B.R. 24.5 ton hopper (HUO)

[Flood]

As I have mentioned in a number of threads over the last few months I am currently constructing vacuum braked (and partially fitted) freight trains for use on the club layout of Duffield.

 

One of the rakes is a representation of the Seymour Junction to Willington coal traffic before it either went over to HAA mgr wagons (or was stopped completely, I don't know what actually happened). There was one photo on fotopic of one of these services by John Woolley which I managed to save before that site went down and the wagons seen are as follows:

 

HUO, HTV, MCV, 6 HTV, 3 MEO, 2 HTV, HUO, MEO, HUO, MEO, 2 HTV, 2 MEO, HUO, 4 MEO, HUO, 2 MEO....

 

The HTV (21 ton hopper), MCV (16 ton mineral) and MEO (24 ton mineral) are all easily modelled with Parkside producing excellent kits and using a modified Bachmann mineral wagon for the MCV. The HUO hopper is a bit of a problem though. A whitemetal kit was made of the prototype design but the production batches had slightly different styled bodies. As the basic chassis is the same as the 21 ton hopper I felt that a new plasticard body could be added to a modified Parkside 21 ton chassis.

 

The 24.5 ton hopper had three major variants:

 

The first 498 had LNER style 8 shoe clasp brakegear with a body that was used on the majority of the wagons

The next 3676 had offset V hangers and push brakegear with the same body as the above (and possibly built with roller bearings)

The last 1087 had the push brakegear but were built with a slightly simpler body design and roller bearings.

 

250 of the second batch were built with vacuum brake gear but this had been removed by the time I am modelling.

 

Buffers were a mixture of RCH spindle, self contained and oleo depending on the lot number.

 

 

So to the model making. The great thing about Parkside kits is that 1) you get a number of variations in some kits and 2) you can order any separate sprue of items from them for a pound. For some of my other rakes I have already made some LNER brake 21 ton hoppers with rebuilt bodies (the brake gear being ordered separately) and as you generally need 2 solebars but only one set of clasp brakes for the 21 ton hoppers I had some clasp brakes spare. The Parkside tube can be built with either push brakes of clasp brakes. As all of my tube wagons have clasp brakes I should be able to modify the push brakes to use on the 24.5 ton hoppers.

 

Last night I decided to make a start. I already have untouched sheets of 10 thou and 40 thou plasticard, assorted microstrip, 15 sprues of HTV solebars (the reason for I'll explain later), 5 sets of wheels, 5 HTV frames and 3 packs of Lanarkshire self contained buffers.

 

Having decided to try the clasp brake style wagon first (I will be making one) I looked at modifying the Parkside LNER clasp brake gear. One set needs to be the mirror image of the other so while the brake unit was still mounted on the sprue I cut out the brake rodding, tidied it up and reglued it the other way around. Once the joins had set I removed both sets of brakegear from the sprues.

 

 

The unaltered set still has the plastic guides moulded on for strength when removing from the sprue, these were then cut off.

 

Next I looked at the solebars. I could have used the HTV soleabars (with the hopper discharge handle brackets removed) but I have spare MEO solebars from making roller bearing fitted wagons so I used two of these (as they have oil axleboxes) instead. These were very slightly shortened to match the HTV solebar length and brass bearings were added and the solebars were attached to the HTV frame and the wheels inserted.

 

Sorry for the awful photos so far)

 

Back to the need for 15 sets of solebars. I decided to use the Parkside hopper discharge handles (as they are so good) so I ordered 15 sprues - 2 handles per sprue, 6 needed per wagon hence 15 sprues. At the same time I can very carefully cut off the brackets for the discharge handles and reuse them and I also end up with loads of roller bearing axleboxes spare in case I need them for other wagons. A bit of an over undulgence? Probably but I don't care. Six of the discharge handle brakets were carefully removed from solebars (along with the V hangers which will have to move anyway) and put to one side.

 

 

Next the brakegear was added to the basic chassis and, most long winded of all, new brakegear rodding guides were made from microstrip. Now I know why people use etched brass. You can bend it to shape, it's stronger and you don't need three small pieces per guide.

 

So at about 2 o'clock last night I had the following:

 

 

 

I've now spent nearly an hour typing this out so no more will be done, at best, until tomorrow. I will probably look at making a push brakegear chassis next with all the parts for the bodies being cut out in one go. I hope people find this an interesting read, I've only even seen one photo of models of some of these wagons and that is on one of the pages of the Kier Hardy site (D6327 and D6328 at Shenston Road). Some people will cringe at my use of Parkside brakegear but I enjoy working in plastic and it looks fine to me.

 

More to follow in time.

[Fat Controller]

Looks fine to me as well..I've not tried scratchbuilding one of the 24.5t hoppers yet, though I have tried one of the very asymetrical underframes under a rebuilt 21t mineral of the 4-door sort, using a modified Chivers body. I have one of the K's kits- it must be close to 50 years old.

