SR 25t Pill Box brake van

[roundhouse]

I put one of my vans in the microwave last night and look what happened!

 

 

This Farish one is rather nice but the Rapidos will have to go.

 

Ian

[autocoach]

It is an unexpected day home from work.

 

At long last my pair of SR 25 ton brake vans arrived. The first shipment was lost in the post and this was a replacement order.

 

First came the replacement of the coupler with Kadee #18 which fit nicely in the pocket and were correct in height with a Kadee gauge.

 

Then, I looked up this thread for installation ideas on the brake rigging. Then I realized I would need to replace the wheels with RP25 tread/flange wheels as they are a bit cookie cutter. But alas, I had no suitable replacement 14 mm wheelsets. So that will have to wait until I have enought of an order with Mainly Trains to justify the postage (I am definitely not in a post free zone.)

 

So I decided to do the chimney relocation on the right hand ducket version. But alas on the last stroke of a careful cut with a fresh single edge razor blade, the chimney went flying off into the legion of the lost on my workbench. Ah but never fear. I had in my stash of unbuilt kits a Cambrian SR 25 ton brake van kit. I located the chimney and sliced it off from the base with a slight angle and was able to keep control of it long enough to attach to the roof. As soon as the glue is completely dry, the roof will be painted a filthy dark grey to simulate the use of many years up until my 1947 timeframe. The large SR will also be removed and a small SR transfer applied. Then final weathering and it can work goods to/from Padstow to Wadebridge and beyond on the North Cornwall..

Edited January 10, 2013 by autocoach

[SRman]

Ha ha, Ken!      I did exactly the same thing as you with the chimney on mine when cutting it off!!  

 

I replaced it with a bit of straight brass tubing drilled through the roof and weathered in (I have overdone the weathering at the moment and will tone it down a bit). Mine is now a parallel sided chimney but it looks like a stove pipe chimney so near enough for me.

[nberrington]

Has anyone taken this beastie apart? I don't see how to remove the body.

Neil B

Canada

[adrianbs]

                     Some of the more obvious  FAULTS on Bachmann  4mm SR BRAKE VANS

          1         Roof on LH van is mirrored to the correct design i.e. it is the same as 2+2 van so roof end is also incorrect.

2         Rivets on body planking uprights incorrect, one extra pair throwing out alignment very badly in places.

3         Some rivets missing on solebars of LH van ( As per Chorley drawing which is wrong )

4         Unnecessary rivets alongside duckets on cabin corners (As per Chorley )

5         4 very large bolts on platform ends missing

6         Buffer beams have reinforcing plates which vere not used until later years and some rivets are missing

7         Axleboxes are BR variant on all versions including SR and rather crude.

8         Springs are very low relief outboard of “ W” irons which are very thick and rather crude.

9         Steps supports on LH van are not tapered in at the top.

10       Plank grooves are far too wide and deep and spoil the appearance.

11       Sandboxe lids are incorrect slope on 2+2 vans but OK on LH vans. Odd, as they are different mouldings.

12       There are no bolts on the cabin end corners ( Technically  may be rather difficult but not impossible)

13       The torpedo vents are too large for oval type or the wrong shape if meant to be the rarer round type.

14       The screw heads on the Ducket are about 3 times the correct size and would have been better omitted.

15       The SR lettering is one plank too high on the large lettering versions. Looks rather odd.

16       Rivetting on verandah end pillars is incorrect on the end face.

17       Hook plate is 2+2 type for both versions, LH vans have 6 rivets.

18       Lower footsteps are far too high on all variants.

19       Solebars of all SR livery variants should be brown, the same colour as the body

20       The brake rigging is correct for the LH ducket type but the handbrake crank is wrong for the 2+2

 

          Other points to note. The “air cylinders” people keep referring to are NOT air cylinders but are fairly standard

          vacuum brake cylinders which were fitted ONLY to MOD/WD vans but are quite common on preserved vans as

          most were bought cheap when the MOD sold them off. Only 2 vans in BR days had them and both were ex MOD.

 

         There are two different chassis mouldings, one for LH vans with “W” irons and one with “Plate” axleguards for

         the 2+2 vans. The first batch of EVEN PLANK RH ducket vans also had the “W” type whilst the majority had the

         later plate version

 

         I believe that, apart from ex MOD vans, no vans were ever air or vacuum braked but in later years were piped.

         Valves in the cabin which enabled the brakes to be applied were fitted, hence the pipework on the bodyside of

         those vans and the bauxite livery.

