More Pre-Grouping Wagons in 4mm - the D299 appreciation thread.

[SRman]

'''

 

 

Sorry, yes it is the verandah end windows I was asking about. I think I'll glaze them - if it subsequently turns out that they shouldn't be, it should be possible to knock the glazing out. The inside of the verandah is a bit sparse too - it hasn't got a floor!

 

...

  

I had a similar dilemma with my LCDR brake van, and still have not found any photos that show whether the end windows or side openings were glazed or not. I glazed them with the same philosophy as you; if they subsequently prove to have been unglazed, I can always push the glazing out, that being much easier than trying to add glazing retrospectively.

[Penlan]

I am so glad I replied to this tread because today I have learnt so much more about these Dia16 brake vans. I have been a member of the L.N.W.R. society for 19 years and in all that time I haven't seen any models of ballast brake vans or any drawings or anything to do with them.

I refer you to Jol's comments in post # 582   

'Thanks for the reminder of Richard's book* (published by the LNWR Society). Perhaps I should have read it more carefully, as I was one of the contributors. Its publication created some discord within the Society Committee, several of whom had difficulty in recognizing that the modelling community were a major consumer of its books and did a lot to "promote" the LNWR.'

* 'Forty Years of the London North Western Railway Society'.

This may also be a partial reflection on why I'm no longer a member of the Society, although there have been, and are, some great modellers within their ranks.

Edited October 10, 2017 by Penlan

[Compound2632]

Dear members and ex-members of the LNWR Society,

 

Many thanks to all of you who have contributed to this thread and so helped me, a mere Midland enthusiast, build better models of LNWR wagons. The LNWR Society's website and publications have also been invaluable - as will LNWR Wagons Vol. 3 in due course I'm sure. In fact, as far as wagons go, one could say that the LNWR modeller is now better served than the Midland modeller - perhaps we now suffer from being first in the field, with Bob Essery's pioneering work.

 

May I make one suggestion, or perhaps request, that you refrain from further washing of your dirty linen in public, or at least, in this thread?

 

With gratitude,

 

Compound2632

[Penlan]

Dear members and ex-members of the LNWR Society,

May I make one suggestion, or perhaps request, that you refrain from further washing of your dirty linen in public, or at least, in this thread?

Point taken.

[Buhar]

Whilst we're working round the ordinal points of the compass, I've been looking at the available kits for GSWR wagons that will pass for c. 1903, working south via the Settle & Carlisle. 51L's 10 ton open wagon (Diagram 15) seems to be the sole candidate. When did the GSWR adopt large lettering and, if later than c. 1895, what went before?

 

 

I raised this query within the G&SWR Association (www.gswra.org).

 

ian@stenochs wrote:-  

As far as I know the large G&SW lettering was in widespread use from 1900 but may have been introduced a bit earlier although I have no evidence to a date. Prior to the large lettering ownership was on a cast iron number plate along with the wagon number. After the painted lettering on the wagon sides appeared the cast number/company continued to be fitted and continued in use right up to the takeover by the LMS.

Some covered vans had the number also painted on the end quite high up. Brake vans too had their numbers right up on the end eaves panel of the veranda. I don’t think the number was on wagon ends, at least I have never seen a photo of one so adorned.

 

​Stuart Rankin commented:- 

 

 

 

1895 seems plausible date for new wagons being built. James Manson had by that time built new passenger and goods locos and coaching so it was turn of goods stock. Absence of dated records and dates on photos is a problem in this field.  Before 1895 if that is the date they seemed shy of insignia.

 

 

 

Hope this helps. 

 

Were you aware that Stirling 0-4-2s worked through to Birmingham from Kilmarnock around the turn of the century, usually returning those much sought-after D299s.  

[Compound2632]

Were you aware that Stirling 0-4-2s worked through to Birmingham from Kilmarnock around the turn of the century, usually returning those much sought-after D299s.

 

Get thee behind me, Ayrshireman!

[Penlan]

As an aside, and off topic, I've posted an item on the Pre-grouping bit in Specialist subjects re. the fact LNWR Staff uniforms were GREEN. 

[Compound2632]

On 11/10/2017 at 13:08, Penlan said:

As an aside, and off topic, I've posted an item on the Pre-grouping bit in Specialist subjects re. the fact LNWR Staff uniforms were GREEN. 

 

Not at all off-topic but quite timely, as I was thinking of putting a guard in the verandah of my D16 brake van, to disguise the lack of other internal detail especially floor.

