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John Brenchley

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  1. John Brenchley
    It’s hard to believe that it’s nearly 5 years since I last wrote a blog on this forum and actually, most of the work I’m about to describe was completed about 9 months ago.
    I recently decided that in order to make my wagon fleet more representative of the Big 4, I needed some LMS vans.  The Association shop sells 3 plastic body kits that are suitable for my era - a twin pack from the N Scale Society and a single 2mm scale version.
    I was concerned that the N Scale versions would look too large in comparison with my other pure 2mm scale wagons but comparison with drawings suggested that the length and height were acceptable; the problem was with the width which was about 1.5mm too wide.  I therefore decided to see if I could remove sections from each end to reduce the width to match that of the 2mm scale van.
    The N Scale pack has sides and ends to make up into two quite different diagrams, one with horizontal planked sides and corrugated ends that I chose to model as a fitted version of D1897 (10’ wheelbase) and the other with vertical planking and ends that featured cross bracing between two end stanchions that I modelled as an unfitted version of D1664 (9’ wheelbase).
     
    D1897
    Looking at the ends of this kit, it seemed that there were two places where I might be able to reduce the width. Firstly, the flat space between the side of the central ventilator and the start of the corrugations seemed too wide and secondly, there looked to be more plain plastic on the edges than seemed to be the case in photographs. This latter problem was easily solved by trimming a bit off each edge with a sharp scalpel.  The problem either side of the ventilator would mean cutting the ends into three pieces which I did by scoring heavily almost all the way through from the back with a P cutter and then finishing off the cut with a scalpel. 
     

     
    I then cut and filed the pieces so that the corrugations came much closer to the ventilator, trying to get a nice smooth fit between them. 
     

     
    The ends were reassembled using a thick piece of spare plasticard behind them to strengthen the joins.
     

     
    Carefully scraping and filing along each corrugation helped to remove any traces of a ridge where the joins had been.
    A comparison between the original (left) and altered ends (right) can be seen below.  To quote Eric Morecombe (and show my age a bit) “You can’t see the join” (well, hardly).
     

     
    The picture below shows the assembled wagon but with the area below the solebar still needing to be painted black and with one more buffer needing to be bought from the 2mm shops, followed by some darkening of the roof and overall weathering.
     

     
    D1664
    The end of this style of van looked like being harder to deal with as I did not want to spoil the nicely riveted detail of the cross bracing nor lose the riveted detail on the corner plates.  The only solution I could come up with was to replace the three plank sections either side with new ones with the planks scored slightly narrower.  Again, I divided the ends into three pieces, cutting just outside the edge of the vertical stanchions.  In order to retain the corner plates, I glued the edge pieces to the van sides and only after the glue had set really hard, cut the ends back leaving only the bit of plank that was visible behind each corner plate.
     

     
     I scribed two new pieces with three 1mm vertical planks and glued these either side of the original N scale centre piece.
     

     
    After fixing the ends to the sides, extra pieces of plasticard were scribed and fitted to fill in the gaps in the buffer beams.
     

     
    Below is a view from above to compare the width of the one of the finished vans with an un-altered N Gauge Society van kit.
     

     
    Finishing Off
    To create some variety in both chassis style and colour, I chose to model the vans as follows :-
    D1897 - this is modelled as a fitted van with clasp brakes as appears in the photo of number 506818 on page 45 of the 2010 reprint of Essery’s LMS Wagons Vol 1.
    D1664 - I decided that this wagon would be unfitted but painted in bauxite livery with 5” lettering.  I numbered it 264131 as per the picture of a van in BR livery on page 39 of Essery’s book.  Although the photograph shows the ends of this van having slightly different strapping, I hoped these were later additions and also that the van was from one of the unfitted batches as I could not see the brake details from the photograph.  Also, there was no evidence that the van would have received the bauxite livery, but I doubt if anyone can prove it one way or the other.
    The vans are shown below posed in front of Tavistock’s trainshed, still needing painting of the roofs, weathering and buffers.  The left-hand van is from the 2mm Scale Association kit, modelled in LMS grey as an unfitted D1808, number 131391.
     

  2. John Brenchley
    Since my last post I’ve been trying to catch up with the backlog of unmade wagon kits that have been sitting in my “to do” box for far too long.
     
