MDO & MDV 21 Ton Mineral Wagons, by Accurascale

[Fat Controller]

38 minutes ago, mevaman1 said:

There is some good published reference materials on wagon and formations.  

‘Freight-Train Formations’ by David Ratcliffe has a mix of MDOs, MDVs, MCOs and MCVs on 7G34, the 13:34 Pwllheli-Bescot on 18/09/79.

 

’British Railways Unfitted and Vacuum-braked Wagons in Colour’ by Trevor Mann has good photos/data on page 40.

 

’Working Wagons Vol 2’ by David Larkin pages 14 and 15 and ‘Working Wagons Vol 3’ by David Larkin pages 12 and 13. 

 

Finally, ‘Model Railway Constructor November 1983’ pages 637-641.

 

There are probably loads more out there.

 

Hope that this helps.

Yet more Larkin:-

page 34 and 35 of 'Wagons of the Final Years of British Railways has some photos, and more interestingly, lists of the original allocation to certain traffic flows.

[TheSignalEngineer]

3 hours ago, Mark Saunders said:

How can it be wrong when that is the way it was rebuilt ; you really mean not as the original build!

Yes. Pictures of originals all seem to be to diagram but the rebuilds look random, presumably because that's the way the originals were when the wagons arrived at the workshops. 

[The Stationmaster]

I have raised the question via an email to Stephen but has one of the MDO packs already sold out please?  (MDO Pack B - I'm trying to order MDO Packs A &B plus MDV Pack A and hitting problems - which Stephen will hopefully be sorting) 

[Accurascale Fran]

19 minutes ago, The Stationmaster said:

I have raised the question via an email to Stephen but has one of the MDO packs already sold out please?  (MDO Pack B - I'm trying to order MDO Packs A &B plus MDV Pack A and hitting problems - which Stephen will hopefully be sorting) 

 

Hi Mike,

 

No, all should be working as normal? Definitely not sold out!

 

Cheers,

 

Fran

[The Stationmaster]

Thanks Fran,

Not sure what happened or why but every time I ordered Pack A of the MDO it wouldn't register an. order for Pack B but it did allow me to order Pack C.  But if i then cancelled Pack C I could order Pack B.   Once I had Packs A & B of the MDO ordered it wouldn't let me orderPack A of the MDV but it would let me order Pack B of the MDV.  But if I then cancelled Pack B of the MDV I could order pack A.   So I finally ended up getting an order in for what I wanted.

 

Might be a Safari oddity or something a virus checker was doing but I managed to get round it by ordering the wrong thing and then cancelling it and trying again to order the one I wanted.  Very strange,  However it worked extremely well at extracting my hard earned pension money which is the stage where most websites seem to grind to a halt.  

 

No doubt you'll be letting us know when the 'dirtied' versions will be on sale as a further contributions to pension poverty?

[SM42]

Just what I've been waiting for. Excellent choice of prototype that will complement my Chivers rake (need to cross check the wagon numbers I've used now)

 

However I'm not sure about the yellow door stripe on MDO 201048 (pack D)

 

Paul Bartlett's photo shows, at first glance, what appears to be a yellow stripe, but on closer inspection looks to be white with rust staining it a sort of yellowish brown colour.

Happy to concede I may be wrong though

 

Now, where's that credit card?

 

Andy

 

 

[Islesy]

5 hours ago, SM42 said:

Paul Bartlett's photo shows, at first glance, what appears to be a yellow stripe, but on closer inspection looks to be white with rust staining it a sort of yellowish brown colou

Interesting that you’ve picked up on that @SM42as I agonised over whether to portray that stripe as white or yellow. In the end, I erred towards yellow having looked at some other examples that featured similar colourisation. 
It would be interesting to hear other viewpoints, after all, this is why we publish decoration artwork in the first place!

[The Stationmaster]

As my previously posted photo exampled I saw quite a lot of MDOs during my everyday working life at one time (1973 in particular when I was managing a marshalling yard in South Wales) and I never saw an MDO or any other vehicle with a yellow end door marking stripe instead of a white one.   And that was in an area wj here we also had both a wagon repair shop and a vehicle grading yard (where the cost of repairs needed by a wagon was assessed and a decision made on whether or not to repair it).

 

On the everyday railway in a coal/coke producing area one could see various occasional oddities  -wagons with three different numbers being one piece of amusement which came to light as TOPS cutover proceeded;  Coke Hoppers without the extension boards above the rave being another; and even on one occasion a Hyfit loaded with coke.  But obviously I was only working on one part of the railway so what happened elsewhere might have been different (and often was) but I saw an awful lot of MDOs in those days and never a yellow stripe on one of them. 

[Accurascale Fran]

Hi everyone,

 

Thanks for the feedback on this. It's why we actively participate on RMWeb; so we can look at things and get feedback, debate it out etc. We thought about the yellowing of the stripes as part of our "pre weathered" state of decoration as it seems to be rust streak discolouration of the white stripes etc. An American outline manufacturer is doing something similar (they call it "primed for grime", raging I never came up with that myself!) but the stripes were indeed white when first painted. So, we have listened to the above and is now corrected to the white as per below!

 

 

Cheers!

 

Fran

[slg]

 

I think you may need to offer some weathered versions

[Mark Saunders]

41 minutes ago, slg said:

 

I think you may need to offer some weathered versions

The one with the end door donated by an unfitted one would make an interesting prototype!

[Enterprisingwestern]

 

I'm probably missing something, but when ordering the multi packs there seems to be no way of ordering specific liveries, the text just mentions the three different liveries.

 

Mike.

