airnimal

Richard, it is good to see unusual wagons like the brake van, you should show us more. Are the rest of the wagons scratch built or is it just the brake van ? Well I got up early and put most of the loco back together. I still have a couple of parts to add or replace. The carpet monster ate one of the safty valves levers and the replacement I was making broke as I was cleaning it. I think painting the operating levers black has made a big difference IMO. I was disappointed when these locos were first announced that the plain black was not going to be a option. Then due to public demand, Minerva released a batch of plain black after I had already acquired my lined version. Perhaps Minerva has done me a favour because if plain black had been available I wouldn't have taken the trouble to repaint mine this shade of green. I need to replace the plastic coal in the bunker with real coal but where does one get some of that today. Obviously a heritage line but are any open ? I also so need to weather it to a well looked after but slightly run down example.

I was a member for over 30 years but did not renew my membership this year because I got sick and tired of the same few people on the forum. I joined my local group when it was first announced and was told at my first meeting by an old boy who was in charge that I had to bring something along every month to contribute to the group. I took something along like I was told for 5 years and in that time the old boy in charge only ever produced 1 single wagon. When I left I use to see members at Guild shows and was asked why I no longer attended. When I look back on my working life most of the reasons I left my employment for a new post was usually because of some obnoxious person being in charge. I was once given a post that I didn't want where I had to deal with people face to face. What that told me there you meet some of the most helpful and kind people and some of the most horrible humans possible. I once addressed an old lady as dear, but later got a reprimand of my superior form being to familiar. The old lady had said to me that it had made her day to be addressed so lovingly. There I think is the problem with the Guild, people, human beings. Wasn't it Groucho Marx who said that I don't want to be a member of any club that would admit me.

Richard, your loco looks extremely good, did Colin do the repaint as well as converting to S7. You should show us more of your work looking at the above photograph. I did see your article in the S7 newsletter about your layout plans for a mineral railway. I stayed in a small youth hostel just near where your layout is based about 20 years ago, quite remote part of the country. I have decided to paint my Manning Whardle a light Highland Green. I gave the parts a grey undercoat before spraying them with a rattle can which is a Ford colour. I will let them harden overnight before attempting to reassemble all the bits and pieces. I what to paint the operating rods black to get rid of the bright red bits which look a bit toy like lMO. The smoke box door has come out well but it is hard to photograph.

Neil, that's the first I have seen modified other than repainted ones. You have made a first class Job of it. I like the cab modification but I don't think I brave enough to cut mine down. I am not sure which of the cabs to use yet. I have made a new smokebox door and added a couple of hinges with .6mm rivets from MasterClub. I have also added a handrail with 4mm handrail knobs. This is like going back to my childhood cutting up Airfix kits again !

A change from the normal today. My Minerva Manning Wardle needs a repaint and a new lift up smoke box door. I have had it modified to run on S7 track by Colin Dowling ( Eastside Pilot ). When I ordered my loco from Minerva they were offering them in 3 different colours. I wanted plain black or green but they were only offering them in bright blue, red, and lined black. So I opted to have the lined black only to find out 12 months latter they were going to do a limited run of plain black ! Just my luck. I didn't like the bright red levers and the lining looks like one big yellow line when in fact there is a red line either side of the yellow which is so fine it gets lost and can't be seen from normal viewing distance. So so I decided to strip mine down and give it a repaint. I was expecting to see articles in all the magazines on people rebuilding these little locos and maybe on line to. But it has been very quiet on this front. The body comes off with just 3 small screws and is then broken down in to all the small components parts by brushing on white spirit to soften the glue holding everything together. It takes a few minutes for the the white spirit to work it's magic and then I have basically a kit of parts. Everthing is stored in a Ferro Roche chocolate box so that I don't lose anything because there are some very small components. When the smokebox door is removed it leaves a recess rather than a plain front so I have cut a couple of rings of black 20 thou plastikard to fit in the space left by the vacant door. I just need to fashion a new lift up door with new handrails. I have also removed the lining by scrapping with a number 9 flat scalpel blade because I thought the lining might be visible under any new paint.

I have now weathered down to match the other NSR wagons. I think it is better toned down rather than being ex-works.

