Scotland Street

[John R Smith]

 

Did you brace the sides on yours? They seem a bit thin and flexible so a stout bracer seems a good idea.

 

David

 

I considered some cross-braces, but I think when the roof is glued on it stiffens the whole structure up OK - it depends on how much handling the van will be subjected to, I guess. I'm glad that you enjoyed Goonamarth - it was a fun layout to build.

 

John

[railwayrod]

Hello David.

 

On Slater's kits I too make up new brake guards from metal strip. They look better and are fairly easy to do.

 

I like your idea of using photographs on the backscene but you may need to hide the view so that when looking along the layout they do not appear to be flat. On Ramchester Howard drew out several building on a computer and scaled them down to the size we wanted. These were coloured and then printed off. You can add some perspective if you experiment a little so that it looks right and by placing bushes in front they can look very effective. Where a gap occurs between half relief buildings we used this method to generate a flat building slightly wider than the gap and stuck this to the backscene.. A suitable view blocker such as a tree hides the fact that the modelled structures have only a shallow depth and the tree helps to tie the scene together. I will leave you to judge the results of our efforts which are still on going.

 

Rod

[Simond]

David,

 

It will not hurt to drill a couple of goodly-sized holes in the floor of your van, to allow any glue fumes to escape from the otherwise closed box. Epoxy & casting resins should not be a problem, though contact glues & of course, solvent adhesives, most definitely can be.

 

If there's space, a couple of self tappers would secure your lead very permanently, which the double sided tape may not, good though it is.

 

Best

Simon

[Astir648]

Rod, could I ask where you source brass strip in such small sizes? I'd much rather fabricate the brake guards and brass seems the ideal material to me.

 

The backscene photos are definitely a work in progress - how successful remains to be seen! I noticed you'd used drawings on Ramchester and that's definitely an option for Scotland Street, but my art skills are pretty ropey and my artistically skilled OH is too busy with work to be roped in at present.

 

Simon - the ever present bleeding obvious - why didn't I think of self-tappers?! Happily, being a ventilated van there's an exisitng escape route for any adhesive vapours.

 

David

[Simond]

If the ventilators actually ventilate... (The Peco GW van ones are dummies!)

 

Best

Simon

[Astir648]

If the ventilators actually ventilate... (The Peco GW van ones are dummies!)

 

Best

Simon

 

Happily they do!

 

The wagon is finished now, aside from rainstrips on the roof and of course painting and transfers.

 

I made a few deviations from the instructions...

 

1. The vacuum pipes are made of springs, which I have always thought a clever way of representing them IF you want them hung up. If you want them to be dangling (and to be honest, they usually were) the stiffness of the spring makes them stick out at 45 degree angle, defying gravity. So I inserted a bent piece of brass wire into each, to force the spring to hang down.

 

 

2. I braced the side walls using a leftover sprue from the kit. Hopefully rough handling won't be a part of its life, but I figured it can't hurt to include a bracer in case.

 

 

3. On the other two vans I've built I've provided a realistic roof covering using talcum powder mixed with paint (I think that was recommended in the instructions of the Connoisseur guards van). This time I've adopted a suggestion from Iain Rice's book on plastic wagon kits and used a piece of tissue paper brushed with liquid poly, which seems to look ok.

 

 

All in all I'm really pleased with this kit - it went together well and easily and I do prefer small parts being brass castings and etchings, rather than plastic or whitemetal (which I'm not at all keen on).

 

 

Next task is to get on with the embankment. I've got a sleeper wall to build on it before adding loads of overgrown vegetation and shrubs. This is new territory for me, so could be challenging!

 

Onwards and upwards.

 

David

[railwayrod]

Hi David I have posted the promised photo of the frog mods on Peco points on Chronicles of Ramchester thread. Please do get in touch if I can be of further help.

 

rod

[3 link]

Hi David,

 

The van below is still work in progress, it is one of a rake of vans but I thought I would model this one in a state of repair.

 

 

 

Regards,

 

Martyn.

[81A Oldoak]

Hi David,

 

The van below is still work in progress, it is one of a rake of vans but I thought I would model this one in a state of repair.

 

image.jpeg

 

image.jpeg

 

Regards,

 

Martyn.

I did something similar a few years ago. I applied some Maskol to the area to be exposed and then painted the roof with a paint/talcum powder mix.

 

CK

[3 link]

Hi Chris,

 

That is exactly how I did this van by using Maskol, I first scribed out the roof to show the timbers and then indented some holes to represent the nail heads, and then a fine coat of Maskol followed by the airbrush.

 

Regards,

 

Martyn.

[hmrspaul]

Happily they do!

 

The wagon is finished now, aside from rainstrips on the roof and of course painting and transfers.