                         Regards all  adrianbs

  

[Jack]

Atleast Dapol arn't alone ...

 

... thanks for posting the info Adrian.

[adrianbs]

  Hi All, And it won the wagon of the year award !! I I presume this was because the rivets were so small the reviewers could not see them, which may mean the Dapol model is not so lucky being in "O Scale" in spite of being "more accurate" ???     Regards  all      adrianbs 

[autocoach]

Adrian gets the ultimate rivet counter award for 2014.

 

Destroyed all my illusions about what I thought was a fairly good RTR model and now I will have to build the other Cambrian kit for a 25 ton brake van I have in the kit larder. And I had purchased two of these now horribly inaccurate Bachmann blobs of plastic. Oh woe is me. But I guess inquiring minds need to know.

 

And all of this was missed in the major magazine reviews?

 

Unfortunately the rivet counter machine reviewed in the April 2014 Model Railroader Products section that should be forwarded to the winner was their April Fools joke. 

Edited May 10, 2014 by autocoach

[adrianbs]

Hi  Autocoach,  Isn't it annoying when a manufacturer throws in a few extra free  "Rivets" !!    If only the Torpedo vents had been 10% larger they would have been spot-on for  the Dapol O gauge model !!    Do you know my friend Scott Maze in Walnut Creek by the way.   He and I use fingers for counting rivets, this was fine in the good old tinplate days but has literally got out of hands these days.

   Like you, I should have left the model in the box instead of trying to use it. These days it seems as if one model after another is a "Best left in the box" .  I nearly had a go at altering the old K's Kits Brake van when I finished up with the patterns.  I thought rather better of it when I realised that the only usable bits on my built model were the buffers and the coupling hooks and they were from my own range anyway. A set of buffers is hardly a good start for a new set of patterns even if they are a rather fiddly item.

  Thanks for the award, thats the 40th year in succession now and the award did not exist before that anyway, since it had not occurred to anybody to count rivets, apart from a certain Mr J S Beeson.who was rather good at it and explained his methods to me. No idea what he was talking about though, seemed to be something to do with relativity and the distance between hemispherical bodies. 

   Best of luck with the Cambrian Kit, I read the article on one of the forums and decided either to scratchbuild or wait for a decent RTR, looks like it's scratchbuilding again.!!

            Regards adrianbs

Edited May 10, 2014 by adrianbs

[dibber25]

A couple of days ago I received the pre-production painted sample of our Satlink red and yellow version of this model. It's awaiting photography at the moment. 

CHRIS LEIGH

[The Nth Degree]

Personally, I really like Adrian's input. Obviously, you can take it or leave it, but when a manufacturer says "this is a scale model of..." and then somebody says "no it isn't, and this is why..." you can look at those discrepancies and decide for yourself whether those inaccuracies are worth worrying about or not. I think Adrian should review everything!

[TheSignalEngineer]

                     Some of the more obvious  FAULTS on Bachmann  4mm SR BRAKE VANS

 

10       Plank grooves are far too wide and deep and spoil the appearance.

 

 

At least two different cross-sections of planking were present in BR days. 2+2s normally seemed to have chamfered planks as did some of the even planked ones. This was not confined to the Pillbox, but was extensively used on CCTs, PMVs and BYs. It gives the impression of wide and deep grooves which is heightened by a bit of dirt collecting in them. Square planed planks give a much smoother finish, in fact the joins can be almost invisible when freshly painted.

 

This extensively replanked van shows the different effect of modern timbering style freshly painted compared with its old style doors

http://paulbartlett.zenfolio.com/srbrakevan/h255b784b#h255b784b

[adrianbs]

Hi All,  Sorry to hear that Chris, Just hope you need a fair few for your layout.  You can always get rid of the rest as Freebies with the magazine !!   Just joking, they will of course sell like hot cakes since nobody knows what's wrong with them, apart from the select few who read these posts.  If you get the picture sufficiently out of focus they won't be able to see the rivets anyway. The trouble is these days with these new fangled digit cameras you just point your digit and shoot and the picture is perfect.  I'm guessing that if we did not have these new cameras, model standards would not have improved over the last 10 years. Trouble is some manufacturers must still be using box brownies for research. 

   For goodness sake  "The Nth degree" don't give them ideas, I think I would have an unfortunate accident within days, you know how the Triads work.

