West End Workbench

[jwealleans]

Too cold here for modelling in the attic so I've retreated to the lounge, lit the fire and started contemplating a few projects. One of them I've already had a discussion with some people about. I need a brake van for the Continental freight we run on Thurston and fancied backdating the Dapol kit to an LNER build. As far as I can see I need to do the following:

 

Shorten footboards

Different handrails (small grab handles at the base of each verandah opening, three horizontal side handrails)

Different lamp irons

Roof layout different (almost reversed)

Solid verandah door (two panes in later builds)

No visible end weights

RCH type W irons instead of the plate ones.

Upright vac pipes.

 

Can anyone come up with anything I've missed? I thought I'd seen a thread here or on another forum where someone did this but I can't find it now I want it.

[Wizard of the Moor]

Single instead of double brake shoes.

Different cabin height (but not by much!)

No angle trussing (might have been added to the final vans built - I think that it corresponds with concrete weights)

Vac. cylinder and V-hangers (does the Dapol kit have these?)

 

Dave Bradwell's instructions for his BR brake van chassis kit are a good source of information on these kind of details.

[jwealleans]

That's very helpful, thank you. I don't suppose the Bradwell instructions are available for download?

[jwealleans]

Some very generous correspondents on another forum sent through a great deal of documentation on the Toad E for me to peruse. Before I could get onto that I had to rescue the Sentinel which I managed to drop from some height and dent quite badly. I was slightly pleased that it didn't fall apart, but I'd much rather not have found out that way how strong my soldering was. It still has a few dents and ripples but nothing like what it had suffered.... It's back to painted and lettered stage again now and I'll post up a pic when I've got it finished. No shots of the damage... I was too cross with myself.

 

Anyway, to matters Toad. I had a Dapol kit bought at Warley so it just remained to find the time to get to grips with it. Through the week I spent some time in front of the TV paring off handrails and roof detail in preparation for a proper start.

 

This is what you get in the kit:

 

 

Not shown are the couplings (throw them away) the wheels (use those - they're a great deal better than they used to be) and the transfers (see under couplings) The sharp eyed will also note the absence of one outer end. The plastic is very soft and I broke it at the top while shaving the lamp irons off. The plastic is also very hard to photograph with any contrast or detail visible so I have had to tweak the following as best I could.

 

One thing I noticed which Geoff Kent also pointed out are the marks left by the mould ejector pins in the ends. These are on the inside of the verandah but still visible so I thought I'd make at least a token effort to do something about them.

 

 

These are paper (from the instructions sheet, in fact, punched out with an ordinary hole punch and glued in place with plastic weld. They're just about spot on for size and thickness (is 80 gsm paper about 7 thou?); I'll know better how they look when primed but it's better than it was before. Once they've thoroughly dried you can scribe the plank lines back into them.

 

While they were drying I took the time to get the roof ready; details shaved off and then new vents and chimney applied as per several photos and diagrams I now have to hand. I'm going to do a very early build vehicle and they had very high set round roof vents as here (I suspect they're D & S, from the spares box). Rainstrips varied in length but are nearly all straight on the photos I have.

 

 

Surgery was then required on the chassis; I wasn't going to build this rigid and so some of the underpinnings have to come off to allow the suspension units to fit. Here I've shortened the chassis component and also removed the concrete weight from the ends of the floor piece. That's one of the major visible differences between these vans.

 

 

The van doors were also solid on the LNER vehicles, at least the early series. Helpfully this is a separate piece in the kit, so I just made up a new one out of Evergreen planked sheet with a packing piece of 20 thou behind it. I resisted the temptation to model one open as then I'd have to get into interiors which is not somewhere I want to go in 4mm.

 

 

Here I've added hinges and a representative catch. The photo in Tatlow also hows a grab handle on the door which seems to have been abandoned very early on.

 

 

By now I was starting to get the shell assembled; here measuring up for the suspension units which are our own Mike Trice's finest. I left the W irons on the solebar I stuck in place t give me something to line the wheelsets up to.