 

I made a few deviations from the instructions...

 

1. The vacuum pipes are made of springs, which I have always thought a clever way of representing them IF you want them hung up. If you want them to be dangling (and to be honest, they usually were) the stiffness of the spring makes them stick out at 45 degree angle, defying gravity. So I inserted a bent piece of brass wire into each, to force the spring to hang down.

 

Slaters wagon 5.jpg

 

2. I braced the side walls using a leftover sprue from the kit. Hopefully rough handling won't be a part of its life, but I figured it can't hurt to include a bracer in case.

 

Slaters wagon 8.jpg

 

3. On the other two vans I've built I've provided a realistic roof covering using talcum powder mixed with paint (I think that was recommended in the instructions of the Connoisseur guards van). This time I've adopted a suggestion from Iain Rice's book on plastic wagon kits and used a piece of tissue paper brushed with liquid poly, which seems to look ok.

 

Slaters wagon 6.jpg

Slaters wagon 7.jpg

 

All in all I'm really pleased with this kit - it went together well and easily and I do prefer small parts being brass castings and etchings, rather than plastic or whitemetal (which I'm not at all keen on).

 

Slaters wagon 9.jpg

David

Nice. Personally I haven't found it necessary to use liquid poly with plastic roofs. A very fine tissue paper will attach to the roof by simply spraying the paint on - especially a car spray type.  Sometimes some poly is needed just to attach to the edge of the roof and the turnunder.

 

Paul

[Astir648]

I did something similar a few years ago. I applied some Maskol to the area to be exposed and then painted the roof with a paint/talcum powder mix.

 

CK

 

Chris, Martyn they look excellent. I love the clearly visible planks in Martyn's wagon. I'd heard of using Maskol to create rust patches on open wagons, but this is a new one to me.

 

I might put a split in the roofing material (roofing felt? tarred canvas?) of mine as this would be easy to do by cutting with a scalpel then lifting the edges with the tip of the blade. I wonder if it tended to split in a particular direction?

 

David

[John R Smith]

Chris, Martyn they look excellent. I love the clearly visible planks in Martyn's wagon. I'd heard of using Maskol to create rust patches on open wagons, but this is a new one to me.

 

I might put a split in the roofing material (roofing felt? tarred canvas?) of mine as this would be easy to do by cutting with a scalpel then lifting the edges with the tip of the blade. I wonder if it tended to split in a particular direction?

 

David

 

I know you blokes are having a lot of fun, but I think that you seem to have a rather jaundiced view of BR in the 1960s and 1970s. We really didn't let totally decrepit or defective rolling stock out and about for long, especially vans which are supposed to keep things dry when in transit. One as bad as Martyn's would have been pulled out of the rake sharpish as a cripple and parked in the "graveyard" ready to be assessed by a CWE (carriage and wagon examiner). At the very least a wagon sheet (tarpaulin) would have been stretched over the roof before the van was used again.

 

John

Edited August 21, 2016 by John R Smith

[Simond]

That would be an interesting model, but you could only run it once per blue moon...

 

Best

Simon

[Astir648]

I know you blokes are having a lot of fun, but I think that you seem to have a rather jaundiced view of BR in the 1960s and 1970s. We really didn't let totally decrepit or defective rolling stock out and about for long, especially vans which are supposed to keep things dry when in transit. One as bad as Martyn's would have been pulled out of the rake sharpish as a cripple and parked in the "graveyard" ready to be assessed by a CWE (carriage and wagon examiner). At the very least a wagon sheet (tarpaulin) would have been stretched over the roof before the van was used again.

 

John

 

That's a really interesting point John. I have real difficulty remembering how rolling stock really looked in those days because if I'm honest I didn't pay it any attention. I was far more interested in what was hauling it. Oh how I wish I took more photos (and kept them).

 

David

[John R Smith]

What can help is if you think of the sort of traffic which was regularly loaded into vans - cartons of confectionary, bundles of magazines, paper sacks of animal feedstuffs, more paper sacks of fertilisers (no plastic sacks back then), cartons of tea and coffee, etc. All things which must not get wet. A great many wooden open wagons were regularly sheeted back then too, to keep their contents dry (just as flat-bed lorries of the day were often sheeted).

 

Mail of course must also stay dry, but usually travelled in the (passenger) guard's brake. A point not often realised (and never modelled I suppose) is that parcels bags were unloaded by BR platform staff but letter post was supposed to be only handled by the GPO (grey bags and blue bags were the visual difference in my platform days). How do I have such an intimate knowledge of all this? Because if you ventured outside the shunter's cabin at Newton Abbot you were likely to be immediately press-ganged by the down-side supervisor into unloading a string of vans or helping with the mail aboard a down express.

