are also steel. The fifth doesn't so the tyres must be plated brass or nickel silver.

 

*I can't see what else they can be.

[5050]

I think the narrow tyred wheels were made by PC Kits.  I may still have a couple of pairs salted away somewhere.  They were very susceptible to any gauge widening so accurate track laying was required and early Streamline points with the wide frog/checkrail gaps etc. gave a rough ride.

[Il Grifone]

22 hours ago, 5050 said:

I think the narrow tyred wheels were made by PC Kits.  I may still have a couple of pairs salted away somewhere.  They were very susceptible to any gauge widening so accurate track laying was required and early Streamline points with the wide frog/checkrail gaps etc. gave a rough ride.

 

You may well be right. I did acquire a P.C. Models carriage kit, so that could well be where they came from.