 

A fellow club member, knowing my interest in pre-grouping wagons, very kindly passed on to me a couple of timber wagons, which he thought must be Midland:

 

 

They are rather nice models of long timber trucks to D389. They are whitemetal – nice and heavy, which is good – I’m wondering where to put the weight in my LNWR timber trucks! The detail on the bolster is particularly fine and the D-shackles have been done very neatly. I don’t believe they are current kits – they’re not in David Geen’s list nor could I find them on Wizard Models’ new-and-harder-to-navigate website, neither do they feature in an old D&S list from 2005, so I think they certainly date from the century in which the prototypes were built.

 

With oil axleboxes and both-side brakes, they represent trucks from the later lots – 150 trucks built to Drg. 2970 in 1908 or the further 600 trucks to Drg. 3383 in 1911-1915. So they are, unfortunately, too modern for my c. 1903 period. However, I plan to repaint them to late Midland livery for my 1922 collection.

 

I’d been thinking for a while of building some Midland timber trucks – my LNWR ones are by way of a practice. For c. 1903 I can only have dumb buffered ones – long timber trucks to Drg. 559 and D388 short timber trucks (with 7’0” wheelbase) to Drg. 366. Timber trucks weren’t numerous – only 2,604 by 1902, of which nearly three-quarters were the short variety. Only two batches of the long trucks were build, 200 in 1877, with the early 8A axleboxes, and then nearly a quarter of a century later, another 540 to the same drawing but almost certainly with Ellis 10A axleboxes. As far as I can tell, this later batch were still dumb buffered, being to the same drawing. The building of dumb buffered goods and mineral wagons was, I think, outlawed by 1887 but timber trucks seem to have been exempt. On my reading of LNWR Wagons Vol. 1, all the LNWR’s D12 timber wagons (note the difference in terminology) were dumb buffered until work on converting them to sprung buffers started in 1913 – some having been built as late as 1911 – but the D13 twin timber wagons were being built with sprung buffers by 1899. Although the LNWR wagon fleet was around half the size of the Midland’s, the two companies had similar numbers of timber trucks or wagons – but this simply reflects the very large number of D299 open wagons on the Midland, many of which were being used for coal traffic. One could argue that the two companies’ fleets of merchandise wagons were of similar size. Still, with timber trucks making up only 2% of the Midland wagon fleet, one needs to be careful not to have too many. On the other hand, the nature of the traffic they carried meant that they could be seen in quite large multiples. I was looking at a photo earlier today, in Russ Garner’s S&DJR Locomotive and Stock Registers, of a rake of at least thirteen timber trucks at Highbridge, loaded with rails. That’s about a third of the S&DJR’s total stock of such wagons. The S&DJR trucks are very similar to the Midland ones, and come in similar variety, but Highbridge seems to have had its own ideas on some details of construction – longer brake levers, for instance.

 

Edited September 2, 2022 by Compound2632
image re-inserted

[Rail-Online]

I think those kits are from the Cotswold range - they did a small number of whitemetal MR wagon kits right at he end that companies existance -about 1985?

 

Tony

[Mrkirtley800]

I had another stay in hospital -- yes another one, back in 1980.  It was for a gall bladder operation, and was a real hammer and chisel job.  None of your keyhole stuff then.  Anyway my stay was a few weeks and during that time I lost a couple of stones in weight.  When I got home, it was for a long recuperation, before I was allowed to go back to my job.

So, I filled in my time building wagons out of plastikard in the warm lounge..  A few of them were Midland bolsters, with dumb buffers. 

I also had to regain some weight, so it was coffee and Danish Pastries every morning, but that is another story.

Here are a couple of pics showing some of the bolsters, together with two bogie wagons.  Sorry about being a bit out of focus.  The two small bolsters had a scale wheelbase of only 6'6" so were a bit unstable when running in a train

Derek.

Edited October 13, 2017 by Mrkirtley800

[Compound2632]

D299 spotting: Gedney, M&GN, 1909, with thanks to Edwardian.

[Compound2632]

At last after ten months I’ve pretty much completed the LNW D16 brake van. The glazing looks convincing to me from the outside but not so good on the inside of the verandah end, as the photo shows:

 

 

I have read of the use of such materials as Kristal Kleer for windows but never tried this; perhaps improved glazing will be a future upgrade, along with a green-coated goods guard. (I’m using Microscale’s Micro Set and Micro Sol so it’s not that the material is hard to get hold of.) The livery follows the example on the LNWR Society website, copying the tare weight of just a touch over 10½ tons and using the allocation ‘Walsall’ from the HMRS transfer sheet. The number, 1328, is the only 4-digit number on the Ratio transfer sheet and is conveniently in the right range (below about 1600) – LNW goods brakes were numbered in a separate series from other goods stock (as was the custom on the Midland and I expect other railways ). I’ve not attempted to add the suffix ‘B’ to the number – it’s less than an inch high!