    Before giving some details and final pictures of each wagon, the above picture is a fun little test for the wagon experts among you – can you identify the wagons with only a coat of grey primer? They are all constructed from the 2mm Scale Association plastic body kits with the appropriate etched chassis.
     
    Well – how did you get on? The DC1 and DC3 brakes on the left hand two are a dead give-away for GWR. The next one is a bit more generic but it’s the 5 plank LMS kit. The plank numbers on the other three may help. The 8 plank as an SR open and the other two are the 6 plank LNER kits, one modelled unfitted and one fitted.
     
    GWR Diagrams O14 / O5
     

     
    These two wagons are sold as a twin pack labelled as O3/O5. I don’t have a problem with the O5 description for the 4 plank but I don’t think the 5 plank is correct for diagram O3. Two of the distinguishing features of the early diagram, 5 plank wagons were the diagonal strapping and the side stanchions. The kit has a diagonal strap with curved feet at the bottom. This is appropriate for diagrams O3, O9 and O14 – other diagrams had a straight diagonal. The stanchions either side of the door on the model are L section. I believe this is only appropriate for diagram O14. Photographs of the other two diagrams show flat strapping for the side stanchions. (subsequent edit - On looking again, O3 had flat side stanchions but photos of O9 show T section)
     
    I therefore chose to model the 5 plank wagon as a diagram O14 similar to the photograph on page 54 of Cheona Publications book GWR Wagons Before 1948 Vol. 1. The only addition I made to the body was to add two vertical pieces of plastic to represent the protection for the door when it drops against the door spring stops. The picture shows a DC3 cross cornered brake arrangement with brakes on all 4 wheels. Although it is an unfitted wagon, I included bracing between the W irons as this is shown in the photograph.
     
    The O5 was built as per the kit but with the addition of a small circle of plastic on the top plank as protection for the door when it drops against the end of the brake shaft as there was no door spring stop. I chose to model a chassis with DC1 brakes (on 2 wheels only) but with the adjustment to cross cornered handles.
     
    The instructions for the GWR chassis mention that it is not possible to fit DG Couplings and at the same time model the DC1 cross shafts at each end of the wagon. While this is correct if you use the fold up support for the couplings, it is actually possible to adapt the coupling by folding it in a right angled Z shape so that it fits round the back of the buffer beam and is soldered directly to the floor of the wagon – the fold up support is left flat and unused. A slot also has to be made in the fixing end of the coupling so that it can be fitted either side of the central cross shaft support. Hopefully the picture below explains what I mean.
     

     
     
    LMS Diagram D1666
     

     
    This wagon was built as per the kit with a standard 9’ wooden solebar chassis with independent either side brakes on all 4 wheels. The wagon is numbered 54680 which is listed as one of the known numbers for this diagram in Essery’s reprint of LMS Wagons Vol. 1.
     
    SR Diagram D1400
     

     
    Having previously modelled one of these kits as the earlier diagram D1398, I decided that for some variety I would go for the later diagram D1400 this time. No change is needed to the body but the chassis now has to have independent brakes on each side operating on all 4 wheels. Being a 10’ wheelbase, chassis kit 2-332 was used with the steel conversion overlays. I must admit I find the conversion overlay really difficult to work with particularly as the door bangers always seem to snap off if you want them to correctly follow the shape of the solebar channel - I invariably have to solder them back on one by one which is incredibly fiddly.
     
    D1400 only just fits into my time period of mid to late 30’s and therefore had to be lettered with the smaller post 1936 style letters. As with all the models, Modelmaster transfers from the N Scale society were used.
     
    LNER 6 plank opens
     

     
    The LNER 6 plank wagons come as a twin pack so I decided to model one as fitted and one unfitted. This also gave me an opportunity to introduce a new wagon colour to my fleet as the LNER painted its fitted wagons red oxide. Unfortunately I did not have a tin of this colour but had some LMS bauxite which I hope is a reasonable approximation particularly after some weathering has been applied. The wagons were numbered to match the two pictures on page 19 of Tatlow’s book A Pictorial Record of LNER Wagons. Note that at this stage I have not painted the inside of the wagons - the grey primer needs to be changed to something slightly browner to represent weathered unpainted planks.
     
    The unfitted wagon uses the standard 9’ wheelbase wooden solebar chassis, this time built using the Morton brakes. Luckily the Association also produces an appropriate chassis for the rather distinctive 8 shoe braking arrangement used by the LNER for its fitted wagons. Also, by the time I got round to building the fitted version, I had acquired some RCH style ribbed buffers so used these as being more appropriate than the generic earlier Association turned brass style.
     