[Accurascale Fran]

47 minutes ago, Enterprisingwestern said:

 

I'm probably missing something, but when ordering the multi packs there seems to be no way of ordering specific liveries, the text just mentions the three different liveries.

 

Mike.

 

Hi Mike,

 

Can you clarify what you mean? Decoration shows what livery each pack is in, and the bundle deals are fixed per type, so all the MDOs together and then the MDVs together. If you fancy a bundle sized deal and a mix of both MDO and MDV, email and we will sort that for you.

 

Cheers!

 

Fran

[Enterprisingwestern]

 

To quote from the website;

 

"Containing 15 wagons

Grey, Pre-TOPS and TOPS liveries"

 

How do I specify pre TOPS?

 

Mike.

[McC]

9 minutes ago, Enterprisingwestern said:

 

 

How do I specify pre TOPS?

 

Mike.

 

Morning Mike,

 

There are filters on the left hand side column for most ranges, allowing you to filter by Era, Livery, etc, for the MDO/V, this filter shows just preTOPS - https://accurascale.co.uk/collections/mdo-mdv-21-ton-mineral-wagons/pre-tops?grid_list=grid-view

[Enterprisingwestern]

 

Thanks, but there isn't a bundle shown.

 

Mike.

[McC]

Just now, Enterprisingwestern said:

 

Thanks, but there isn't a bundle shown.

 

Mike.

 

Correct, there is a bundle of Bauxite, and a Bundle of Grey liveries, which include wagons that are a little into transition between TOPS and PreTOPS.

If you'd rather pick and mix by era, just drop us. a note.

[Phil Bullock]

19 minutes ago, Enterprisingwestern said:

 

Thanks, but there isn't a bundle shown.

 

Mike.

Have done that already Mike... 15 unfitted and 6 fitted pre TOPs, the excellent Accurascale chaps gave me bundle discount. 

[The Stationmaster]

7 minutes ago, Phil Bullock said:

Have done that already Mike... 15 unfitted and 6 fitted pre TOPs, the excellent Accurascale chaps gave me bundle discount. 

Agree - that was exactly what I did because I didn't want the maintenance data panel as it's out of period for me.  So I selected the two MDO packs without it and an MDV pack without it (fitted wagons would be much rarer for the period I'm interested in).  And like Phil I also got a bundle discount from those nice, very helpful, people at Accurascale.

[Enterprisingwestern]

18 minutes ago, Phil Bullock said:

Have done that already Mike... 15 unfitted and 6 fitted pre TOPs, the excellent Accurascale chaps gave me bundle discount. 

 

6 minutes ago, The Stationmaster said:

Agree - that was exactly what I did because I didn't want the maintenance data panel as it's out of period for me.  So I selected the two MDO packs without it and an MDV pack without it (fitted wagons would be much rarer for the period I'm interested in).  And like Phil I also got a bundle discount from those nice, very helpful, people at Accurascale.

 

Having just had a quick email chat with the helpful chaps, and on closer reflection and consideration, as I will be changing the number panel styles on some of the wagons anyway, I might as well go for the grey bundle and re transfer the TOPS versions, I can get away with the maintenance data panel in my era, so that's a useful thing to have.

 

Mike.

[Roy Langridge]

I would have thought that, if possible, Accurascale offering mixed MDO/MDV bundles (one TOPS / one pre-TOPS)  would be a smart move.

Roy

Edited December 8, 2020 by Roy Langridge
Typo

[Enterprisingwestern]

17 minutes ago, Roy Langridge said:

I would have thought that, if possible, Accurascale offering mixed MDO/MDV bundles (one TOPS / one pre-TOPS)  would be a smart move.

Roy

 

From my understanding Roy, you can do a pick and mix and make your own bundle up, as Phil has done above.  I wouldn't expect Accurascale to come up with every combination that everyone might possibly want as an option.

 

Mike.

[Roy Langridge]

Just now, Enterprisingwestern said:

 

From my understanding Roy, you can do a pick and mix and make your own bundle up, as Phil has done above.  I wouldn't expect Accurascale to come up with every combination that everyone might possibly want as an option.

 

Mike.

 

I appreciate that, but there will be people that do not span the TOPS transition era and I just thought two more bundles, one everything pre-TOPS and one everything TOPS might save a lot of effort for the lads with calls and maybe promote a few more orders from people who would not otherwise ask.

Roy

[The Stationmaster]

2 minutes ago, Roy Langridge said:

I would have thought that, if possible, Accurascale offering mixed MDO/MDV bundles (one TOPS / one pre-TOPS)  would be a smart move.

Roy

Maybe - but equally it is quite possible to do what Phil and I did and 'mix and match' to make up our own 'bundle' and get a discount.   Accurascale are offering a considerable variety of decoration to start with covering a number of different periods although thus far it looks like there is a pre-TOPs markings variant of the MDO which they are not doing - i.e. there isn't one with a yellow data panel).  

 

But to get down to that level of detail we are looking at very short periods - each of less than 5 years in the case of the MDVs - in the real world and there's probably a pretty limited amount of prototype photos which can be relied upon for absolute accuracy.  I just checked back on one of my own photos and it includes two MDVs in 1973 (so well into the dawn of the TOPS era) with two totally different arrangements of lettering etc and one of them hasn't even got a maintenance data panel nearly a decade after they were introduced.

 

Accurascale are getting down to very fine levels of detail decoration variants and they no doubt need to keep some different ones in the drawer for future runs (and in any case we can buy transfers and paint and indulge in a spot of modelling if we want).  

[75B]

I e-mailed Fran and asked if there was a possible bundle deal for the pre-Tops MDO and MDV packs; answered immediately with a yes, now I have 18 wagons on order.

 

Thanks to Fran and the team for their brilliant customer service.

 

Keith