A lot of the vacuum-braked versions were used on stone traffic from Westbury in the early/mid 1970s, most notably to some of the terminals for M23/25 construction. Prior to that, when the first wagons were being ordered against specific traffic flows, three wagons had been ordered for stone traffic from Wells on behalf of Foster Yeoman.

[Peter Kazmierczak]

Flood,

Is this said train?

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/westernsunset/5583373126/in/set-72157626410760856

[Flood]

Flood,

Is this said train?

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/westernsunset/5583373126/in/set-72157626410760856

 

No Peter but I have found that photo before (I've even put a message on it) and it is an excellent reference and very useful. I reckon that it's a Denby to Willington service and that's only because it has two Toton 20s and not Tinsley ones.

 

I'd love to post the actual photo on here but it's not mine to do that and John has not got it uploaded to flickr either.

[Flood]

I have actually managed to make one of the next sets of brake gear but I will give more details and photos when I start to make some more sets.

 

The good news is that the photo that the train is modelled on has now been uploaded to flickr and this is the link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pics-by-john/8378657325/

 

Many thanks to John Woolley for making this available.

[Flood]

Well 18 months flies by nowadays.

 

I was going to post lots of pictures of the offset V hanger brake gear during construction but the process is merely cutting out bits and glueing back together so on to the first photo:

 

 

The solebars are from Parkside Grampus wagons which have the option of the roller bearing axle boxes, these are stuck to Parkside 21T hopper frames. The headstocks are from the Parkside 21T hopper with self contained buffers from Lanarkshire Models. The offset V hangers are also from the Grampus sprue which contains four variants of V hanger.

 

Above the chassis is the sprue from a Parkside Tube showing the push brakegear. This was cut on the left side first and glued and when hard the rod to the right hand side of the pivot was cut to length and glued.

 

 

The handlevers for the offset V hanger HUO wagons were pretty long compared to most other types. A handlever from the Tube was cut just before the bend by the latching bracket and then one from the Grampus was cut to include the latching bracket and the extra length needed. These were then grafted together. A completed handlever and one from the Tube sprue is shown below:

 

 

 

The completed offset V hanger chassis is as below (less brakelever, this will get in the way of adding the centre hopper discharge handles):

 

 

 

Those of you who are vigilent will have noticed that the shutes for the hoppers have already been added. These were fashioned from 40 thou plastic card and the lower edges trimmed with angle. This angle is particularly prominent on photos and was made from 2mm I beam. The I beam was cut down the centre, the ex centre section then trimmed to the same length as one of the I beam uprights and then one of the uprights was cut off:

 

 

Close ups of the end and centre shutes are below:

 

 

 

 

Yesterday I succeeded in giving myself a headache, probably from PlasticWeld fumes, whilst I made up two of the bodies. Also made from 40 thou plastic card they are not the easiest things to make. The top sections are simple enough but the angled hopper sides are a pig.I vowed to give myself a weekend off after making two out of the five.

 

This morning, though, my order of plastic strip from Eileen's came through the door (ordered 23.00 Thursday night - arrived 09.00 Saturday, great service). So I have made up the end supports for one wagon and this is shown below compared to a Parkside HTV and on its own:

 

 

 

 

So still a long way to go but at least I'm getting somewhere. It would be great to have a rake of thirty two of these but just making five is going to take a while. One day somebody may decide to make them either as a kit or r.t.r.

 

Any questions please ask. Otherwise I doubt I will add anymore to this thread until the wagons are painted and finished.

[Mark Saunders]

Looks fine to me as well..I've not tried scratchbuilding one of the 24.5t hoppers yet, though I have tried one of the very asymetrical underframes under a rebuilt 21t mineral of the 4-door sort, using a modified Chivers body. I have one of the K's kits- it must be close to 50 years old.

A lot of the vacuum-braked versions were used on stone traffic from Westbury in the early/mid 1970s, most notably to some of the terminals for M23/25 construction. Prior to that, when the first wagons were being ordered against specific traffic flows, three wagons had been ordered for stone traffic from Wells on behalf of Foster Yeoman.

 

If I remember correctly the K's kit is based on the two prototype hoppers (B333000 & 01) which did not have the two end doors which the production ones had!

 

Mark Saunders

 

[Flood]

That's an interesting view of the prototype photo on the K's kit. I've seen the castings from one a few years ago but didn't pay much attention as the two prototypes were so different from the rest.

 

The photo looks far more like 21T hoppers than the rest of the 24.5T batch.

[Flood]

I said above that I probably wouldn't add any more to the thread until I'd painted and finished the wagons but I will post some pictures once I have added all the side supports (along with the discharge handles and the brake levers).

 

In the meantime I have built six more Parkside 21T hoppers (with rebuilt bodies) and tested the whole rake on the club layout of Duffield last Tuesday and again last night.

 

Whilst it is not a particularly good photo of the 24.5 ton hoppers, below is my version of the photo of the train in post#5 (http://www.flickr.com/photos/pics-by-john/8378657325/). Taken with a phone camera the depth of field is poor but I am pretty pleased with the result. I don't think that having the two outer goods lines removed from the layout to make an even more accurate photo is an option that the club, and layout builders, would ever allow happen.