Wonky Kits and home made wagons

[relaxinghobby]

How well is the site working at the moment? If this image is still here this evening I'll post an explanation of this kit.

 

 

 

[relaxinghobby]

 

LSWR van    Cambrian kit C115    00

As the kit build proceeds I can't leave the original kit alone the way the manufacturer intended. I've filled in the chassis sides to represent wooden ones and also glued fillets of plasticard to the bulk out the bottom corners. Going for the older wooden chassis look. Wooden buffer beams look much thicker from the side than the thin ones of the kit which represents a steel one.

 

Reinforced the sides with bulkheads to make the van less likely to flex inwards by the squeezing action of a hand picking it up.

Also a length of sprue glued along the top as a ridge support for the roof. Van Kits always seem weak in this area compared to ready made models and need careful handling so the rooves don't pop off. The roof moldings are very thin and flexible maybe too fragile but the edges look fine and realistic, a play off between looks and durability. Unfortunately this leaves the van side to roof contact area for glue relying on minimal contact, sooner or later the glue gives up. So my solution is this stiffen the sides and build up more support to the roof,

 

The roof on this kit is very plane no vents or rain strip is this how they where on the big railway back in their day?

 

[relaxinghobby]

Recycling some old Cambrian kits I got for cheap out of that box of bargains that appears at every club and second hand stall at model fairs and exhibitions.

The wonky kit bargain, Cambrian in particular are difficult to bring all 4 sides floor and sole bars and buffer beams together, that’s 9 pieces all to be lined up and set square requires a high degree of skill and understanding of how the kit designers intended things to be. Unless it's all done exactly when you put the wheels in they either bind or when, after several hours of carefully gluing and waiting between stages for the glue to harden you go to test the wagon and roll it across a flat surface it just rocks and skids side ways. OH......... deary me.

 

 

I struggle and from the amount of wonky kits I find I see many other kit builders struggle too. With that fact in mind I applauded Cambrian kits introducing their new one piece chassis, molded floor and sole bars and W irons. Now they are all made perfectly square and the axles holes lined up for you.

 

These particular ones came with PECO plastic wheels running directly in the axles boxes, runs quite smoothly but not as good as metal wheels running in metal conned bearings. An upgrade needed.

 

Picture badly aligned kit parts see the floor, buffer beam end join.

 

Kits usual come apart easily, the more wonky they are the less contact area between the miss matched side so the glue is less effective a gentle bit of twisting and apart they come.

 

Kit reboot, as the film makers say take the original components and try reassembling them again. It might be better this time.

[relaxinghobby]

With this forum closed down for a few weeks or what seemed as long as a few weeks when it was only just a few days I realised surfing was just something I did late in the evening instead of going to bed or doing some actual modelling.

Also following someone else’s projects and builds had become a sort of pass time instead of getting out the plastic and glue and doing some modelling my self.

So here is some modelling

 

I hate the marking out I can never get lines straight and at right angles or in the correct place, no matter how hard I try, rulers, set squares, compasses and pencils are never quite accurate when in my hands.

So struggling to learn a computer drawing package was worth it all the straightness and right-angled-ness and perfectly centered arcs are done for you by the electronic machine. Printed out and on thin paper, glued with Pritt-Stick or some cheep supermarket equivalent, tacked to a sheet of plasticard we are ready to do some real scratched building.

 

Now all I need is a metal straight edge and sharp knife, a heavy craft knife like a Stanley as it is much easier to hold than a tiny scapula.

 

Wagon and it's raw material 20 thou' plasticard or 0.5 mm to the metricated, every thing is built up from thin layers of this, those dumb buffer are just multiple layers.

 

There is a round ended version of the pent roof wagon the ends modified by hand as I was cutting out the card. Not as neatly done as the all pure machine drawn templates.

 

 

The wagons seem a little bit big after I glued them together and looking at the size in the flesh on the bench in real 3D life. Perhaps I had made the drawings over scale, something that is easy to do working our the drawings and parts out on a computer screen.

 

Here they in comparison to two kits a Cambrian pre-grouper and a Slaters Midland Railway 5 planker.

The corner joints look worse than they are because of the shadow cast from the sideways light.

 

 

And finally in this report adding surface detail.

End stanchions built up from triangular layers of 20 thou' again, a template on the home made computer drawing. Corner brackets and iron work represented with strips of ultra thin plasticard, with rivets pressed in with a needle. The only source of which I can find is coffee cup lids, different makes are different in thickness’s and style. Some are concave or have too many designs and printing embossed on them to be very useful.

 

From the days of yore I found this plastic wagon strapping from Kenline a long defunct kit manufacturer and provider of wagon parts. This little beauty is nearly used up now, cost 24p originally. I found 2 packets once and never seen any since. This sort of thing is found in the box of odds and ends at the exhibition table next to the box of wonky kit built trains.

