Nether Madder and Green Soudley Rly

[Martin S-C]

Some more progress - a little slower now as some pre-Christmas cheer has entered the house and my hands are a bit unsteady after a glass of two of cheer.

I've got the side doors to a stage where I'm happy with them - not ecstatic, but happy. I can hide some of the grimness with a subtle weathering job, and I'm pretty good with a paintbrush and can make a convincing trompe l'oeil effect to hide the not-so-straight vent slats

Holes drilled for handrails which is the next task.

Fitting all the little brass twiddley bits is a real joy. I used to hate working with such tiny items and get angry when they pinged out of the tweezers never to be seen again but as I get older and my eyesight weakens it becomes a happy achievement to enjoy success with small parts like this - so satisfying to be able to work with them. I have no idea how the 2mm FS people do it though!

And yes, I noticed a few days ago that the upper foot steps should be mounted at the lower edge of the frames but by then it was too late! I like them up there, it adds to the character of the van I think and I'm sure some vehicles had high foot steps for whatever reason.

[Caley Jim]

19 minutes ago, Martin S-C said:

 I have no idea how the 2mm FS people do it though!

With difficulty!  

 

Jim

[Martin S-C]

Progress of a sort. All the little brass bits attached now. Undercoat painting tomorrow. I may be odd but I do think that slapping all the handrails on tends to bring a brake van to life. Its equivalent to painting the faces of the little metal or plastic people - they cease being objects and gain a personality.









I've also finished the two open bogie wagons. One will be a general merchandise vehicle and the other will convey minerals. They had their undercoats added today.





The Tri-Ang Insulfish van conversion to an L&Y themed van has begun. I'm using a Cambrian 16ft 6" underframe kit as the basis under the body. Did these vans have brake levers both sides, or just one side? That is until no doubt the LMS added brakes both sides.



Then there's this thing. Bought second hand, its a brass kit and nicely made. I've popped out the EM wheelsets it came with and replaced them with 00. I need to repaint this into my NMGS departmental livery which is basically the red oxide the LMS used - does anyone know exactly which paint colour that is ... in any acrylic manufacturers paint?



The oxide colour I need to match...

[Caley Jim]

49 minutes ago, Martin S-C said:

I've also finished the two open bogie wagons. One will be a general merchandise vehicle and the other will convey minerals. They had their undercoats added today.

The nearer of these being the sole CR Dia50 50T iron ore wagon, if I'm not mistaken!

 

Jim

[Compound2632]

1 hour ago, Martin S-C said:

The Tri-Ang Insulfish van conversion to an L&Y themed van has begun. I'm using a Cambrian 16ft 6" underframe kit as the basis under the body. Did these vans have brake levers both sides, or just one side? That is until no doubt the LMS added brakes both sides.

 

Built with brakes and lever on one side only; some were fitted with a cross shaft and brake lever facing left on the off side; most probably finished their days like that since the LMS had extensions to the time limit for fitting MoT-compliant brakes up to 1939. So not "no doubt", rather "very considerable doubt".

[Martin S-C]

A brake lever facing left? That's interesting and unusual. I might add that, just for something different.

[Martin S-C]

On 04/12/2021 at 22:27, Compound2632 said:

 

Built with brakes and lever on one side only; some were fitted with a cross shaft and brake lever facing left on the off side; most probably finished their days like that since the LMS had extensions to the time limit for fitting MoT-compliant brakes up to 1939. So not "no doubt", rather "very considerable doubt".

Some questions principally aimed at @Compound2632 I'm not attempting scale fidelity or accuracy with this conversion, but I could do with more help with the brake arrangement so that I can get things looking more or less right. Originally these vans were built with brakes one side and a lever one side - was the braked wheel always on the side with the canvas roof hatch? The few photos I have found (prototype and models) suggests tit was. Was there just one brake shoe on one wheel or a pair operating on both wheels on that side? I've taken a look at your own model builds in your D299 appreciation thread which suggests one wheel but there is this photo which seems to suggest a brake shoe on both wheels although I can see the photograph has been edited with some background under the wagon blanked out.



With the safety grab rails that seem to have been fitted at the brake handle end would these just be on one side/one end for a single brake lever? I assume that's the case. I've taken a look at Bob Essery's Midland Wagons Vol.2 plate 379 and that seems to show a van with brake levers both sides, and hence grab rails both sides at that end.