                       Regards and apologies to all who have bought SR brake vans on the strengh of the published reviews     adrianbs

[adrianbs]

Hi  The signal engineer,  Absolutely correct about the chamfers which mainly applies to the 2+2 vans but even so I would have preferred them to be about 30-40% narrower and the even plank variant would, in dead scale, have such thin grooves as to be almost invisible. Probably in real life it would not have been possible to get a 5P piece between the planks. This would be less than about 1/1000th of an inch in 4mm, i.e. about the thickness of a hair !!!   Even reducing the grooves by 40% would probably be well overscale for the chamferred planks and 70% for the even planked variant..  When I look at my old Hornby Dublo Fruit D, a model which is now well over 50 years old, Meccano were perfectly able to produce planks with realistic widths and also put the nuts in the right places as well.  On that basis the Fruit D would have won the Model of the Year had it been in competition with the Bachmann brake van. even with its antiquated diecast chassis.  So much for progress !!

     To add insult to injury it now appears that Bachmann are about to have a 20% average increase in their prices as of now !!   I thought I was being a bit over the top this year by increasing my prices for the first time in 3 years by just over 10%.  My kit prices have fallen steadily over the last 40 years by comparison with RTR from a point where they were about 350% more than an equivalent RTR wagon to a point now where they are about the same or less.  Maybe the tide will turn soon and people will only be able to afford to buy kits if Bachmann's price predictions for the next 5 years are correct.   A scary thought as I will have have fully retired by then even if I last that long and unless someone else takes up the baton that will seen them disappear.     Regards adrianbs

[hmrspaul]

                  

         I believe that, apart from ex MOD vans, no vans were ever air or vacuum braked but in later years were piped.

         Valves in the cabin which enabled the brakes to be applied were fitted, hence the pipework on the bodyside of

         those vans and the bauxite livery.

                         Regards all  adrianbs

  

Perhaps a total red herring, but the 15tonners used on the weedkiller trains appear to have been vacuum braked - DS455 was given the TOPS code ZTV and red base to the vacuum pipe http://PaulBartlett.zenfolio.com/srbrakevan/e1dca1978

 

Paul

[TheSignalEngineer]

I agree that many of the Dublo SD6 bodies stand up pretty well for their age, despite the inaccuracies in scale of some items.

 

Size of small detail is a bit like trying to copy exact colour on models. Because the eyes and the brain tend to work as much on angles as on linear dimensions a detail that is spot-on accurate to scale may look too small, whilst something 40% over size can look just right. That said, a lot of modern models do still get the emphasis  wrong, especially in grooves and my pet hate - wood grain so deep that it can be seen from six feet in 4mm scale. That one is as bad as the panel welds on a Bachmann Mk 1 coach roof.

[dibber25]

Hi  The signal engineer,  Absolutely correct about the chamfers which mainly applies to the 2+2 vans but even so I would have preferred them to be about 30-40% narrower and the even plank variant would, in dead scale, have such thin grooves as to be almost invisible. Probably in real life it would not have been possible to get a 5P piece between the planks. This would be less than about 1/1000th of an inch in 4mm, i.e. about the thickness of a hair !!!   Even reducing the grooves by 40% would probably be well overscale for the chamferred planks and 70% for the even planked variant..  When I look at my old Hornby Dublo Fruit D, a model which is now well over 50 years old, Meccano were perfectly able to produce planks with realistic widths and also put the nuts in the right places as well.  On that basis the Fruit D would have won the Model of the Year had it been in competition with the Bachmann brake van. even with its antiquated diecast chassis.  So much for progress !!

     To add insult to injury it now appears that Bachmann are about to have a 20% average increase in their prices as of now !!   I thought I was being a bit over the top this year by increasing my prices for the first time in 3 years by just over 10%.  My kit prices have fallen steadily over the last 40 years by comparison with RTR from a point where they were about 350% more than an equivalent RTR wagon to a point now where they are about the same or less.  Maybe the tide will turn soon and people will only be able to afford to buy kits if Bachmann's price predictions for the next 5 years are correct.   A scary thought as I will have have fully retired by then even if I last that long and unless someone else takes up the baton that will seen them disappear.     Regards adrianbs

With respect, Adrian, the last time I checked you were producing kits in the UK not RTR in China. The full reasoning behind those price increases has been discussed at quite some length elsewhere. I think we have to accept that there is a divergence within the hobby between those who expect (even demand) 100% perfection and accuracy to prototype (regardless of whether or not they are willing to pay for it) and those for whom a brake van is just a brake van. I used to get quite wound up about Pullman car models with names that were inappropriate for the type of car represented by the model, for instance. After time, I came to accept that for many modellers, a Pullman is a Pullman is a Pullman and that's fair enough. The great thing about this hobby is that we can please ourselves in that respect and those who don't know the intimate details of the real thing will be happy that this looks like the SR brake vans they remember. For the rest, the door is open for the perfect kit.....