 

 

This is one of the downsides of the kit - the plastic is soft, it bends and stays bent. Fortunately it can be bent back, as long as you have some means of keeping it there.

 

 

Having left the straight solebar to dry I attached the bent one to the body and used the buffer beams to bring it to the right shape. I did clamp it against a straightedge for a while to encourage it to remain straight.

 

 

The double brake shoes are one of the very distinctive features of the BR van. We shan't be having those, so I made up one of the Mainly Trains sets and attached to the brass suspension units.

 

 

Finally the all important test against the buffer height jig showing that we're about right. I've put a piece of 10 thou plastikard over the ends and chamfered the edges down slightly to make it look more like the prototype steel plate. This is an area where I've weakened the kit and the MJT units are part of the structure here as well. By it's nature, though, it won't be pulling anything, just rattling round at the end of a string of ferry vans so I'm not unduly concerned.

 

 

This is where we've reached. I've attached the fixed axle and will allow that to set before using it as the datum point to attach the rocking one. Having very carefully preserved the springs in place while removing the W irons I then found I had to thin the solebars quite a bit to get the MJT units in and so removed them to attach to the new W irons instead. Ideally the rocking ones will rock inside the J hangers although the stepboards will make most of them very hard to see.

 

I hope to move this on a bit further this week before I start my Christmas hols.

Edited September 12, 2018 by jwealleans

[jwealleans]

A small amount of progress last night as I shortened the footboards and added them along with the body retaining brackets along each side. I've also attached the inner ends but the roof is just sitting in place. There are a couple of footboard brackets to replace where the BR ones don't match to the LNER and then those holes in the solebars to fill in.

 

 

A couple of small niggles are now becoming apparent: one end has pulled up slightly, presumably an effect of the drying mekpak on the plastic. If I were doing another I might look at ditching the solebars and using Evergreen I beams for added rigidity. The camera has made it appear like that at both ends, which is not the case. The footboards also restrict the movement of the rocking W iron. Bill B's sprung ones are a good alternative in that situation.

Edited September 12, 2018 by jwealleans

[mikemeg]

I hope you won't mind me posting this but I too did a batch of these Dapol brake vans, a couple of years ago, converting them to the LNER versions of this van, including one which was not vacuum fitted and was produced for the Cheshire Lines Committee.

 

As well as the list of changes shown above, I made new solebars with full rivet and works plate detail - the original ones simply wouldn't stay straight and had no detail.

 

A new roof (.020" plasticard rolled around a wine bottle filled with very hot water) with new rainstrips (strips of .010" plasticard cut with a scalpel) and chimney. The roof supplied is far too thick and can't easily be thinned, hence the new one.

 

New ends to the cabin, which were flush glazed, though I retained the original ends to the veranda.

 

New handrails (0.3 mm wire) and new steps under the solebars

 

Also much new on the underframe. Anyway this is one of five I did; three with the concrete platforms and two with the iron platform. Peter Tatlows book on LNER Wagons gives quite extensive details of the various forms of the LNER long wsheelbase guards van.

 

Oh and I glazed the duckets, too; makes a hell of a difference! And the grey colour on the platforms and veranda floor, that's just my version of soot and muck - it's actually a layer of dust!

 

Cheers

 

Mike

[jwealleans]

Cheers for that, Mike; it's always nice to see how other people have tackled the same job. I may well change the roof yet; part of the idea was to see how much of the original kit I could retain but it does rather offend my eye. What did you use for the steps? I toyed with the idea of new ones from brass angle but went with the originals in the end.

 

A point I hadn't thought of thus far - were the sheet steel end platforms painted black or red oxide? I'll have to check my sources.

[mikemeg]

Cheers for that, Mike; it's always nice to see how other people have tackled the same job. I may well change the roof yet; part of the idea was to see how much of the original kit I could retain but it does rather offend my eye. What did you use for the steps? I toyed with the idea of new ones from brass angle but went with the originals in the end.