Looking at the above photo I'm puzzling over how the canvas roof was secured. Under it you can see the outline of wooden slats and I'll try to indicate these with lengths of 0.3mm brass wire laid on the roof and then tissue paper over the top. I can see there's a cut-out in the roof overhang that goes back to the body side and the canvas edge is secured down by what looks like an iron bar with a locking mechanism each end that shows in the above photo as a rectangular block, then below that is what I assume is a board that is the end or edge of the folding roof arrangement as it clearly prevents the side doors being opened when its in place and I can't see what other purpose it might serve. There is a locking bar of some kind on the right hand end which I can't decipher as well.

The two wooden strakes - did they run right across the roof - did the canvas awning slide back across between them or are they just wind/rain strips? I appreciate that the canvas awning only opened to the centre line of the roof, but was wondering if these strakes went further.

Man thanks for any help you can give.

[jwealleans]

Somewhere - Stephen may have it to hand - there's an elevated picture of an L & Y goods yard showing the roof arrangement on those D3 vans very clearly.

[Martin S-C]

Silly me, I have found it now:



So ... *squints hard* doors both sides but the canvas roof hatch on one side only. And the van centre left with the figure next to it shows a left-hand brake lever too which is useful. There was quite the extreme arch to the roofs of these, much more so than the Tri-Ang van body I'm using.

[Compound2632]

3 hours ago, Martin S-C said:

Some questions principally aimed at @Compound2632 

 

The book you want is N. Coates, Lancashire & Yorkshire Wagons (Wild Swan, 2 Vols.) though purchase thereof is probably overkill for the conversion of one old Triang body! Anyway, that's what I'm looking at. I have a feeling I bought Vol. 2, which covers the covered goods wagons, after I built my model from the Geen kit. However, the photo you posted is in Vol. 1.

 

3 hours ago, Martin S-C said:

Originally these vans were built with brakes one side and a lever one side - was the braked wheel always on the side with the canvas roof hatch? The few photos I have found (prototype and models) suggests tit was. Was there just one brake shoe on one wheel or a pair operating on both wheels on that side? I've taken a look at your own model builds in your D299 appreciation thread which suggests one wheel but there is this photo which seems to suggest a brake shoe on both wheels although I can see the photograph has been edited with some background under the wagon blanked out.

 

It does seem to be the case (with an exception I'll come to) that the brake gear on the side with the right-facing lever was completely conventional, with brake blocks acting on both wheels on that side, and that this was on the side with the roof hatch. Where fitted, the left-facing lever on the non-hatch side was connected to the hatch-side brake gear via a cross-shaft. (My understanding is that the levers used Morton's clutch, so that either lever operated the brakes without the other lever moving; Morton was a L&YR employee.) On the left-facing lever, non-hatch side, there is a single brake block acting on the left-hand wheel. (There are a couple of good photos of vehicles in first LMS livery showing this; also, there is another photo of the Great Howard Street goods yard, Liverpool, in August 1913, where the angle of the two vans on the left in your photo is less oblique; the left-facing lever and single brake can be clearly seen on one; on the other it is obscured by a sheeted open that has the same brake arrangement.

 

3 hours ago, Martin S-C said:

With the safety grab rails that seem to have been fitted at the brake handle end would these just be on one side/one end for a single brake lever? I assume that's the case. 

 

Yes, the photos of the left-facing lever side show the grab handle at the left end, above the lever. 

 

3 hours ago, Martin S-C said:

Looking at the above photo I'm puzzling over how the canvas roof was secured. Under it you can see the outline of wooden slats and I'll try to indicate these with lengths of 0.3mm brass wire laid on the roof and then tissue paper over the top. I can see there's a cut-out in the roof overhang that goes back to the body side and the canvas edge is secured down by what looks like an iron bar with a locking mechanism each end that shows in the above photo as a rectangular block, then below that is what I assume is a board that is the end or edge of the folding roof arrangement as it clearly prevents the side doors being opened when its in place and I can't see what other purpose it might serve. There is a locking bar of some kind on the right hand end which I can't decipher as well.

 

There were wooden slats supporting the canvas, as you say. The GA drawings reproduced in the book are unclear but from photos it looks as if there are five equispaced slats, as wide as the gaps between them. Then there's a further slat that hangs over the edge of the roof and I think has holes for the securing chains and finally the exposed slat that is only just wider than the side doors and covers the top of them - but your interpretation of the photo you posted is as good as mine on these parts. In Vol. 1 there's a useful photo of a van with the doors open and the canvas roof rolled back; this makes it clear that there is a single aperture - the eves rail is not carried through. 