CHRIS LEIGH

[dibber25]

  Hi All, And it won the wagon of the year award !! I I presume this was because the rivets were so small the reviewers could not see them, which may mean the Dapol model is not so lucky being in "O Scale" in spite of being "more accurate" ???     Regards  all      adrianbs 

The Model of the Year Awards are not made by reviewers but by magazine and RMweb readers.

[adrianbs]

Hi again Dibber,  Does seem like you are suggesting those modellers  who voted on the awards did not bother to look at the models. I did not intend to give the impression that only magazine reviewers voted, rather that their reviews, which appear to have been somewhat cursory, probably swayed Joe Public that there was little wrong with the models. This is, as you well know, a problem that has been with us for as long as I can remember and there is no remedy whilst the finances of magazines are so dependant on the revenue from advertisers.  Most people do not have the knowledge to decide if a model is accurate, they simply vote for the model they wanted the most, regardless of the accuracy, especially if they have not read any adverse reviews and it does not fall off the track. As long as companies make the most popular model on the lengthy wishlists they can pretty much get away with anything and still win an award.

    In my opinion the standards to which some of the largest manufacturers work these days seems little better than 50 years ago in spite of modern technology which is supposed to be able to speed up and improve design and tooling.   In addition the availabilty of information and access to preserved items has made research many times easier than 50 years ago.  Bachmann only produced this model a couple of years ago, even the use of a tape measure and a camera on a preserved van and a drawing board would have given them all the information they needed, let alone the access they have to laser scanners and CAD design.

    .It seems as though if a rivet is misplaced on a loco, all hell is let loose but getting 70% of all the "rivets" misplaced and various important dimensions wrong on a wagon is not even considered worth a mention.and thus the manufacturers make little or no attempt to improve their products.  It would be interesting to see what would happen if say Dapol or Hornby decided to duplicate the Bachmann brake van, making it quite clear that they are making a superior model.  Loco duplication is rife so why not do the same for other items if a much better product is possible..  Perhaps I should invest in persuading Dapol to scale down their 7mm model, provided I could be sure all of it's errors were corrected. That would put the cat among the pigeons although Bachmann might retaliate of course..      Regards  all  adrianbs

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

Personally, I really like Adrian's input. Obviously, you can take it or leave it, but when a manufacturer says "this is a scale model of..." and then somebody says "no it isn't, and this is why..." you can look at those discrepancies and decide for yourself whether those inaccuracies are worth worrying about or not. I think Adrian should review everything!

There's nothing like a well informed review. Fact is though the Bachmann van is better than I can kit build to a finish, and as a 'non-vital' item something I am pleased to have from a RTR manufacturer. Because comedically red-hot ducket position and ventilators apart (both easy to alter) what it does capture successfully is the distinctively different look from a proper LNER Toad E / BR standard van. Buying such a thing RTR leaves more time for the building of kits - including Adrian's - and some scratchbuilding; of the more vital items like bog standard general merchandise opens in all their variety which remain terribly neglected by the RTR makers, yet were 'everywhere'.

[adrianbs]

Hi 34--------B&D   "Comedically red-hot ducket---"   Afraid you've lost me there !!!    regards adrianbs

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

The chimney coming through the roof above the ducket position on the version I have, means that the guard would have to sit on whatever stove was connected to the chimney in order to make use of the ducket. Warm work in winter...

[adrianbs]

Hi  34------------B&D    OK, so i'm getting old and don't watch catchprase, pity you could not do the cartoon though!!!  I might have got it straight away.  adrianbs

[Guest Belgian]

As a matter of interest Adrian, Bachmann have just posted a 68%* increase in the price of the Pillbox vans! What do you make of that?!

 

JE

 

* now £24-95 rrp for a weathered BR grey one and £23-95 for an unweathered bauxite one - the latter was £14-25 - that's a 68% rise!!!!!!).

Edited May 13, 2014 by Belgian

[JSpencer]

As a matter of interest Adrian, Bachmann have just posted a 68%* increase in the price of the Pillbox vans! What do you make of that?!

 

JE

 

* now £24-95 rrp for a weathered BR grey one and £23-95 for an unweathered bauxite one - the latter was £14-25 - that's a 68% rise!!!!!!).

That is jump. You can buy the much bigger Queen Mary for £6 cheaper.