     
    So that's my fleet of open wagons complete for the moment. I need to get the airbrush out to do some weathering and then I can move back to building construction. I think my next project will be the GWR stables for Tavistock
  3. John Brenchley
    What with a change of job and one or two modelling projects either stalling or taking longer than expected, it’s been a while since I last posted on RMweb though I didn’t realise till now that it was over 18 months.
     
    Having recently finished the paint job on a couple of GWR wagons and taken some final pictures now seems a good time to add a blog about the diagram AA16 brake van.
     
    Detailed notes on the construction of this David Eveleigh designed etched kit have already been written up by Gingerbread in his 4 blogs on Building an old Toad so I don’t propose to repeat the excellent notes that were written there. However, Gingerbread’s toad was based on the original 1882 design with 4 shoe push rod operated brakes. I wanted a version that was more suited to my modelling period of the mid 1930s so chose to vary the chassis to match the version that was "modernised" during the First World War by fitting clasp brakes, self-contained buffers and a few other modifications. This version was given the diagram number AA16. By this time, the van would also have been fitted with oil rather than grease axle boxes and had additional hand rails and sanding gear added.
     
    Luckily I had some clasp brake etches left over from a 2MM Scale Association wagon chassis etch that could be used on this van. The wagon chassis was for a 9‘ wheel base so I had to separate the clasp brake etch into two parts so as to fit the 11‘6“ wheelbase of this brake van. I also took the opportunity to thin down the etch where it joins the two triangular parts together so as to better represent the rod connections that could then be bent to approximate the way the operating rods were connected (see bottom left of first picture below).
     

     

     
    I think David’s etch is meant to represent the original grease axle boxes and since these seemed rather too square looking and omitted the obvious join between the two parts of an oil axle box, I opted to remove this part from the final layer of the etch (attached to the footstep layer) and replace it with a large oil axle box etch left over from another kit (can’t remember which one and might not even have been GWR but it seemed close enough in appearance). The picture below shows the chassis folded up with the brakes attached and oil axle box layers soldered on to one side. One footboard etch is shown before alteration and below it the folded up and soldered version with the grease axle box removed.
     

     
    The final addition made to the chassis was to solder four pieces of wire into holes drilled in each corner to represent the vertical dry sanding pipes that are visible in some photographs of these brake vans.
     

     
    I opted not to fit the final sole bar and footboard layer until the body had been fitted to the chassis so as to make sure no gap was left between them – a tip learned from Gingerbread’s notes (its great being able to learn from other modeller's observations)
     
    Another thing I picked up from Gingerbread’s blog was that it was difficult to line up all the body parts if they were soldered to the top of the chassis one by one. I therefore opted to build the body as a separate box which would be screwed to the chassis once completed. This method also allows the roof to be soldered to the body from underneath which would not be possible if the chassis was already in place.
     
    David uses the clever approach now adopted by many etch designers of attaching the body layers to separate frames that have holes in each corner allowing alignment of the layers for soldering. These frames are only removed after soldering is complete. The only problem I found was fitting the corners smoothly together. As designed, each layer slightly overlaps the previous one creating a stepped edge that creates interlocking between the side and end pieces at each corner. However, once the three layers were soldered together, I found it very difficult to completely remove the tabs that attached the ends to each frame – any residue of a tab rather got in the way of a tight fit between the sides and ends. With hindsight I should have removed the tab on each vertical edge and filed it smooth before soldering the layers together. The tabs on the top and bottom edges would have been sufficient to hold the layers in alignment and can be filed off more easily after completion.
     
    The original version of the 1882 van only had the mid-level horizontal handrails and a couple of vertical ones by the door to the verandah and at the far end of the cabin. In later life they acquired an extra vertical rail on the other side of the door plus two low level handrails along the bottom of the cabin sides. I decided to be masochistic and make up hand rails knobs from twisted phosphor bronze wire. The back of the inner etch layer had indentations to mark where these should go so I carefully drilled these through all three layers using drills of about 0.3mm to 0.4mm, breaking quite a few in the process but I think it was worthwhile as the handrails do stand out slightly from the side of the van rather than being soldered directly to it.
     