 

A point I hadn't thought of thus far - were the sheet steel end platforms painted black or red oxide? I'll have to check my sources.

 

Yeah, I too looked at what could be used/what needed replacing. This is an old kit - good for its age - but many of the mouldings are just overscale so were discarded.

 

The steps were cut from .015" plasticard, with the reinforcing portion a piece of .020" x .020" plasticard, glued to the back of the stepboard. The supports and fixings for the stepboards are .030" x .010" microstrip.

 

I believe that the end platforms, both concrete and sheet steel, were painted in the body colour - red oxide, or grey on the unfitted vans - but I can't find a photograph with a viewing angle to confirm or deny that. The veranda floor I painted natural wood on the basis that the guard would wear away any paint.

 

What is visible from photographs is a line of rivets around three sides of the steel plate platform - covering the buffer beam and sides but not the join to the veranda end.

 

Photo below shows a van (from that initial batch of five) similar to the one you are doing; this one well worn and weathered. The lamp fixed to the top of the body has been modified by fitting lens into the lamps.

 

Just a point on rainstrips. These were always curved, otherwise they would have accumulated water along their length, rather than deflecting it.

 

Cheers

 

Mike

[jwealleans]

Thanks for that, Mike. Body colour is probably what I'd have gone for. Interesting what you say about rivets... I have a drawing showing them on the end platform following the lines of the underframe members, but not round the edges. It makes sense, though, given that this is just a steel sheet.

 

I can see the steps better on the second photo, the first one looks as if you've used the original steps. If I built mine like you have they wouldn't survive the handling of a show, so any replacement would have to be brass.

 

"Rainstrips were always curved".. that's a bit of a red rag statement, especially on here. In fact you aren't the first person to query that. I don't have my Tatlow in easy reach, but that's what I went from.

What I did have to hand was Larkin, Pre Nationalisation Freight wagons on BR: page 82, upper, E246665 of the very type we're discussing. Those rainstrips are definitely straight and look to me as if they're parallel with the roof edge. I hear what you're saying and I can see why they'd be either curved or angled, but here is my evidence.

 

(If you're going to prove me wrong, please do so before I make a new roof and stick them in the same places...)

[mikemeg]

Looking at the pictures of LNER Toad D long wheelbase vans - the Toad E's were 10' 6" wheelbase vans (Tatlow Pages 166 & 7) - I agree, the rainstrips do look straight and parallel to the edge of the roof. I think, however, part of that may be the angle from which these vans were photographed and I have worked on the assumption that these strips were quite gently curved. Sods law, the drawing on Page 168 of the Tatlow book doesn't show them, though the drawing of the Toads B & E (page 166) does. So I'll certainly not set out to prove you wrong or me right.

 

And yes, the lines of rivets do follow the underframe members.

 

Cheers

 

Mike

[jwealleans]

Not much obvious progress last night, mainly brake gear and other stuff which will be painted black and mainly invisible. I have added the buffers which were nice clean mouldings and certainly no worse than the whitemetal alternatives. I had a bit of help with the roof; I replaced the roofs on those German ferry vans I built last year as they'd sagged. There was one in the bits box which was damaged, but enough intact to cut down for this purpose. The detail transplanted over easily enough.

 

 

This is the other ongoing project at the moment; I was given this half built recently and have just started to try to finish it off. So far I've added my usual method of securing body to floor, also secured clerestory to the brass roof Peter had made up and started to detail one bogie thanks to the instructions so kindly provided. Since the photo I've also added the hinges and drilled pilot holes for all the lamps and vents.

 

Edited September 22, 2018 by jwealleans

[mikemeg]

Using the plastic solebars, as supplied in the kit, one thing you can do is to use some 3 mm x .015" brass strip (this used to be available from Mainly Trains) and superglue it to the back of the solebar, making sure that the strip is glued over its entire length. This will stop any bending or twisting of the solebar, at least in the vertical plane.

 

Yes, I know, bit late for the one you're doing, but you might do another one.

