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Parkside Beetle Prize Cattle Van


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Hi

I bought a parkside beetle prize cattle van i model early BR steam and read that they survived in service untill late steam days but i am unable to find pictures, but i am unsure what livery they would have been painted in. :)

Thanks

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Well, by BR days, Crimson with black ends, but almost certainly, under a thick layer of grime. Some, though I've seen no evidence might have ended up in maroon, but I would doubt that.

 

Adam

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Dear Earl

 

There is a photograph of the similar 6-wheel version built by BR in 1952 in

Russel, J. H. (1981) Freight wagons and loads in service on the Great Western Railway and British Rail, Western Region. Oxford Publishing Co. Oxford, SBN 86093 155 2 as Figure 109.

This shows the livery when new, which as you suggest should be crimson. As the bodies are the same as the GWR 4 wheeler some at least should have had similar lettering layout. It is not strictly following the instructions of the time, as the lettering is high up on the shutters - if they had been lower down then when the shutter was down the lettering would have been covered - which was unacceptable.

 

Regards

 

Paul Bartlett

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  • 3 months later...

Breathing some life back into this old thread, a little awakening interest in livestock traffic took me to this site during my reserach:

http://www.gwr.org.uk/probeetle.html

 

A good jumping-off point seems to be to Google 'Parkside Beetle,' although there is a VW dealer by that name which wipes out a decent percentage of hits returned.

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Tatlow's "Historic Carriage Drawings, NPCS" has a couple of pictures of the Beetle. It was useful to me when I built mine. Modelmaster do transfers for BR era.

 

Here's mine:

 

P1010018.jpg

 

P1010019.jpg

 

And yes the door springs are bent. Only noticed after the pic was taken.

 

John

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John, you're a top, top man. Cheers!

 

Placing orders shortly, now these are a species known to inhabit the Scottish Borders. Yours is a great shop-window for Parkside's heifer-haul vehicle, thanks for sharing.

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Thanks Chard. I'm kicking myself over the door springs. I used the plastic ones from the kit but they are decaying. I should have used 1mm phosphor bronze strip. I'll have to get the thing on the workbench and rectify things. I tend to replace fragile plastic parts with metal where I can. Eg. I used etched brass for the brake shoes (something I had in stock from Mainly Trains - they're actually LMS but when you're riding past on a bike...).

 

John

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Eg. I used etched brass for the brake shoes (something I had in stock from Mainly Trains - they're actually LMS but when you're riding past on a bike...).

 

 

Interesting phrase, puts a new spin on the notion of 'normal viewing distances'. Not sure it'd go down too well at exhibitions though :sungum:

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  • 3 years later...

Surprised there has been no response so far, so here's my two penn'orth:

 

From the W7 diagram in Atkins/Beard/Tourret GWR Wagons tome it appears they were 1ft 8 and a half inches from headstock to end, and looking at the plates had a smallish head and no ribs. I used the MJT 2306 as I'm not into sprung buffers but the GWR fitted wagon buffer (die 1056) from Model Railway Developments (emardee.org.uk) looks to be the right size and is supplied sprung and assembled if you are so inclined.

 

HTH, Ken...

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If you measure from the W7 diagrams in Atkins et al. you'll find that both builds of W7 had buffers that are 2' long overall. In fact, they are a conventional coach buffer of a type widely used in the early years of the 20th century. Photos in Russell's coach appendix vol 2 confirm that these were retained into the fifties. 

 

The best MJT types are 2308 or 2308S, despite being labelled 'wagon buffer'.

 

Nick

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