     

     
    A couple of extra fittings that show up in the next photograph are the brass brake lever bought from N Brass Locos and the sand boxes fitted to each corner of the verandah which were made from scraps of plasticard – I think some vans originally had one box or bench across the whole width of the verandah but I obtained some drawings and notes from other GWR modellers that suggested that the AA16 version had the two separate boxes.
     

     
    I could not find any evidence of examples of these vans allocated to Plymouth during the 1930's which would have been appropriate for the Tavistock branch so I opted for number 8819 whcih was allocated to Taunton, the closest location I could find. A little modeller's licence may be needed to explain it's presence at Tavistock. Also, I haven't worked out yet how I am going to do the lettering for "Taunton" as it isn't on any standard decal sheets
     
    Only two other things remain to be done. Firstly some light weathering which will hopefully hide the annoying edges of the transfers – I don’t think I had the finish sufficiently glossy before I applied them. Secondly, I only had thin shanked buffers available at the time I built the kit but I now hear that the 2mm Scale Association has some 3D printed self-contained ones available – designed I think by Julia Adams, so I’ll get some and retrofit them to any of my wagons that should have had this style.
     
     

     
    A final photograph showing the brake van and a couple of other wagons on Tavistock. The diagram V18 van uses the resin body available from the 2mm Scale association and I have modelled it as one of the vacuum braked versions that had an iron roof and an extra small central ventilator just below the roof at each end.
  4. John Brenchley
    Before painting and lettering the two Midland open wagons, I spent quite some time studying Essery's Midland Wagons Vol 1 looking for examples in LMS livery.
     
    I eventually decided that the majority of the 3 plank D305 wagons built with the shorter brake lever did not have either side brakes with levers on the right but in fact only had brake blocks on one side . On the opposite side, there was a lever at the left hand end which operated the brakes via a cross shaft.
     
    Although the model wagon was essentially already built, I hoped that it would be possible to alter the brakes without too much damage. Although the chassis etch did not cater for "same end" brakes, if one of the brake levers was assembled in reverse, ie making all the folds the opposite way to what was intended, this should give me a left hand lever and hanger.
     
    On one side, I carefully unsoldered the brake lever assembly and put it to one side for use on a future wagon kit - I did not try to refold it as I was sure the thin etch would break into pieces. I also snapped off the brake shoes and push rods from this side but left the single V hanger. From a new chassis etch intended for a future wagon, I folded up a new lever in reverse. As there was no hole etched at the left hand end to solder the top of the brake hanger into, I drilled a new one and filled the right hand hole with a wedge of plastic strip. I did not want to disturb the brakes on the other side so did not try to thread through a new full width cross shaft to replace the previous stub shaft. Instead, I butted it up to the back of the V hanger and soldered it in place.
     
    The picture below shows the new brake arrangement after painting - the new hole at the top of the brake hanger still shows up in close up but I did not want to risk filling it with solder because of the close proximity of the plastic body. I may try to wedge some bits of plastic into the hole to improve it a bit but it is not really visible from normal viewing distance.
     

     
    I chose the number 16600 from the picture on page 61 of the Essery book as this seemed to match the altered version of the model.
     
    For the 5 plank D299 wagon, I found a picture of 37729 on page 53 which seemed to match the model quite well though without a central door banger. However, this number was going to be quite hard to make up from the N Scale Society's decal sheet without applying some of the 5 numbers individually. I therefore changed the number to 37725 which I could make up a bit easier, hoping that this was appropriate for a wagon from the same batch. I also left the door banger in place on the model as I thought it would be too hard to remove without damage to other parts and there seemed to be an infinite number of variations in pictures so who was likely to argue that 37725 did not have one at some time in its life?
     

     
    Finally a picture below of the two wagons with quite a bit of weathering posed on part of the Tavistock layout.
     

     
    Best wishes
     
    John
  5. John Brenchley
    Since reaching the stage shown at the end of my last blog on this wagon, I did not make much progress while working on other projects but I continued looking for photographs, particularly of wagons in LMS livery.
     
    At this point, my modelling took on rather masochistic tendancies as I realised from photographs that there seemed to be some sort of beading either side of the corner framework and also near the bottom of the wagon side. This seemed quite noticeable but was not allowed for on the kit so I tried to represent it by fixing pieces of 10 thou plasticard on edge into the grooves on the etch with superglue. I then scraped and sanded them down to approximately the correct shape.
     