 

On the ones I did, I retained the plastic solebars, because I wanted the springs and spring hangars, which were attached, however I filed the back and front of the solebar flat (the '[' section of the solebar is way overscale anyway) then glued a length of 3mm brass strip all the way along the solebar, after which I added .020" x 1.5 mm pieces along each edge of the solebar to give the '[' section. I now had a solebar which was 4 mm deep, which matches the drawing. The top and bottom of the '[' section were dressed back to around .010" depth leaving a 3.5 mm channel.

 

A 3.5 mm x .010" plasticard strip was then detailed with rivet and various other details and then glued into the '[' channel over the brass strip using slow setting cyano. I did all ten solebars together and the whole process took a couple of evenings to produce the ten solebars for the five models.

 

These were done around two and a half years ago and have stayed absolutely straight.

 

Getting the solebars right, on these LNER Toad D's, is half the battle to capturing the essential character of these vehicles. Another thing is the stepped chimney, where the chimney pipe goes into a casting which then fits into a square plate with the corners rounded. And don't forget that on the LNER vans the lamp irons were fitted to the lower section of the veranda, again all helps to capture that character.

 

As to the rainstrips on these vans - were they straight or curved - all I can add is that the LNER General Arrangement Drawing does give an indication of this. It also shows the extent of that curvature (or straightness)!

 

Cheers

 

Mike

[jwealleans]

Lamp irons and handrails will be tackled in the new year now. I have been using the picture of 182922 in Tatlow as my guide wherever possible. What drawing did you use, Mike? I was casting around for where I got the round plate for the chimney base idea from last night and the only hint I have is the Skinley drawing (yes, I know, but someone was good enough to send me it and it is the only one to explicitly show it). Do you have dimensions for it?

 

Are those the Dapol lamp mouldings with lenses inserted, BTW?

[mikemeg]

Lamp irons and handrails will be tackled in the new year now. I have been using the picture of 182922 in Tatlow as my guide wherever possible. What drawing did you use, Mike? I was casting around for where I got the round plate for the chimney base idea from last night and the only hint I have is the Skinley drawing (yes, I know, but someone was good enough to send me it and it is the only one to explicitly show it). Do you have dimensions for it?

 

Are those the Dapol lamp mouldings with lenses inserted, BTW?

 

I managed to get hold of a copy of an LNER GA Drawing, to supplement the Tatlow information; there were too many queries to use the drawing in the Tatlow book as the sole source.

 

The chimney plate is 1' 3" (5 mm) square, bolted at each corner to the roof. The chimney has an o/diameter of 4.5 " with the stepped portion having a diameter of 6". I assume that this was to keep the hot flue pipe away from the roof timbers; there would have been a circular hole in these roof timbers of a larger diameter than the flue pipe, I imagine. And there is a small handrail adjacent to the mounting plate and parallel to the van ends, towards the centre of the van, which was around 9 " (3 mm) long.

 

Yes I used the Dapol lamp mouldings. First I squared them up on very fine emery, then removed the flash from the top projection. Then drilled them right though with a 1 mm drill and inserted sections of 1 mm aluminium tube into which are fitted pieces of clear polystyrene rod. The ends of this rod are then lightly 'polished' to give the impression of glass. Again, I did all ten lamps in one go and each took around ten minutes, from memory. It's one of those tiny details which benefits the model out of all proportion to its size.

 

Cheers

 

Mike

[Pennine MC]

Looking good as always Jonathan. If I hadnt been late to the party, I'd also have suggested replacing the roof - it makes sense, as the detail on the kit one is wrong anyway

 

As regards rainstrips, some (in BR days at least, and possibly on BR built vans) most definitely were straight and parallel to the roof edge as you've fitted, although it wasnt the most common pattern; this is one of those things that many years ago I took fa -arr too much of an interest in and mentally logged any variation I came across in photo albums.

