Guy Rixon

The LCDR wagon-buffers and the LNWR self-contained wagon-buffers, which were languishing in "first to try" status, have now been printed successfully and the samples are on their way to me.

Also "printed successfully" and on their way are some shackle-mounted springs. They're 40-inch, 4-plate springs intended for GWR fruit vans, but they might be usable for other vehicles. Now that I have the CAD primitives for these springs I can do similar ones of different sizes, and I invite suggestions. The springs will not be in the shop until I see the samples. There were problems in getting them accepted at all and I need to check that nothing tragic has happened before offering them to anybody else.

BTW, though the GWR and others used rivets on their metal underframes, only the LNWR, as far as I know, used them to hold its wagon corner plates together. 

The fasteners on some GWR vans look like rivets on the outside, but I speculate that they may actually be dome-headed coach-bolts with the nuts on the inside of the body.

One area that requires further research is the use of Archer's rivets - I have no idea what the best size for wagon bodies might be.  Another area is that of producing homemade transfers; West Norfolk Railway and fictitious POs need lettering, though the latter might be supplied by HMRS generic lettering sheets.  I also find that the Great Eastern seems to lack transfers.  Further, just about every company I would want to represent, save the Midland, would still have been typified by small lettering, not large initials, in 1905.

If you have access to old MRJs, Chris Croft's series of articles lists the fastener sizes for 1923-spec wagons.

I've just looked at an RCH specification-drawing from the 1906 spec, for a 12-ton wagon. The body fastenings, holding the sheeting to the side knees and the diagonal braces, are specified as half-inch bolts. The only other fastener size I can make out (my scan of the drawing isn't perfectly clear) is some 5/8" bolts in the underframe. I would guess that a nut on a half-inch bolt might be 0.75" across the flats (having just looked at a modern, M12 nut), or possibly up to 1" if they were being generous with the metal. Presumably there was a standard for imperial fasteners.

POWsides do dry-print transfers for GE open wagons and ventilated vans in 4mm scale.

PS: the village is looking lovely and quite inspiring.

The definitions of scratchbuilding concerning raw materials, above, are all good. However, I prefer a different distinction for a class of hand-built models: one where the builder has researched the prototype and made some parts to the scale dimensions, preferring those to commercial parts that are wrong. To me, this is more significant than the proportion of raw material in the model. I don't think we have a specific term for this approach, although "finescale" in the broader sense comes close.

I'm not thinking about finer-scale wheels here, but more the case where one makes, say, new ends for a van because the ones in the kit are 3 scale inches too wide.

I'm building a Mousa D32 at present and I had the same problem with the AG bearings. The advice over at the S4 Society's forum is to use Markits bearings which are bored consistently deeper. Problem is, Markits don't sell "waisted" bearings (apparently), and full-fat bearings are a bit large to move within the moulded axleboxes. So I made my own.

I started with Markit's flanged bearings. I made a filing jig by drilling a 2mm hole in a scrap of 0.75mm styrene sheet: it holds the bearing with the flange pressed against the bench and the other end exposed for filing down. 

I sacrificed one bearing and found that the tip of the conical bearing-surface breaks through as a hole when the bearing is filed down to ~1.0mm from the back of the flange; i.e. when it's standing ~0.2mm proud of my jig.  I didn't measure this dimension accurately.

The production process is now first to reduce the diameter of the part that sticks out above the jig, then to file down the remaining "pip" to ~0.5mm above the jig surface. I reduce the diameter using a pillar file with its safe edge running against the surface of the jig and the cutting edge vertical. I file a series of flats and then round off the corners until I have a roughly-circular end to the bearing with a diameter ~1mm.

I put the first set of wheels in this morning (second set of Exactoscale wheels is still curing in the gauging jig) and the results were good: no splaying of the axleguards and just a tiny amount of end float, enough to let the wheels spin freely.

The connecting service in the 1948 timetable would have been the 11.50 p.m. from Acton although over the years some of the Smithfield trains ran to/from Old Oak.  The Smithfields were limited to a maximum of 25 wagons plus a single brakevan and as the next service didn't leave Acton until 4 hours later (except on Mondays) the logic is that those services which connected into those two trains can't have conveyed more than 50 wagons between them) and of course the Birkenhead wasn't the only train conveying Smithfield traffic.

Hmm. Smithfield is a wholesale market. That means that not all the stock sold there has to ascend to the trading floor. Samples could go up and the bulk of the stock could stay in the warehouse downstairs.

By extension, it's conceivable that some of the meat traded at Smithfield could be held at Acton and delivered from there to the final customer. This is purely hypothetical, mind. I have no evidence that this was done, nor do I know how the wholesalers at Smithfield would have organized the delivery.

I mention this because the owners of (old) Covent Garden market were taken to task for not operating this way. They had all the stock delivered to the market halls; this was considered inefficient and bad for the traffic flow around the market.

Now for the key question for me as a modeller: are transfers for the small G.W.R lettering available?

Fox have them on their GWR general-freight sheet: http://fox-transfers.co.uk/transfers/gwr-freight-vehicle-general-pack-60154

The loco is possibly an LCDR "Sondes" class. They had a few Crampton well tanks from the beginning of the line, when it was still called the East Kent railway. The exposed valve gear matches the description - the Sondes class had Gooch gear.

The original Sondes class was unsuccessful but too embarrassing to discard. Martley eventually rebuilt them as conventional 2-4-0T, called the "second Sondes" class.

The last leg of the meat haul to Smithfield was over the Metropolitan railway (inner circle), so the main-line engines were exchanged for condensing tank-engines. The 633 class (0-6-0T) were the mainstay, with Metro 2-4-0T filling in. When the early engines wore out, some time in the 20th century, condensing pannier-tanks were built.