 

3 hours ago, Martin S-C said:

The two wooden strakes - did they run right across the roof - did the canvas awning slide back across between them or are they just wind/rain strips? I appreciate that the canvas awning only opened to the centre line of the roof, but was wondering if these strakes went further.

 

You've answered that with the Great Howard Street photo.

 

2 hours ago, Martin S-C said:

There was quite the extreme arch to the roofs of these, much more so than the Tri-Ang van body I'm using.

 

This is where the exception comes in. Vans of this genera style were built over a long period, 1877-1904. The high arc roof was definitely used from 1897/8 with over 2,000 built. Vans built before than had a flatter roof profile, over 1,500 in service in 1895. There was some evolution of the design, the earlier vans having wider planks; or possibly the higher roof came in in 1890... 

 

In a photo that shows two of the flatter-roofed vans at Great Howard Street in 1909, both are seen from the roof hatch side and no brakes are visible so presumably there are conventional brakes on the other side only.

[Martin S-C]

Wonderful info, thank you. I'll go do a search for those books but as you imply I suspect they will be expensive and overkill for this model build.

Here's where I am at the moment. I went with two brake shoes on the hatch side as the photo I was working from implied that - if this is incorrect it isn't a huge job to remove one of them. I haven't put a brake shoe on the opposite side. I can easily add one from scrap bits. I wanted a left hand facing brake lever because it just looks so weird! Haven't started on the roof yet, but holes are all drilled for grab rails and other handles.

[Martin S-C]

This is a first. I have never used dilute PVA and tissue paper while kitbashing a wagon before. I'm taking this slowly and just doing a little work each day and thinking about it in between spurts of work. This is taking a good bit of messing around and I don't want to muck it up nor do I fancy doing any more of these! One is enough.

I carefully cut back the roof edge in the distinctive profile the prototype picture shows. It was at this point I wish I'd used a much thinner sheet of plastic or even brass for the roof. @MrWolf very kindly gave me a spare Coopercraft roof and I used that without thinking ahead enough to how important a fine roof edge would be on this particular model.





I put a lot of effort into the rain strips or roof strakes or whatever they are as the photo shows these are curved at the ends and chamfered along their top edges in a very marine style so once glued on I spent a fair while trimming these by scraping with a scalpel blade edge to get what I think is a very distinct shape to them. Then using the information given by @Compound2632 I cut out 5 slats from 5 thou plastic sheet and glued these to the roof as they support the canvas cover and presumably had steel or iron guides on the underside ends that slotted in a track in the roof cut-out. Whatever the arrangement was these slats, the canvas cover and the two "rain strips" did not interact, there is a gap of what seems to be about 3" between the canvas and the strips.



I then used dilute PVA to glue on a square of tissue paper. Fortunately for photographic purposes I had some in yellow which shows up well.





The roof shot taken in the goods yard shows a top or end board on the canvas roof that I interpret as being outside or above the canvas so this was glued on last, covering the exposed tissue paper edge.



Finally, set aside for 24 hours to dry. I have left a big overhang of tissue as what I interpret as the closure or locking bar of metal seems to pass across this and I will fashion something up next out of scrap bits, plus the narrower board that helps hold the doors closed.

Edited December 7, 2021 by Martin S-C

[Martin S-C]

Here is the current state of play:







These images don't show the roof slats very well but they do show a little "in the flesh" which is perfect. Given what a bodge this was and that almost everything came from the scraps box its turned out to look enough like the actual van to satisfy me. What grey was the livery? Was it a little lighter or darker than Halford's primer . I have some transfers so tomorrow ought to see this one done and dusted.

The two fitted "express freight" bogie opens the NMGS built as prototypes in 1918 are coming along. The wooden open will be a dry merchandise wagon and will be sheeted most of the time (so I need to make up a paper sheet for it) and the steel open will carry minerals ... what sort I am not sure yet. As you can see I used up my last NMG letters with the ex-Caley wooden open and struggled with the rub-down lettering on the LNE steel. Without any Ns Ms and Gs, Gs are converted from Cs and the Ns and Ms began life as Hs, Vs and Ws ! That was challenging fun in a masochistic kind of way. I should be able to recover something half-decent looking from this with a bit of judicious signwriting/fixing. I need to overpaint the lettering in any case as its the wrong yellow; I need GWR mustard rather than Magic Roundabout daffodil.




I might rub off 513's number and do it again to the right of the left hand door so the pair look more consistent.

One thing I forgot is a representation of the inside knees on the Caley 50 ton mineral. The interior looks awfully blank and bald without them. Another job for tomorrow, or maybe this evening.