 

[Nile]

3 hours ago, relaxinghobby said:

The roof on this kit is very plane no vents or rain strip is this how they where on the big railway back in their day?

Yes, the LSWR didn't go in for rain strips. The only vents are on the ends.

[relaxinghobby]

 

Now the roof is on, it's a bit fictional as after looking all over the internet there are no good pictures that show the roof and roof doors.

So the hinge length and position is a guess.

The sole bars had to be pulled of, lucky the glue takes a good week to really set. I used Tamiya Cement. I had them too close together so there was not enough room for the metal W-irons.

The hinges will be cut back later when the glue is hardened.

Edited April 14, 2022 by relaxinghobby
correctiom

[relaxinghobby]

Back to the Cambrian Kits LSWR Van C115.

 

 

Now it's all done and all details glued on and with the ballast added its up to 30gram , or 31 or even 29 g. The electronic kitchen scales can't quite make it's mind up.  I suppose when you are weighing out cake mixture 1g here or there does not matter.

Ballast is odd screws fixed with superglue, scrap iron just like what they used to ballast brake vans with.

 

Yet to fix couplings. I standardise on the Bachmann miniature bar and hook. They are un-available at the moment, a hen's teeth situation and getting pricey. Maybe it's time to devise some homemade ones using bent wire and other scrap box gubbins but they must be compatible with with all my Bachmann fitted wagon kits, I don't like the similar Hornby as their hooks are too long and not quite 100% compatible.

 

I find these Cambrian kits the most difficult of all the kit makes to build, definitely a craftsman level jobs. Mostly due to little positive positioning of parts to one another. I struggle and have often to pull the sides and floor apart and try again. And re-reading the instructions to see if I had misinterpreted them the first time around. Buying second hand wonky ones cheap and rebuilding them confirms to me that other modellers struggle with them too.

 

Much as I admire the wagon building threads over on 7mm and particularly the S gauge scratch builds of  airnimal, I run out of patients with all the tiny details. Here on this kit C115 the LSWR bottle shaped buffer bodies and buffer head rings are so tiny, impossible to hold with fingers and difficult to hold the cone shaped buffer bodies with tweezers they keep pinging off to disappear across the floor. Wasting time hunting for them.

 

Maybe I should go n gauge or the new PECO TT? Less detail. Or gauge 3 parts big enough to see and hold?

 

Finally done through.

 

 

Ooo-eer look at all that flash and lumps of glue, the terror of close ups.

 

There was a problem with the brake molding on one side, it was too long and rubbed against the wheels, I had to cut off one shoe and glue it back on about half a millimetre back to allow free running.

 

You can see a strip of white behind the brake lever, I misunderstood the instructions and carved off the thee little nubs on the sole-bar to support the brake lever and brake hanger molding. So something had to go back on to support it all.

 

The metal handrail got bent it can stay like that to represent a used and care worn van.

 

It's the first time I've built one of the Cambrian kits with the new all in one floor, solebars and W-irons. Much easier than the old multiple bit, try and line it all up system. Markits 2mm square ended and shouldered bearing cups, just popped in, spot of glue. Dapol wheels.

Edited June 7, 2022 by relaxinghobby
Edit and corrections

[relaxinghobby]

Bright chrome wheels, the Dapol ones need a bit of toning down, I've use some of the body colour here which is a very thin paint. The body has had two coats by brush, Brown Revell Enamel Matt 84 a little bit on the dark side for LSWR chocolate perhaps ?

 

Back to the wheels, to darken them up in the past I've tried gun blue and other chemical treatments, but that can leave the tyres with a rough surface. A cheap method is to draw on them with a permanent marker pen, solvent based like a Sharpie or similar.

 

The internal user passenger van is a bitsa from an Airfix cattle wagon at one end and a Cambrian Shark ballast brake at the other. A spare coach door in the middle.

 

Roofs are Humbrol Enamel grey 196 satin thinned down with WD40.  Might need another coat.

 

[relaxinghobby]

 

 

The scratch built lime wagon is about finished and here is waiting outside the factory for it's painting crew. It looks a little to big, over scale perhaps ? Was my drawing wrong ? But it does not seem too different from the PECO kit one or the Cambrian Kit 10 ton open.

 

[relaxinghobby]

 

Patching up a wonky kit.

This is an open wagon based on the same set of parts cut and used from the lime wagon above. In stead of a pent roof I've rounded of the end and for a bit of variety used a spare kit end. The gfrey plastic it may save time on detailing if I can get it to go together straight.

Re-joining the side plastic to the end plastic. One corner was off square, so I broke the joint and reglued it around some blocks of wood and card packing until the corner was good.

As glue, Humbrol Precision Poly in this case, takes a few days to harden, a check of the model 24 hours later for straightness and squareness may reveal wonkyness, often the case with my models so in a day or two the glued is still soft and weak enough for joints can be pulled apart and re-glued.