     
    After a spray of undercoat (Testors) it became apparent that the disadvantage of superglue being totally clear is that it is very hard to see if all the surplus has been scraped off and some stray remnants were highlighted by the undercoat. So out with the scalpel blade again to clean this up before another burst of undercoat.
     
    At this point I was shown some better quality pictures in volume 2 of the LNWR wagons books and realised that there was also beading along the top of the sides on either side of the doors. So out came a bit more plastic strip and another spray of undercoat. At this point I was getting very concerned that too many coats of paint were being applied and I think with the final coat of LMS livery, it may be a bit thick and is slightly obscuring some of the fine rivet detail. The finished wagon, appropriately lettered and numbered is pictured below. I still need to spray the roof a dirty grey and add some weathering to the sides and underframe - some dry brushing might bring out the rivet detail again.
     

     
    With hindsight (isn't that a wonderful thing) I wonder why on earth I didn't try suitable size wire lightly soldered into the appropriate grooves instead of the plastic. It might have been easier to get straight and a more uniform size so if I ever try another of these kits, that's what I'll experiment with. At least from normal viewing distance and once weathered, the faults are not too noticeable though in the photograph, the slight kink in the right hand diagonal strapping annoys me quite a bit. At some stage I might be able to obtain more accurate LNWR style buffers but for the moment, the 2mm Scale Association generic ones will have to do.
     
    John
  6. John Brenchley
    As the weather here in Perth, Western Australia has been too hot for me to use an airbrush outside, I decided to press on with making another of the 2mm Scale Association's kits and wait for cooler days before painting all the LMS vehicles in one go.
     
    This one was for the Midland Railway's diagram 257 van. The date on the etch is 2007 so it has been around for a while and I have noticed examples of completed vans in pictures elsewhere on this site but I am not sure if anyone has posted any details of the construction - apologies if they have.
     

     
    The kit is a nickel silver etch for the van body and has to be matched up with one of the Associations etched chassis kits. The body etch is one of Chris Higg's designs and this was the first time I had tried one of them - I was most impressed. The sides and ends of the van are made up of a series of overlays (in the case of the van side, 6 layers in total). The clever part of the design is the method of alignment - each layer is contained in its own frame that has 1mm holes in each corner - these are aligned by using something like a top hat bearing or anything else of a 1mm diameter inserted in the holes - the frames are then cut off after soldering. The method works very well and I know something similar is also used by David Eveleigh on some of his kits so I do not know who to credit with the original idea.
     
    The picture below shows all the layers attached and also indicates the method of aligning the parts together round the floor - the ends have a slot into which a tab at the end of the floor is located. Also, the inner layer of the sides is slightly smaller at the bottom, giving a lip that locates over the floor.
     

     
    Almost at the last minute before soldering the sides and ends together, I noticed two small holes etched into the sliding door layer. Checking with prototype pictures showed these to mark the position of a door handle so I found my last remaining 0.3mm drill and carefully started to drill them all the way through with the intention if inserting a piece of guitar string bent to a rather square cornered U shape and soldered from the back of each hole. With hindsight it might have been better to pre drill through each layer before assembly rather than trying to go through all of them at once since despite being really careful, I managed to break the drill after one and a half holes. This still enabled me to fit one handle as I cut off most of one side of the U and passed the other long side through the complete hole and soldered it to the back - the short side was effectively pulled tightly down and just sits in the half drilled hole. The handle on the other side will have to wait till more drills arrive from Eileen's Emporium.
     
    The instructions say that the sides fit between the ends but after I had attached one end and one side in this manner, I found that the floor seemed a bit short if I fitted the other end outside the side. Maybe some of my soldering had not been careful enough but there was no way I could adjust all the layers now so I was a bit stuck as to what to do. I decided to bend the roof to shape and see if this helped me identify if I had the van too long or too wide. In fact both seemed to be the case as it looked as if the roof would be a bit skimp in both width and length. Perhaps I have too much solder between some of the layers and this has made the sides and ends too thick. In the end I decided to compomise and assembled the other sides and ends with alternate corners either inside or outside, making the body slightly wider and shorter than intended by the thickness of one etch layer. I may have to cut a new roof from scrap metal so as to get the appropriate overhangs all round but that will have to wait till next weekend. Did anyone else who has made up these kits have similar problems or is it just me?
     