The passenger-rated road van is looking like an over-ripe strawberry this evening after its first coat of EWS maroon! Its not even remotely presentable. I will give it a second coat tomorrow when it might begin to look better. I chose to give it this colour as though its a freight vehicle I didn't want the WELR to own a third goods brake van so this will be a hybrid vehicle and on quiet freight days may well just go up the line on its own behind the tram engine.

[Annie]

1 hour ago, Martin S-C said:

What grey was the livery? Was it a little lighter or darker than Halford's primer . I have some transfers so tomorrow ought to see

This is a digital model of a late 19th century L&Y van I commissioned Martin and I've been told by the van's maker that the livery colour is reasonably correct.

 

[Compound2632]

7 minutes ago, Annie said:

This is a digital model of a late 19th century L&Y van I commissioned Martin and I've been told by the van's maker that the livery colour is reasonably correct.

 

Reasonably. It's certainly got the florid digits for the tare weight but needs them on the end, at eves height, for the running number. Also the rather characteristic numberplate on the solebar. I'm not sure about the white roof either - even if it started out that way, in the dank sulphurous atmosphere of industrial Lancashire and Yorkshire it would turn dark grey in no time.

[Regularity]

Prior to 1902, the LYR painted the ironwork black, and the wood not at all! Sometimes it was varnished, sometimes not.

Useful reference: https://lyrs.org.uk/Wagons

[Caley Jim]

That canvas roof door has come out rather well, Martin!  I'll reserve judgement on the 50T ore wagon, if you don't mind!  

 

Jim

[Compound2632]

Just now, Caley Jim said:

That canvas roof door has come out rather well, Martin!  I'll reserve judgement on the 50T ore wagon, if you don't mind!  

 

Several railways experimented with high-capacity mineral wagons in the first few years of the 20th century:

 

[Embedded link to catalogue thumbnail of Midland Railway Study Centre item 64098]

 

There were seventy of these 30 ton wagons, from three builders; they seem to have ended up in loco coal traffic. 

 

So I don't see why we can't imagine the NM&GSR indulging in a similar experiment, if it has some specific traffic flow that would be appropriate. As I recall, the Caledonian ore wagons were used on a docks-to-steelworks circuit?

[Martin S-C]

Thank you Annie - for the grey that is very helpful. A fairly deep bluish tone lighter than GWR but darker and bluer than BR. I'll try a tyre grey wash over the Halfords base for that. I am modelling 1919 so grey is the livery I need to use, rather than the pre-1903 stained raw wood (much as I'd love to have wagons appearing like that in model form). Stephen - thanks for the note about the end number, I can see in the goods yard photograph I link to again below that the van at extreme upper left does have a number where you state, but the other two visible ends do not, though perhaps the paint has disappeared under layers of grime. The image in Bob Essery's book shows it beautifully. I probably have the necessary digits on one of my NMRS pre-grouping sheets. The goods yard photograph shows a real mix of roof tones so I suspect white is correct as each van rolls proudly out of the paint shop but would quickly turn to that very helpful "whatever grey the modeller wants" tone.

 

[Compound2632]

No blue at this period. Any bluish tinge came in with the use of zinc white as a substitute for white lead, in the early 30s, mostly.

[Martin S-C]

35 minutes ago, Caley Jim said:

That canvas roof door has come out rather well, Martin!  I'll reserve judgement on the 50T ore wagon, if you don't mind!  

 

Jim

Thank you Jim. I do appreciate the words of support. And, yes, do please place your judgement aside wherever you wish to!
 

26 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Several railways experimented with high-capacity mineral wagons in the first few years of the 20th century:

 

[Embedded link to catalogue thumbnail of Midland Railway Study Centre item 64098]

 

There were seventy of these 30 ton wagons, from three builders; they seem to have ended up in loco coal traffic. 

 

So I don't see why we can't imagine the NM&GSR indulging in a similar experiment, if it has some specific traffic flow that would be appropriate. As I recall, the Caledonian ore wagons were used on a docks-to-steelworks circuit?

Almost certainly such a wagon on a secondary company's line SW of Gloucester would mean coal though the humble PO wagon to the various Forest collieries would have that market cornered, especially because of end-door discharge arrangements at the S Wales docks. That would leave ironstone or limestone as possible freights and both were mined in the Forest, though a 50 t capacity wagon I admit is unlikely as many of the mining concerns were small. There is also of course timber which was moved in all kinds of sizes, lengths, diameters and other parameters, but again such a large vehicle is unlikely, I admit. For the purpose of moving around my layout with an operational reason it could be a rare visitor to the wood distillation works, stuffed full of cordwood. My fiction is that it was a prototype build, intended to capture freight post WWI but it would have remained merely a good intention once the company was submerged into either the GW or the LMS in 1923, and no more would have been built in the scheme of standardisation during the 1930s.