 

John

Edited August 22, 2016 by John R Smith

[Astir648]

I think this is the classic railway modelling problem - as we get further from the period we are modelling it gets harder to recall the detail of things we may only dimly remember, if at all. The risk then is that we start modelling models, i.e. if I've seen it on a layout it must be accurate.

 

I just watched a Youtube video filmed in 1960-62  In the middle is a long train of box vans with the guards van three wagons in from the end. Perhaps these last three were vacuum braked or perhaps it was a necessity, forced by some shunting move. Whatever the cause, the modeller who replicates it at an exhibition is probably in for some discussion about whether it's prototypical.

 

 

As we get further away from our prototype it's easy for anomolies such as vans with damaged roofs to become more widespread than they would ever have been, especially if they're interesting and quirky. Perhaps it's just as dangerous to be too closely wedded to a vision of what is correct. Somewhere in the middle would be just right, I reckon.

 

One thing I want to replicate in Scotland Street is some very faint memories of standing on the platform at the disused Dunfermline Upper station around 1979-ish, watching a Class 25 shunting the coal yard and goods shed there. The platform track was missing and the station had been closed to passengers for some time. Why a small coalyard was still rail served in 1979 I have no idea. Nor do I know what was in the occasional van that found it's way there, but these little pick up goods trains regularly went along the truncated line towards Dunfermline Upper and Oakley until at least 1985. I wish to hell I remembered more detail about them though!

 

David

Edited August 23, 2016 by Astir648

[Simond]

Did enjoy that video!

 

best

Simon

[John R Smith]

Great video, David, thanks for that. I think the vans coupled behind the brake van are, as you say, so they can be dropped off down the line without having to park the brake first. As long as there is a tail lamp on the last vehicle this is OK.

 

Lots of useful info in the video - notice how clean and tidy many of the wagons are, even 16T minerals. And those lovely Peppercorn pacifics and the A4 - just wonderful. Sadly, the thing which is so totally missing with our electric models is this drama of steam. See the exhaust on some of these locos going 100 feet up into the sky!

 

John

[3 link]

Not wishing to prove a point but at 10.23 on that video there is a cream coloured van with a torn roof, and apart from that, what a great video.

 

Martyn.

[Guest 40-something]

Not wishing to prove a point but at 10.23 on that video there is a cream coloured van with a torn roof, and apart from that, what a great video.

Martyn.

Maybe it was to let the smell of fish out

 

Fantastic video, thanks for posting

[railwayrod]

Cant remember where I got the brass strip from that I used for the brake hangers. I rummaged through my "bits" box and found it lying there. You could try Eileen's Emporium or other suppliers and I am sure you will find something suitable.

 

Rod

[Astir648]

Cant remember where I got the brass strip from that I used for the brake hangers. I rummaged through my "bits" box and found it lying there. You could try Eileen's Emporium or other suppliers and I am sure you will find something suitable.

 

Rod

 

Thanks Rod - I'll have a look.

David

[Astir648]

Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury...

 

I appear to have backed myself into a corner and seek any and all advice!

 

Scotland Street has a private siding for the bonded warehouse (and implied distillery, accessed via the fiddle yard). As such it ought to have a gate across it where it joins the BR metals. Not only do I want to model this I have a hankering to motorise it. BUT I'm struggling to squeeze it in. 

 

The siding is accessed via a headshunt and the logical place for the gates would be at the start of the siding, after the headshunt turnout. But that will conflict with one of the loading docks. I could fit it in, with the gate pivoting in front of the kiln building but the post at the other end will be too close to the rails.

 

 

So I seem to have several options, none of them ideal. I need to decide which option will (i) look right and (ii) be reasonably prototypical.

 

1. Put the gate across the headshunt instead. Not ideal as I don't think it would look right and it would also prevent me using the headshunt for BR shunting movements.

 

2. Put a gate across in front of the siding, but without a post at the end. I wonder if there are any prototypes of this - there might have been a real situation somewhere where space was tight and they were forced to come up with an alternative to the typical gate between two posts?

 

3. Model two half gates, with the nearer one collapsed (so as to keep it out of the way of passing rolling stock).

 

4. Don't bother.

 

To be fair, St Leonards didn't have gates on the bonded warehouse private siding but arguably that's because there wasn't a single entrance to it and no private owner locomotive in use. The layout has both and it seems to me that it doesn't quite look right without a gate.

 

Any thoughts?

 

David

[John R Smith]

David

 

Sadly, option 4 is really the only one. You simply don't have the space to put a believable gate in a believable place.

 

Leave the gate out, and nobody will notice. Put in a poorly conceived one, and everyone will point it out.

 

John