 

I take Mike's point about their possible effectiveness, but would cite the later BR standard vans in this connection, which had a straight 3-part strip with slight gaps. I would say that the most common pattern - and possibly your safest option, unless you understandably dont want to disturb things again - is a slightly longer (but still straight) strip which runs inwards from the corner at maybe 25 - 30 degrees, or the slightly arced pattern as on Mike's van

 

I've no idea what the LNER GA shows (would this have been binding on the works anyway?) but I think every drawing I've ever seen shows the very sharply curved strips like those on the kit mouldings - I've never seen any photographic evidence of this and I feel it must be very unlikely as it just wouldnt be possible to get the batten into that shape without specialised forming processes, which I wouldnt have thought would be worthwhile

[mikemeg]

Jonathan,

 

I've taken enough space on this, your thread, so please allow me to offer you encouragement on your models and on the LNER Toad D, which is looking very good.

 

If there is any more information which I may have accumulated in the process of building mine, then just ask, either on this thread or by PM.

 

Keep up the excellent work. Now I'm back to building my signals and locos.

 

Cheers

 

Mike

[jwealleans]

Hello Ian. I knew if I said 'brake van' often enough, you'd be drawn in... This is turning into a very useful discussion indeed. Looking very hard at the photos in Tatlow I can see what Mike means about the rainstrips being slightly curved, but I have more chance of getting them regular if they're in a straight line. I can see the chimney coming off in January, though; a square plate will be easier to make and I can turn up a new chimney easily enough.

 

I've decided that the turnup effect on the ends is actually only at one corner, so I may try to find a way to brace that and try to bend it back into shape over Christmas. There'll be no more work on this now until January.

[mikemeg]

Looking very hard at the photos in Tatlow I can see what Mike means about the rainstrips being slightly curved, but I have more chance of getting them regular if they're in a straight line.

 

 

Jonathan,

 

Make a simple jig, preferably from cardboard or any material not affected by poly solvent. This jig is cut to the curved profile that you want the rainstrips to adopt. Make the length of this jig 2 mm less, at each end, than the length of the rainstrips. Fix the jig to the roof, temporarily, with blu-tack, double sided sticky tape or whatever, where the rainstrip is to go.

 

When I made my jig I also made it of the correct depth so that it not only provided the curve profile but, by lining the jig up against the edge of the roof, it also positioned the rainstrip with reference to the edges of the roof to ensure positional consistency.

 

Take your rainstrip, cut to the appropriate length (and with this curvature the length of the arc is approximately equal to the straight line distance) and glue the ends to the roof outside of the jig but with the strip curved around the jig, so avoiding gluing the rainstrip to the jig or the jig to the roof - this is why the jig is slightly shorter than the rainstrip.

 

Leave this to set, whereupon the jig can be removed and the remaining portion of the rainstrip glued to the roof and you have evenly curved and consistently curved rainstrips.

 

Cheers

 

Mike

[mikemeg]

One final little 'wrinkle', this one for rolling van roofs. I normally roll these around a wine bottle, which I then fill with near boiling water and leave for around ten minutes. The roof then assumes the curve of the bottle and will retain it.

 

However, it is the bracing of the roof around the bottle which is the trick, especially spreading the forces along the edges using strips of .060" plasticard. On van roofs I also place another .060" strip in the centre of the roof and, as with the edge strips, the full length of the roof. This to prevent the rubber bands, which are under quite some tension, from digging into and distorting the softened plasticard.

 

Otherwise the roof may not roll evenly and may not retain its shape.

 

The photo shows the trick of spreading the forces, though this was for a curved wall and was rolled around a wooden former; nonetheless exactly the same process. The whole lot was then dunked in boiling water and held down - wood floats - for five minutes. Again all roofs so rolled have retained their shape over three or more years.

 

Cheers

 

Mike

[jwealleans]

I've taken enough space on this, your thread

 

Not at all, Mike, it's certainly not a monologue and if I didn't want comment I wouldn't post on here. You've brought new information and sensible suggestions and ultimately I'll end up with a better model. Feel free to carry on.

 

I roll roofs in a similar way to you but my method for avoiding that crinkle cut edge look has been to swaddle in masking tape. I'll have to give that a go. I use lolly sticks to stick roofs on; I expect that would work in the same way.