I'm not overly tough on myself over such matters - its the fun of building interesting models and seeing them rolling along on my layout that is my main interest and in case I need to remind everyone yet again, the Madder Valley system is my inspiration and bogie freight wagons were very evident on that model. On that note I do very much want a model of one of these:

http://www.railway-models-and-art.co.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/DS-NER-Bogie-Road-Van-2-1024x466.jpg

http://www.railway-models-and-art.co.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/DS-NER-Bogie-Road-Van-1-1024x674.jpg

Or the L&Y version which was essentially the same.
 

17 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

No blue at this period. Any bluish tinge came in with the use of zinc white as a substitute for white lead, in the early 30s, mostly.

Hmm. Right. Is the suggestion then that the grey in the image Annie shared is not correct? To my eye/monitor combo it has a distinct bluish tinge (esp. vs the GNS van left of it). If so can you say what grey tone is correct?
 

 

Edited December 9, 2021 by Martin S-C

[Compound2632]

1 minute ago, Martin S-C said:

If so can you say what grey tone is correct?

 

What I do in practice is start from Phoenix Precision P38 LMS freight wagon grey and work in some matt black.

[Annie]

33 minutes ago, Regularity said:

Prior to 1902, the LYR painted the ironwork black, and the wood not at all! Sometimes it was varnished, sometimes not.

Useful reference: https://lyrs.org.uk/Wagons

My usual modelling time period is circa 1910 so I asked for painted wood when I commissioned the van and some other late 19th century L&Y wagons.  Doing models with varnished or unpainted wood would certainly be interesting though.

 

40 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

Reasonably. It's certainly got the florid digits for the tare weight but needs them on the end, at eves height, for the running number. Also the rather characteristic numberplate on the solebar. I'm not sure about the white roof either - even if it started out that way, in the dank sulphurous atmosphere of industrial Lancashire and Yorkshire it would turn dark grey in no time.

Cameron Scott from Darlington Works doesn't like doing weathered wagons unfortunately and he's not that keen on numbering either unless he's given good references and prodded into doing it.

 

4 minutes ago, Martin S-C said:

Hmm. Right. Is the suggestion then that the grey in the image Annie shared is not correct? To my eye/monitor combo it has a distinct bluish tinge (esp. vs the GNS van left of it). If so can you say what grey tone is correct?

I don't see any bluish tinge on my NEC monitor, but then my eyesight isn't the best at any time.

[Caley Jim]

33 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Several railways experimented with high-capacity mineral wagons in the first few years of the 20th century:

 

[Embedded link to catalogue thumbnail of Midland Railway Study Centre item 64098]

The CR had a fleet of 370 almost identical wagons, again from a variety of builders.  The first orders in 1901 were for 30 from Leeds Forge (as @Compound2632's would appear to show) and 20 from American Car and Foundry.  The Leeds ones were delivered on time, but the ones from America didn't arrive (in sections) until 1903 and when they were put together on the dockside 'they had to be cut to pieces and practically rebuilt,.....as the workmanship was found to be so defective.'  (Quote from The Railway News)  The CR Board declined to accept them under any circumstances, despite an MP interceding on behalf of the American company.

 

They were not a success, however as there was not suitable infrastructure at industrial customers to unload them efficiently and, like the MR ones they ended up as loco coal or general merchandise wagons.

 

Jim

[Martin S-C]

I hadn't realised that there were such vigorous attempts to go the American route and introduce bogie freight vehicles by so many different British companies. It does seem a lost cause given the craft-shop style nature of so much British industry and bigger facilities like docks and major goods sheds with their turntables wedded to the 4-wheel wagon and the short journeys compared to the USA. The UK didn't see mass bogie freight traffic until well after the steam era but a what if scenario where that was not the case would make for an interesting layout.

http://www.lyrs.org.uk/images/uploads/D59_upper_web_version.jpg

https://www.g1mra.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/LYR-bogie-Van.pdf

http://www.railway-models-and-art.co.uk/blog/?cat=64

Getting back to livery, has anyone got colour photos of model D.3 vans or other L&Y goods vehicles to give me more info? I am tempted right now to weather directly on top of the Halfords undercoat which seems as good a mid-grey as any other.