    Below is a picture of the van in its current state, taken from the side with the door handle fitted. It has been cleaned up with a glass fibre brush and old scalpel blade to get in the corners - the fine scratches show up on the picture quite prominently but I think from experience on previous models that they will not be evident once the undercoat is applied.
     

  7. John Brenchley
    Having almost reached the painting stage with the LNWR van, I decided that since it was to be painted in LMS livery, rather than get the air brush set up for just one model, I might as well build the two Midland wagons that had been sitting in my "to do" box for a couple of years and finish them in LMS livery as well.
     
    The 2mm Scale Association kit for these wagons comes with a plastic sprue containing the sides and floor for both a 3 plank and 5 plank open in the same double kit. An etched 9' wheelbase Midland chassis kit is also available from the Association and I had bought two of these to go with the wagons.
     

     
    As can be seen, the chassis contains parts to allow various combinations to be made - either single or double V hangers, with or without a central door stop, oil or grease axleboxes but only has the short Midland style brake lever.
     
    Having studied the information given in R.J. Essery's An Ilustrated History of Midland Wagons - Vol 1, I decided that for wagons still running in LMS days, I should have brakes on both sides. For the 3 plank D305, I decided on the wooden end door stops and added these from small pieces of plasticard. I also opted for a single V hanger. Plate 75 in the above book seems to show a wagon with these features but I am not sure if the number given (658) is its original Midland number - not being very knowledgeable on the LMS can I ask if anyone else can confirm if such a wagon would have had an extra number added as a prefix in LMS days?
     

     
    For the 5 plank wagon, I chose to model it with double V hangers and a central door stop but am now struggling to find a picture of such a wagon in LMS days, particularly with the shorter style of brake lever - can anyone help please.
     

     
    The wagon body parts are nice crisp mouldings and fit together easily to create a good square wagon. The floor is reversible, having representations of plain planks on one side and bottom opening doors on the other. Hopefully, I made the right decision and used the bottom doors on the D299 5 plank and the solid planked floor on the D305 3 plank. The only slight criticisms of the plastic parts is that the rivet detail is perhaps a little excessive and some of the corners, particularly on the 5 plank are a bit rounded rather than square. I attempted to improve this by adding some 30thou wide strips of plasicard to the ends of the buffer beams to try to square them up and I also glued in some small plastic scraps of plastic to the top corners of the 5 plank wagon and then cut them back to leave a sharper corner - in the pictures, this seems more successful on the right hand end than the left and although not visible, has improved the inside of each corner as well.
     
    The next stage should be painting but at the moment, with a heat wave here in Perth, Western Australia, the temperature is really too high for painting, so I'll get back to finishing off the train shed roof. I'm also waiting for an order from the Association shop as I've run out of buffers, as can be seen from the picture of the 3 plank open.
  8. John Brenchley
    The etched nickel silver chassis that comes with this kit is similar to the standard chassis type that is now being sold by the 2mm Scale Association for use with a variety of wagons - correct variations being available to suit each region, wagon length etc. It is great to have these accurate kits available as it avoids having to make compromises that used to be forced on me when I started in N scale with kits being stretched or shrunk to fit an incorrect Peco chassis.
     

     
    On the left is the main fold up chassis frame then moving right, the fold up brake unit, the brake levers, the solebar overlays, buffer beams and lastly the axleboxes.
     
    My preference is to do as much as possible with the etch flat so after soldering in the top hat bearings from the back, I added the two solebar overlays and then the axleboxes. I tried to keep these attached to the main etch for as long as possible since once separated they are very small and rather hard to keep hold of. The three layers were folded up and soldered together, then the edges cleaned up with a file before the whole axlebox was soldered to the front of the solebar. I held it in place with the tip of a scalpel blade and gently touched the soldering iron to the base where the axlebox met the W irons. Mostly this worked but I did dwell too long on one of them and had the three layers floating about a bit - it took me a long time to get them all lined up again.
     

     
    The chassis can now be folded up and checked for squareness on a sheet of glass then the wheels popped in prior to a run up and down some test track to check for wobbles. All seemed OK so I added some solder into the fold lines to keep the sides firmly in position. The brake blocks etc are attached to a fold up etch that locates by tabs under the chassis - it lined up perfectly so could be quickly soldered into place (great etch design - I'm not sure who by though - I think Chris Higgs does a lot of the recent 2mm Scale Associations chassis etches but I'm not sure if this is one of his) .
     