Lots of points there to consider, but I'm just a simple modeller trying to do my best while enjoying what I make. " Better to be talked about than not be talked about " Wasn't that an Oscar Wilde quote I have managed to get some letters and numbers on from my stock of meth fix tranfers. They wouldn't stick as well as they usually do, so I had to varnish over them with my bottle of Testers Dullcote before they curled up. I still need to weather the bodywork a little. At least I have a stablemate to keep the small bolster happy.

Perhaps it's me that doesn't see what other people see. Well I don't think it looks any better built up. Perhaps a large load will cover the offending floor and distract the eye away ? I have to find some lettering the right size and hand paint the NSR knot because I don't have any that small. If the rain stays away this afternoon I will paint the axleboxes and springs and do all the little thing that make the wagon complete.

The rain stopped long enough to get a coat of paint on everything. The body has come out reasonable but then I tried to be smart on painting the wooden deck with disastrous results. I must have had about 10 goes at it with each time getting a worst result. I have removed most of the paint and tried different approaches all the time becoming more despondent. I will build it up shortly and see how it looks then. i managed to get a hair cut yesterday after six months which was a present from one of my daughters for a Father's Day present. She booked me in to a trendy barbers on line. For someone my age it's not what I am use to but the gentleman did a fine job, but when I got home and saw the cost it made me shudder. She paid by card on line but they sent me the receipt to my e-mail account. I don't wish to be ungrateful but I don't want my children spending there hard earned cash on an old fool like me.

95% complete ! Just needs a tidy up and a few bits adding and then a good clean before painting. I don't think this will be for a couple of days because of the rain. I don't have a paint booth so I have to paint outside. I hope people liked the coach bolts / rivets idea. Melting the brown rod was not my idea because I had seen it in a very early MRJ but the jig to make them all the same size was. If you need to make them with bigger heads you just increase the size of the packing underneath. This allows the bits of brown rod to be longer so increases the head size.

Richard, I put lead sheet in pockets under the floor. I don't glue them in after the problems other people have had with boiler explosions when the lead reacted with the various glues being used. I don't really have an ideal weight, I just put what feels right and see how they work around various test tracks. I have just put one on the kitchen scales and it was about 3 oz . I am not sure our scales are correct but when I have run a train of 10 or 12 wagons they have all behaved well without any derailments. It's probably because of other people's good track work rather than my wagons being built right. Getting near the end on my bolster wagon I have put some resin bolts on the outside of the headstock. On the other side I wanted some coach bolts made from plastic rather than the resin ones from MasterClub. The reason I wanted plastic is ease of use when glueing the tiny coach bolts in. When I glue the MasterClub resin ones I use superglue but with very small parts in confirmed spaces I tend to glue myself to everthing else. So so I had to make some plastic coach bolts myself. I have a little jig to make them with which consists of a strip of nickel glued to a wooden sleeper with lots of holes drilled to take Slaters 20 thou brown plastic rod. I place this on another piece of nickel but and raise it up with a couple of strip of 30 thou plastic and load the holes with the plastic rod. I then cut the rod down flush with the top surface and remove the packing to leave the rod sitting proud by 30 thou. I the run a match above the rod and watch all the sticking up bits of rod melt in to tiny coach bolts all the same size. I turn the jig over any and all the bolts fall out. Simple.

I have started on the nuts and bolts which showed up a problem with the V-irons. I hadn't got them perfectly square on. I only noticed this when I came to mark the position of the rivets along the small plank above the solebars. I marked the positions with a pencil but when I came to the two in the centre there were either side of the V-iron rather directly above. So I had to remove the pins and fill the holes in and start again. I had to take a small amount of the top of the V-iron on one side and redrill the holes for the fixings. It does look a lot better even though I haven't done the rivets just yet. I have also added a Scale Hardware brass bolt to one side of the D shackles and a coach bolt to the other side. There is still a lot of details to add before I get to the painting stage, but I have got some work to do around the house to keep the household authorities happy.

A bit more detail added to the bolsters including the chamfers on the ends. The backing plates had the holes punched through from a 20 thou strip of Evergreen and cut and shaped to size. All the bolts and rivets are yet to go on.

I am surprised I didn't get pulled up over the Turner Gallery, it is of course the Tait Gallery and the Turner prize. Mistakes like that are common in our house because my wife is from Salford and talks like Hilda Baker, so most things are backward. I have fixed the brake gear with the V-irons and it has worked out fine. The pins holding the V-irons push through the solebar and the brake gear which clips in between several bits of Evergreen. It all comes apart for painting.