 

I’ve finished off a number of other wagons, including the D64 loco coal wagon with toggle brake and D53 8 ton coal wagon with curved brake lever built from an example old Ratio kit 753 bought on Ebay earlier this year – a kit that had sat in its box waiting to be built for about 35 years! Rummaging through my box of wagons from my early 90s P4 dabbling, I found a couple of painted but undecorated wagons from Ratio kit 576. They also lacked brakes, so for the D54 10 ton coal wagon I repeated the curved brake lever – this seems to have been the default design for both D53 and D54 wagons, so I might revisit some earlier models! The 4-plank open has been finished as a D4 with push-rod brake:

 

 

It’s curious that the D54 and D4 wagon, painted a quarter of a century ago, are the same shade of grey as the recent wagons. I can’t recall what paint I was using then; I don’t think my tin of Precision NBR goods wagon grey is that old; it’s P679 and in a Humbrol-shaped tin. My genuinely ancient Precision tins have a B prefix and are taller and a bit narrower.

 

The solebar number plates are from the Ratio transfer sheet but I put a bit more thought into the numbers on the wagon ends. I’ve used numbers which can mostly be made from sequences of two, three, or four digits on the Ratio transfer sheet. The D4 is 49448, a number listed on the LNWR Society website (and in LNWR Wagons Vol. 1); I’ve given it the correct tare weight, just one hundredweight over 5 tons. The loco coal wagon is 16883, within one of a known number. The D54 wagon is 58142, a number in the correct range but also only one digit different from that on its solebar number-plate, whilst the D53 is 51033, the number of a wagon known to have been loaded to Chester Road station in the 1890s, so spot on for my area of interest!

 

A quick tally shows that I’ve built 19 LNW wagons since starting this workbench thread, to eleven different diagrams. Of these, one is the LRM D16 brake van, four are Mousa, and the remainder from Ratio kits, though seven of these include greater or lesser modifications. I’ve got another 13 in various states of build, from the D13 twin timber wagon work-in-progress to some from my P4 box that just need re-wheeling. What’s really worrying is that I have far too many D54 10 ton coal wagons for my c. 1903 period, relative to the D53 8 ton version, an imbalance that can only be corrected by bashing further Ratio kits…

 

… so time for some Midland wagon therapy. First up, a pair of D342 coke wagons:

 

 

The grey is Precision P38 LMS freight wagon grey, which looks right to me for recently (re)painted wagons. The transfers are Slaters Methfix, not Presfix as used to come with the kits but at one time (90s?) supplied separately. These were applied to a gloss varnished surface (I do all my transfers that way now with good results). Patience and Micro Set were needed! These wagons don’t have tare weights yet – the Methfix ones just float away, so I’ll come back to these when I break out some of the Presfix transfers. While on the Methfix theme, some progress on the tar wagon: the higgledy-piggledy lettering came off easily with Micro Sol and it turned out that the replacement transfers I’d got are in fact Presfix – but elderly so still giving trouble. We’ve got ‘- ON-‘ but I’m psyching myself up for another shot a ‘LINCOLNSHIRE TAR’ – I’m on my last chance. What went wrong? The letters were still wanting to float around so I soaked the carrier tissue and left it for a couple of hours – result: couldn’t get the tissue off!

 

Last but very far from least, a short rake of D299 open wagons:

 

 

One is from a Slaters kit, one Mousa with replacement MJT Ellis 10A axleboxes and springs, two Mousa as intended with the earlier 8A axleboxes. Which is which?

 

Painting and lettering is as for the coke wagons.  Here’s a close-up of a Mousa D299:

 

 

I did think the 3D-printed brake gear was a little too flimsy (i.e. dead scale!) so used spare sets from Slaters kits but the Mousa brake lever is exquisite – hopefully you can see daylight (and a bit of rust) through the lever ratchet.

 

For a prototypical balance of numbers, I should have as many D299s as LNW wagons of all types. I think I have 26, in various conditions – recently built, unbuilt, once-built, awaiting re-building…

 

None of these recently-completed wagons are really finished – they need weighting and loads – lots of coal, plenty of sheets.

 

 

 

Edited September 2, 2022 by Compound2632
Images re-inserted

[Mikkel]

A lovely selection of wagons Stephen, and good to see a loco too!

 

The Mousa D299 looks good. I wonder if a light pass with sanding paper might help make the rivets just a tad less prominent on future builds?

[Buhar]

One is from a Slaters kit, one Mousa with replacement MJT Ellis 10A axleboxes and springs, two Mousa as intended with the earlier 8A axleboxes. Which is which?

 

Ok, I'll play.  From the left:- Mousa, Mousa (both as per Bill), Slaters, then Mousa plus MJT.  The planking on what I think are the Mousa models barely seems to show.  I can't make out the axleboxes at all so in guessing on the 8A boxes I've gone by ride height which seems a twitch lower.  Within the tolerances of older springs I would imagine.