I think that the exchange was made at Acton. At any rate, all the special brake vans for the Smithfield traffic were allocated there.

Smithfield GWR was a depot for general goods, IIRC, and Smithfield was (is?) a market for more than just meat. Therefore, a train to Smithfield might include wagons other than meat vans. In particular, vans for other perishables, such the various diagrams of fruit vans might go there. This might imply that a train conveying meat vans to Acton, for forwarding to Smithfield, would include other traffic. Or it might be that the meat trains were all meat vans and the other traffics were marshalled in at Acton.

Sort of, but my understanding is that most of what Shapeways sell is produced (designed) by individual enthusiasts pretty much as one-offs rather than a business producing a coherent range of product.

This is true in most cases, but you have the advantage that if you talk said enthusiasts into designing things for you, those items remains available on Shapeways indefinitely. They don't disappear when an individual retires.

Further, if the drawing time for an item is not too much, an enthusiast may draw up a new product pro bono, with no need to work out a business case. I've done this a couple of times.

You've done well with the paint on the D305. I've always found Precision Paints awkward to apply with a brush.

For the large M R lettering, I recommend the Fox Transfers sheet. Much easier than Methfix.

I have a small shop on Shapeways selling printed fittings for rolling stock. Currently, all the available models are buffer guides for producing sprung buffers, in 4mm and H0 scale, but I plan to add other fittings like axleboxes and springs.

The shop is at https://www.shapeways.com/shops/guyrixon .

Buffers available at time of writing are:

• SER/SECR wagon (3 rib)
• LCDR wagon (4 rib)
• LNWR wagon (3 rib; 4 different lengths of guide)
• LNWR wagon (self-contained)
• Cambrian wagon (with and without wooden pads)
• SER coach (3 rib)

These are all prints I needed for my own models, but I'm open to suggestions for other subjects.

I have never understood the logic behind track gauges. [...] Why 1' 11 1/2" rather than 2'? [...]

I suspect it's 60cm gauge rounded off to the nearest half-inch. 60cm is now, and ever has been, a popular gauge for mine railways.

I already have a pot of LMS freight wagon grey: how close is the LNER shade to that?  Would the open container really have been blue, and if so then what shade?

LNER wagon-grey is darker than LMS grey but not as dark as GWR grey. Anything between these two will look plausible. Phoenix Paints P66 is the one if you're buying, but you can probably just mix LMS grey with some black.

I understand the blue used on the containers was the same blue used for engineering-department stock such as cranes. Phoenix P70.

LCDR buffers are now up on Shapeways: https://www.shapeways.com/product/DWZ8THJJZ/lcdr-buffer-guides-for-wagons-x20-4mm-scale.

This is a beta product until I've had a chance to test print it and time for anybody to challenge the scale fidelity.

... I too would quite like to get my hands on some Slaters MR kits (wagons and coaches) to supplement those I have, but I do wonder whether Slaters sold them off because the moulds were becoming life-expired. ...

Is that likely with injection-moulding tools? I thought they were good for millions of shots, and I doubt railway kits ever got into the hundreds of thousands.

IIUC, CooperCraft are able to produce etched products from the existing masks, might be able to produce whitemetal castings from existing moulds (if the owner can work out which mould does what, and if the moulds are not worn out) and cannot produce any injection moulded parts because the single, specially-adapted moulding machine is broken. Production of etched and cast parts is presumably contracted out, so would depend on the business having enough capital to place an order.

Ok

I guessed that they weren't quite correct, but couldn't quite tell from the limited photos I had of the wagons in LCDR days what type they had. Round based 4 ribbed buffers would definitely be useful for modellers of pre-group wagons, if you did do them. 

OK, I'll see what I can do. I don't have component drawings for these, but can get quite close from photos and the overall drawings of wagons.

Hi Pete, I'm glad that the buffers worked out for you. In fact, they're to an SER/SECR pattern, so could appear on an ex-LCDR wagon in SECR ownership. The LCDR used, I think, 4-ribbed buffers. If you plan to do more LCDR wagons then I could draw some more-nearly correct buffers for you.

The GNR wagon-buffers look excellent, many thanks for those. I have two questions about the buffers. First, what distance are you allowing between the buffing face and the back of the bore for the spring (since this affects the spring rate)? Second, where the buffer bores need to be opened out, what are the inside and outside diameters as printed?

Eileen's Emporium sell gun blue. They have it either in a jar - suits the cotton-bud technique - or in a pen.

By my experience, it doesn't work on some steels. It won't blacken the tyres on Exactoscale wheels, for instance (I think they may be made of stainless steel).

 

Surely out of copywrite by now?

I doubt it. IIRC, British copyright lasts for 70 years after the author's death. Anybody got a biography for Mr. Gray?

Slag travelling in open wagons - i.e. not the powdered product - is possibly going for use as roadstone. There was a slag-to-tarmacadam plant at Frodingham in the 1930s, and it's probably still in operation, although nowadays the stone would probably be shipped without the bitumen. Therefore, any material that represents fine-screen stone would do it. One would have to find out the colour when it is not covered in tar.

I got Ratio kits with the metal wheels but I dislike the chassis. I always struggled to get them to run well but I know there is a company that made a brass etched replacement. Can't remember who it was but I'll find it when I look again.

If you mean the Ratio kits of GWR 4-wheel coaches, then the replacement chassis was by Mainly Trains so now presumed discontinued. Bill Bedford does suspension suitable for these kits, IIRC, and that includes some brake shoes and hangers, but not all the brake rigging or other underframe fittings.