     
    The brake levers are a little fiddly as they have to be bent to clear the axleboxes - etched markers on the back help to get the bends in the correct places and strengthening the folds with a touch of solder prevents too much damage later on. A piece of wire through the V hangers holds one end and a square hole in the solebar is used to locate the folded up ratchet end. The doors bangers need to be bent out from the solebar so that the brake lever can fit behind them, something that is not mentioned in the kit instructions. Note to self for future kits - solder brake hanger BEHIND door bangers not on top of them!!! - I nearly wrecked one of the brake levers when correcting this mistake on the first side.
     
    Below is the finished chassis sitting on a piece of the Associations easitrac.
     

     
    The van body attaches to the chassis with quite a clever arrangement of tabs at the sides that locate into slots at the top of the solabars. You start with the tabs at about a 45 degree angle at which they just start to enter the slots then gently push down on the body so that the tabs end up horizontal and out of sight. At this stage I have not added buffers as I only have a generic type and I think the 2mm Scale Association is currently working on some new designs - I'll have to find out if any will be more appropriate for the LNWR.
     

  9. John Brenchley
    I’ve had one of the 2mm Scale Association’s etched kits for the LNWR diagram 88 van for quite some time and as a change from laying roof slates on my model of Tavistock’s train shed roof, thought the Christmas and New Year holidays would be an ideal time to make a start on it.
     
    The kit is etched entirely in nickel silver and has been described by several people as “challenging”. The main reason for this is probably because of the extremely delicate nature of the etched strapping overlay as can be seen from the picture below. In this picture, I have already soldered the doors in place – the kit giving an option of either LNWR or LMS styles. Although my model is set in LMS days, I decided to model the van as one that had retained all its LNWR features. The doors are rather a loose fit in the hole left for them in the etched sides so I had to place spare pieces of etch behind the joins to hold the doors in place.
     

     
    The kit instructions talk about folding up the van sides first and then adding the strapping. I felt I would have more chance of getting the strapping in the correct place if I worked with the van still flat. The only thing to be careful of if doing it this way is to make sure that the top corners of the side strapping that will wrap round the ends do not get soldered to the ends at this stage – a thin piece of packing under the sides allows the ends to be bend down just enough to keep the wrap around unsoldered.

    No doubt the best way of attaching the strapping might be with an RSU but since I do not have one, I used normal soldering methods - I tinned the back of the strapping with a small amount of solder, held it in position with a small piece of masking tape, applied lots of flux and used a very clean iron with virtually no solder on it so as not to leave stray solder on the surface of the van.
     

     
    The above picture shows that a couple of the long thin diagonal straps have some slight kinks in them. You really only get one go at soldering such delicate pieces in place – I tried a bit of careful straightening but if I got one kink straightened out, another one seemed to be introduced – so I quit before it got any worse. The problem with pictures that can be enlarged to about gauge 1 size is that they show up problems that may never actually be visible at normal viewing distance especially once painted and weathered.
     
    The two substantial wooden stanchions on each end of the van are made up from three layers of etch, the middle one having locating tabs. The picture below shows the three parts as supplied on the etch and a completed stanchion below.
     

     
    Again I decided not to follow the kit instructions which suggest soldering the centre piece to the van end first and then adding the side pieces to it. I thought this was likely to cause me to get too much stray solder on the van so I joined the three pieces together first and then soldered the completed stanchion to the van end. This seemed to work reasonably well as can be seen in the picture below.
     

     
    Now I was ready to fold up the van and solder the wrap round top corner strapping into place. Enlarging the picture below shows that one end of the X strapping is a bit short at the top right hand corner – once all the soldering is complete, I’ll see if I can superglue a small piece of plastic into the gap.
     

     
    Buffer beams are included on the etch for the chassis but actually need to be soldered to the van body. They are a two layer etch with the inner layer having a tab which fits up the inside of the van end so that the outer layer is flush with the van end. As with the van doors, both LNWR and replacement LMS styles are included and I chose to use the LNWR ones.
     