[Compound2632]

One is from a Slaters kit, one Mousa with replacement MJT Ellis 10A axleboxes and springs, two Mousa as intended with the earlier 8A axleboxes. Which is which?

 

Ok, I'll play.  From the left:- Mousa, Mousa (both as per Bill), Slaters, then Mousa plus MJT.  The planking on what I think are the Mousa models barely seems to show.  I can't make out the axleboxes at all so in guessing on the 8A boxes I've gone by ride height which seems a twitch lower.  Within the tolerances of older springs I would imagine.

 

Close - I've replaced the photo with a higher resolution one, click on it and axlebox detail should be clearer though I admit black on black isn't good! I like the prototype point about ride height - though the Mousa ones, being sprung, will sit lower once weighted.

Edited October 15, 2017 by Compound2632

[billbedford]

One trick for black paint is the let it down a little with a spot of cream or magnolia.

[Buhar]

That's clearer, 2nd from the left is the 8A MJT?

[Compound2632]

That's clearer, 2nd from the left is the 8A MJT?

 

That's the one - though you mean 10A - the sort with 'ears'.

 

A lovely selection of wagons Stephen, and good to see a loco too!

 

The Mousa D299 looks good. I wonder if a light pass with sanding paper might help make the rivets just a tad less prominent on future builds?

 

I didn't build the loco...

 

Yes, I began to feel that the Mousa bodies might benefit from a bit more preparation work after I'd painted them. I may try very light sanding of the planking. There's a marked difference in the definition of the planks - the Slaters kit probably over-emphasises the grooves (on the prototype, beveling of the top edge of each plank, on the outside only) whereas the Mousa possibly tends a little too far the other way. Taking a random example (top picture in this post), note how the grooves break up the M R lettering. Well, I've another nine Mousas to try! (I'm waiting for the HMRS transfer sheet for English pre-Grouping goods vehicle insignia (except LNWR) to become available in 4 mm scale again - end of this month I'm told to enquire again - as this has the LOCO COAL ONLY branding that will suit wagons with 8A axleboxes. Some interesting stuff on that sheet... I feel S&DJR D299 and D305 clones coming on... Does anybody know what a Maryport & Carlisle or SMJ wagon looks like?).

[Guy Rixon]

Concerning PVA solution for glazing the van windows: I think the windows may be too large for it to work very well. Some years ago, I used this technique to flush-glaze large windows in a 2mm-scale coach. The solution went in easily enough but dried with with a rough surface and an ugly meniscus. There's probably a maximum aperture where this stuff works properly. Probably best to test on a scrap piece before anointing the model.

[Edwardian]

Excellent stuff, Stephen, as ever.

 

Deluxe Glue N' Glaze for windows would be less of a risk than PVA

[Guy Rixon]

Apologies for lack of clarity: the PVA solution I was using was a name brand for glazing (can't remember which one and I threw out the bottle years back). Definitely not a wood glue product diluted by me.

[Edwardian]

Glue n Glaze should always dry clear, and can be used to glaze small apertures.

 

I recently used it to secure and fill gaps in acetate glazing on a brake van.  If I were aiming for flush glazing, I'd be tempted to experiment with gluing transparent sheet to the rear of the window (using Glue N Glaze), and then building up the required depth with more Glue N Glaze.  I have not tried this, so would not suggest trying it out on your completed model, but it ought to work!

[Mikkel]

D299 I presume: http://www.warwickshirerailways.com/lms/mrcgy922.htm (cakebox challenge, anyone?)

[Compound2632]

D299 I presume: http://www.warwickshirerailways.com/lms/mrcgy922.htm (cakebox challenge, anyone?)

 

Yes indeed but you can't get a much more central Midland location than Birmingham Central Goods! Stores Dept. Long Rail Wagon (31ft) to D334 behind. The LNWR wagon will be a D4 downgraded from 7 tons to 6 tons - this series of photos are 'late Midland', this one being dated to 22 September 1922, according to the Derby registers, so, being post-pooling, there's an amazing variety of wagons and vans. I do have 1922 as my 'second' period!

[Penlan]

D299 I presume: http://www.warwickshirerailways.com/lms/mrcgy922.htm (cakebox challenge, anyone?)

But the Stores wagon in the background caught my attention, because it looks to be the same as this one at Ebbw Vale, LNWR in 1914, and if so, it's way off it's beaten track.

Enquiries within the LNWR Society drew a blank in respect of it being a LNWR wagon.

Based on an earlier comment, I think in this topic, that all all LNWR wagons had split spoked wheels, it's not LNWR