A rake of Hydra..

[Guest baldrick25]

A few shots of my attempt to create a rake of GW Hydra wagons from plastic card. The finished rake is to be 20 wagons , built as 2 batches of 10 wagons each.

I started by sticking together two strips of 0.040thou plastic card wide enough for the length of the wagons. Then after drawing out the sideframes and printing them onto a self adhesive a4 size label, which was attached to the face of laminate of the sheets.

The green and orange you can see is simply a wash of diluted acrylic ( colour not significance- it was just what was out at the time) The purpose is so that when I have cut roughly to size using a piercing saw ( or fretsaw) I can easily see where I have to file them to size. Remember I am cutting a pair of sideframes at a time, and I carefully preserve the orientation and pairing so even if there is a slight difference between wagon pairs , there is no real difference between the opposite sides of each wagon.

 

 

Having cut all the pairs of sideframes reasonably to size , they are seperated , keeping the pairing though, and the first stages of erecting took place. Now I've placed a glass sheet ( old microwave glass door) on top of the small cutting board so all the building takes place on the flat. The frame on the bottom right has an accurately cut and square plastic card sheet which keeps the frames as square as possible whilst they are assembled. I have also added the bearing inner support pieces. On the right are the scribed, 'planked' boards which will be cut to form the flooring. The block of wood is a piece of very square beech which I use to hold such things as the ends of the wagons in place whilst they set. ( I use MEK-Poly solvent cement incedentally).

The lower pair are the first to assembled , with flooring , and in the case of the left one, has been weighted with a mix of kiln dried sand and PVA cement - the white plastics strips are just a belt and braces in case it ever tries to fall out!.

 

 

 

All assembled now , with frames , floors, buffer beams and supports and a couple fitted with pinpoint bearings and axles to check that all is going well.

The one at the top left , in a sort of grey , was just a first test to check that I hadn't dropped a clanger with the dimensions, and as a reference piece for the angles to work from. That one will never run- its just a test piece. All was not well though with the one at the bottom, it didn't go together properly , and the flooring was slightly off centre. At this stage its just a bit of plastic card, so represented no real loss- it was scrapped, although it appears in some other shots as a container.

 

 

Bearing fixings now carefully drilled out to the right size, the fitting begins.

 

 

Romford wheel bearings fitted, and Bachmann disc wheels fitted, all have now been test run on track to see that they run correctly and do not derail etc over quite complicated trackwork. Buffer fixing pilot holes drilled useing a carefully made template. The sides of the flooring have now all been trued , and sized ready to fit the upstanding edging. A few supporting fillets have been added, although more will be fitted later. The pencil line arrows are simply to make sure that I keep cutting the flooring from the strip in the same directon.

 

 

Now some of the side supporting fillets have been made are being glued into the marked places.

 

 

Extra supporting fillets have now been glued, and a block of the correct dimensions added ready to take the scratchbuilt NEM pockets. This was made by gluing three strips of the right width of thin card maintaining a gap of 3mm between them , and then cut to length. I am using Hornby short R8219 couplings. Buffer covers are now in place as well.

 

 

Now the holes for the buffers have been opened to the correct size but these are temporary buffers. I have Bachmann spring loaded buffers to fit after the wagons are painted etc, I just didn't want glue leeching in and ruining them. Although I have added Hornby couplings , I intend to try this as a method for closer coupling as usually I intend that the rake is semi-permanently coupled, with just the outer couplings on the outer wagons so the loco can be uncoupled. Its a cranked piece of thin wire bent as shown. The wire is pushed into the hole left by the empty NEM coupling pocket , and then the cranked bit in the middle will fall down, stopping the bent ends from parting company. Rotate it thru 90 degrees and its free to detach. This will allow me to fit three screwlink couplings and air pipes etc for realism. The wire will be blackened of course. The wagons can be reversed as well as pulled, maintaining the wagon distance.

 

 

Here the 9 wagons now built get a run around behind a Bachmann 0-6-2 GW loco to test that they run well , before they all get a bit of additional weight in the well compartment ( sand and PVA off couse , mixed to a 'cream' consistency). They ran perfectly.

 

 

A side view of the leading couple of wagons.

 

 

Now they will be left for a few days for the glues etc, to fully harden, whilst I make the resin castings for the wheel axlebox covers, air pipes and 3 link screwlink couplings, brake gear, etc. They will then be given a final tweak with the 'wet and dry' as required, perhaps a few 'patches' added to the flooring to individualise them.

 

Then they will be painted in early bauxite , numbered and logo'd , together with final buffer fitting.

 

Then its on with the next batch of 10 , or maybe 11 to make up for the first failure.

[Kris]

They look very nice. Did they run in rakes that long?

[Guest dilbert]

I enjoy this type of project - the building of the more rarer types of freight vehicles.

 

Being passenger rated vehicles, wouldn't these have been equipped with screwlink couplings (as opposed to 3 link) ? ... dilbert

[kandc_au]

How is this project going?

 

Khris

[hayfield]

Baldrick25

 

Just at the right time for me as I need to cast some loco steps, could you do a write up on the casting process please

[stadman]

First time of viewing , some great building work.