    Also at this stage, the bottom corner plates on each side need to be soldered in place. As can be seen from the first picture, they are basically rectangular in shape but are etched with one corner cut off. The only picture I had of an actual van seemed to show purely rectangular plates so I could not see why the cut off corner existed on the etch. I decided perhaps it was to fit next to the end of the buffer beam that was slightly wider that the van sides so fitted them that way round with enough solder to cover the joins and be filed back so that a reasonably neat square corner could be achieved.
     

     
    Finally, I was ready to add the roof and again, I chose to use the LNWR ribbed version. Hopefully some vans in their original LNWR style survived till well into the LMS era and someone might be able to recommend a suitable number for when I get to the painting and lettering stage.
     
    My photograph (from the LNWR Society’s website) seemed to show that the original style roof was an exact fit and did not overhang either the sides or the ends. The etched roof supplied was a perfect fit for length but was about half a millimetre too wide each side which meant some very careful filing was needed so as not to damage the adjacent strapping.
     
    The final photograph is below – it reveals a few areas I may need to improve and careful inspection with a magnifying glass may show up a few more. In particular, I want to improve the join where the folded up side meets the end (the interlocking tabs are still visible) and also add a little solder to the top of the stanchions so they can be filed square and flush to the top of the roof - hopefully this will also hide the fact that they are made from three layers which is currently still apparent.
     

     
    Next weekend I'll have a go at the chassis.
  10. John Brenchley
    Over the Christmas break, amongst other modelling projects, I've continued with the roof slates.
     
    Having reached the top of the skylights/dormers, before adding further rows of slates, I needed to add ridge capping to each of the 6 skylights. Photographs do not really show this clearly but I assumed it would be lead capping fitted over a thin rod. I had some 9 thou steel guitar string left over from the roof trusses so used this, supergluing short lengths along the top of each ridge. For the lead I used thin paper (actually the envelope the guitar string came in) which I had cut about 4mm wide. Before gluing it to the roof, I placed it over a spare length of the wire and creased in the central rolled top. This made it easier to position over the wire on the roof. I used ordinary white pva glue to fix the paper in position and trimmed the edges if they were not quite even each side before the glue totally set.
     
    I then continued to the top of the roof with more slate strips. There are no skylights on the other side so progress with that may be a bit quicker. Only one picture of progress this time and I won't bore you with further blogs on this subject until all the slates are laid on both sides and I can start on the weathering.
     

     
    By way of a change from Tavistock's roof, I've made a start on the 2mm Scale Association's etched kit for the LNWR diagram 88 van and in the next day or so will put up some pictures and description in a new blog entry. It's a beautiful etch but quite challenging to put together.
  11. John Brenchley
    When I joined RMWeb and posted some pictures to a gallery (3 Dec 2011) I had reached the stage where the train shed roof for Tavistock was structurally complete but needed the slates added to it. The picture attached shows the roof as it was last Saturday.
     

     
    The slates I have used in the past on the station building were produced by Ian Barefoot under the trade name of ClearSolutions and are printed as sticky labels on good quality paper. As these worked very well for the building roof, I decided to use them again on the train shed roof - the style I chose was the random grey sheet of Duchess sized slates. Picture attached.
     

     
    Before cutting out the strips of slate, I also cut through the visible parts of the vertical joins between each slate. Although time consuming, I think this is beneficial as when weathered, this allows the joins to show up better. By yesterday afternoon I had reached the stage shown in the final picture - slates added to each of the sky lights ( the dormer shape openings) and the first 6 rows added to the main part of the roof.
     

  12. John Brenchley
    My idea is to report progress on a weekly basis but that presupposes that I have actually got somewhere in the last week. Obviously, slate laying is a slow process as I am still on the first side but the worst is probably over as I've got past the skylights. It was tricky to lay the slate strips round these because of the angles but the rest should go a bit quicker now.
     

     
    The framework for the skylights had to have a coat of dirty light stone prior to laying the slates as I would not be able to do this later without getting paint on the slates. I also took the opportunity to put a first coat of paint on the gutters and part of the underneath timberwork. The grey undercoat is still influencing the final colour which should be a bit pinker but faded and dirty.
     

     
    As a way of getting a rest from laying slate strips, I made a start on the downpipes for the outer wall of the trainshed. The first one in not quite finished as I need to add one more bracket nearer the bottom of the downpipe. In total, four downpipes will be needed . The pipe is made from 30 thou rod from Evergreen and the bracket made from strips of 5 thou welded round the pipe plus another thin strip across the back.
     

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