Dave, I think we are are in the same boat. I am working as fast as I can before the inevitable happens. I am not sure about works of art ! Do you think The Turner Gallery would like to buy them at vastly inflated prices. Its coming together now with the brake gear and the V-irons placed on to check the fitting. I didn't have any V-irons long enough so I had to cut out a pair from a couple of bits of nickel soldered together.

Well ten sets of wheels aren't any good in there packets so I will have put them to use ! These bolster wagons are a mixed lot on the N.S.R. They seem to be different varieties of styles and with only so much information available, so there will be some guess work involved. I was going to do this one with a small body like the previous one but looking at the photos in G.W.R wagon loads were there are several photos showing flush tops to a couple of them. So I modified this body by inserting individual planks which is a first for me. I took the opportunity to make them all slightly different . I cut the runners out of 60 thou plastic with a set of dividers. The first ring of plastic was too thin so I cut out a second attempt which was better with a ring of 10 thou for the steel rubbing strip.

Schooner, thank you for the thumbs up. I am slightly embarrassed about such praise. With the the gentle prodding about single bolsters I have started a larger later version that was probably a rebuilt dumb buffer conversion. It has self contained buffers and modern brakes by my standards ( 2 brake shoes ). The buffers I am using are loco buffers from my spares box that have been modified by filing the base off and filing the body parallel. I think they could have been G.W.R tapered buffers, but how I came by them I have no idea !

Good job I have ordered 10 sets of wagon wheels from Slaters then !

Many thanks for kind comments, It is appreciated. I forgot the ends of the buffers that I made as a separate piece to go on after the painting was complete. Rarther than cut in to the frame to put the iron retaining straps on, I cut 4 pieces from black plastikard with the corners rounded off and painted body colour on one side. I then cleaned the paint off the edge to leave just the black showing. These were then glued on so they look like they have the iron band around the end of the frame. These pieces look smaller than the frame. That's not a mistake on my part they are like that on the prototype.

There are a couple of bits to do but it's more or less finished. I started on the 18th and now it's the 28th so 10 days work for a small wagon. Obviously I didn't work on it every day but there has to be about 60 hours in it. Was it worth it ? What to do next ? There are still about 10 wagons that need finishing / painting in my workshop as well parts galore hanging around. I don't have a good track record using kits so the G.W.R Cooper Craft parts I have don't excite me much. I feel we have been left in limbo wating for the lockdown to ease so we can go and look at a house move. If we don't get a move on soon I feel it will be to late and we will end up staying here and the railway will never get built. Perhaps thinking that way I should order some baseboards and just get on with it !

It's a pleasure to see such an excellent model of an unusual prototype. The chain's and shackles make the model come alive.

....no sign of heat damage ? It has nearly been chucked on the fire several times these past couple of days ! So much for saying I have a photo of each sides so I should not have any excuse for getting things wrong. The label clips were moved because I thought I had them both in the wrong place when only one of them was in fact wrong. I missed completely I had put the brake gear on the wrong side. Could I live with this stupid error ? Of course not it would forever eat away at me ever time I looked at it. So last night when our neighbors daughter and her friends were having a birthday party right outside my bedroom window, I put right the brake gear issues. My wife can sleep through anything but a dozen 23 year olds merry on Vodkas and with a healthy disco turned up loud didn't make for a good nights sleep. So so this morning when looking at where to put the chalk marks on another glaring error jumps out at at me. I spaced the N.S.R to far apart. More work. I won't win any prizes for my observational skills I think I have got it right at last. Onwards to the finish I hope.....

Hopefully I will be able to complete this wagon this weekend. Still lots of loose ends to tidy up and finish the lettering but there is light at the end of the tunnel.

After all the mistakes including putting the label clip in the same location on both sides which was wrong I have finally got to the painting stage. Even having photos of both sides I failed to notice the label clip on the brake side had been moved to fit the brake rack. At least I noticed before I started painting which was a bonus. So I have prepared all the parts after cleaning and blackening the metal bits. A quick 30 minutes with the rattle cans before the rain appeared was time enough to get to the stage you can see here. I borrowed some better wheels from a finished wagon which I will have replace.

After the hiccups yesterday I have done a bit more this morning without burning anything down. I have only the brake handle and rack to do and then I can paint at last. I cut out the axleboxes retaining straps which are an unusual shape. I soldered 4 bits of nickel together and cut them out as one. I think they do make a difference to the appearance of the wagon.