[mikemeg]

Not at all, Mike, it's certainly not a monologue and if I didn't want comment I wouldn't post on here. You've brought new information and sensible suggestions and ultimately I'll end up with a better model. Feel free to carry on.

 

I roll roofs in a similar way to you but my method for avoiding that crinkle cut edge look has been to swaddle in masking tape. I'll have to give that a go. I use lolly sticks to stick roofs on; I expect that would work in the same way.

 

Yeah, I too used masking tape for the same purpose, at first. But it does leave a residue of the m/tape adhesive on the plastic and, if rolling anything from .015" or .010" plasticard, then this can tear or deform when the masking tape is removed. What I wanted was a method which didn't impact the rolled component and where there was no residue left on the rolled component.

 

This way seems to achieve that and everything used to brace the thing, while the rolling is being done, is reuseable (Yorkshire see; owt fer nowt - or at least very little. Only a comment on this one Yorkshireman, not a generalisation!)

 

Cheers and have a very good Christmas.

 

Mike

[mikemeg]

I did find another photo of one of these vans during the build process. This one was finished in BR bauxite, with BR markings. At this stage, the van body is largely complete though the roof still has to be detailed and fitted. This van has the end doors with windows, where others had a plain door. This one also has the angle iron stiffeners under the solebars and a slightly different arrangement of lamp irons.

 

This photo also shows the home made brake yokes, between the brakes and also the various drillings for the handrails, all of which were done before assembly. The modifications to the solebars also show up reasonably well in this picture.

 

This is not the final paint finish but just the first very diluted coat of the final colour. Often, if I am going to seriously weather a van, I paint the whole thing in a greyed natural wood colour prior to applying the final colour. Part of the weathering process is then rubbing through the top colour back to this wood colour, simulating areas where the paint has simply fallen or worn away.

 

Also worth noting that the roof has been rolled to a tighter radius than actually needed. It's easier to stick them if the radius is too tight than if it is undersized and once glued to the final radius, using the ends as the guide, the roof will retain that radius.

 

Cheers

 

Mike

[jwealleans]

A happy Christmas to all our readers and here's to a productive New Year.

[micklner]

ditto +++++++++ have a good un

[jwealleans]

Well, hurrah. Christmas holidays over and back to work. At least I did get some time on the WB yesterday and I wasn't totally idle while away.

 

To continue on the Toad theme I took on board what Mike said above and scrapped the old chimney. Looking again at the Skinley drawing I suspect what he was showing was the position of the stove. New square plate was no problem and I've turned up a replacement chimney from some 2mm Evergreen rod and stuck it on. Not the best picture but it looks more like Mike's above.

 

 

While on holiday in France it seemed appropriate to start work on my next ferry van project, which was always intended to be a French Fasu van, which is the type preserved in the NRM. Studying pictures from the HMRS it became apparent that there were in fact two types of French ferry van seen in the UK, the other much shorter. The second one turned out to be very similar, if not identical, to this preserved one I photographed at Langeais, very close to the inlaws, in 2009:

 

 

and the barely started model

 

 

The vent grilles on the FASU took ages to do but I'm quite pleased with how they turned out once I'd developed a technique to space them consistently.

 

 

Inbetween vent grilles (well you need something to stop you cracking up) I also had a go at these, the new (ish) open from Cambrian. I haven't seen anyone else on here build any yet (apologies if I've missed a thread from someone) but they're the sort of thing pretty much every LNER layout ought to have. They went together pretty well - more care needed than a Parkside and one or two corners to tidy up. I gather they were to/based on a GNR diagram so there may be scope for another variant when I have time to read it up.

 

 

Last job was this BR Lowfit. The kids liked my tractor on a Lowfit for Thurston so much they each gave me another tractor for Christmas, so I'm looking round for a third Lowfit to make the set. This is a Red Panda kit; I hadn't made one before the first Lowfit I built but they're pretty good.

 

Edited September 12, 2018 by jwealleans