Guy Rixon

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.

I use a set of ball-ended tools to rub down the transfers, the balls being a few millimetres in diameter. Structurally, they're small, ball-ended embossing tools, but those are relatively are expensive. Mine were sold as "dotting" tools for nail art, like these on ebay, for a tiny fraction of the price.

With the Roxey etched couplings, why not solder the links to the central section? If you want your coupling either to hang down or to be taught between vehicles - simulating screwed up - then it doesn't need to flex.

For coach footboards, you could try the following recipe.

1. Make the actual boards from plastic card. The full-size boards were probably 1" or 1.5" thick, so 0.020" styrene would be close. The upstand at the back of the lower board will stiffen it nicely.

2. Make the vertical part of the brackets from 0.5mm straight brass wire. The top of the bracket would be forged to a flat plate, for bolting to the solebar. You can simulate this by squeezing with pliers. 

3. Make the horizontal part of the brackets from thinner wire. Twist the wire around the uprights and then splay out the tails where they go under the board to represent the "crows feet" brackets of the full-sized coach.

4. Either solder the crows feet to the uprights or, if you don't feel like soldering, glue them with cyanoacrylate. Glue the boards to the crows feet and also to the vertical part of the brackets.

5. Check that the assembly is square and, when satisfied, glue to the solebars using cyanoacrylate again. I'd recommend discarding any assemblies that are nearly but not quite right, as they eye is very good at spotting any irregularity.

Looks good. I notice that you didn't include the rebate for the glazing when you made your partitions. Are you planning a different method of glazing?

As an exhibition viewer, I find shunting interesting only if it seems purposeful. If I see a train setting down loaded wagons and picking up obviously empty (or back-loaded) wagons, that's fine. If I can see, or infer, the freight being moved, and the particular location in the yard where certain freight is handled, that fine too. However, if I see wagons put at random in sidings, that's boring. And if I see wagons set into sidings and then immediately fetched out and taken away (because it's a micro layout and there's only room for half a train of stock), then that's pretty boring too; even if I can infer that the wagons arrived unloaded and were later taken away full (or loaded and returned empty), it's still unsatisfying. It plays better, for me, if another train moves while the loads from the first are handled. This is hard to do on a tiny layout.

My personal answer to this is a shunting "plank" where one end is the front of an urban goods-warehouse: the body of the warehouse is part of the fiddle-yard. The warehouse can swallow, and remove from the yard standage, a raft of wagons while I sort and position the next raft inbound, or deal with some outbound wagons. If I want intensive movements, I can put more wagons into the warehouse than it could really hold; viewers won't notice unless they hang around and "count cards" (and if you do that at a casino, you get asked to leave ).

I vote for any of SECR H, D, E, (ex-SER) Q, Q1, (ex-SER) R, O or O1 - provided that they are done in SECR livery, preferably full Wainwright lining and brasswork. Those are the classes I personally could run, but there are also the ex-LCDR classes.

From the Bachmann experience with the C class, anything in full livery will sell quite well and the H at least can be reissued in simplified Wainwright livery, Maunsell wartime livery, two SR liveries and BR black.

It glows in the dark! Must be one of those sent to work the Cumbrian Coast line after nationalization. 

Hi Eddie, delay is no problem, as my alternative is scratchbuilding, so extremely slow. Price might be an issue. Up to £15 a body they'd be attractive; above £25 I'd probably prefer to build from scratch.

I suspect Shapeways' volume-based pricing is going to be awkward here. Printing bodies as a kit might be a way round that. I may upload some dummy models to see what prices come out.

BTW, I have CADs for the SER 3-ribbed buffers in 4mm scale. If anybody is interested, I could do a 2mm-scale version.

Cheers,

Guy

Those look great.

Do you know diagram numbers for these? Ive been thinking of picking up some ratio wagons, specifically this and the coal set, but was curious how they go together. What do the kits include?

This other thread has some details: http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/2511-ratio-lnwr-wagon-kits/

Three different types of SER coal wagon now uploaded to Shapeways:

 

1) 1864 coal wagon, these were fairly long lived, the last one being withdrawn from traffic in 1935. SR diagram 1328. Also EKR, one example lasting until nationalisation.

 

2) Dumb buffered version of above, built between 1876 and 1879. Withdrawal dates unknown but probably before WW1.

 

Both these wagons having a wheelbase of 8ft 6 inches should suit Association underfame No. 2-326. Which may need to be trimmed to fit as these wagons are very short.  

 

3) 1889 coal wagon, essentially an enlarged version of the 1864 wagon, with various detail differences, last one withdrawn from traffic in 1938. SR diagram 1334. Also EKR.

This wagon having an unusual wheelbase of 9ft 4 inches will need to use separate etched W irons (2-312).

 

Information, drawings and photographs in the OPC books: Southern Wagons Vol.3 SECR, and Vol.5 Southern Wagons Pictorial.

 

All of these wagons it seems would also have been used for general merchandise by the time of the formation of the SECR, and in fact were reclassified as open goods by the SR.

 

Cheers,

 

Eddie.

Would you be interested in doing these in 4mm scale?

The moulding depressions on the inside of the sides can be filled easily enough and the plank gaps re-cut. I use Humbrol model filler for this.

If one was motivated to improve the inside, it would be good to represent the side knees - i.e. the structural brackets holding the side planks to the underframe. There would be a knee either side of the door, lining up with the washer plates on the outside. They would be L-shaped iron brackets, with the vertical leg visible and the horizontal leg hidden under the floor planks. There was, presumably, some ironwork on the inside in line with the corner plates, but I don't know how the Midland arranged this..

Pre-grouping railways had more open wagons than vans and the proportion of vans increased with time. IIRC, the ordinary vans, excluding specials like meat vans, were about a third of the wagon fleet in the 1930s and about half the fleet in the 1960s. I'd guess about 5-10% vans around 1900. Therefore, pre-WW1, almost anything that moved in an unfitted train would be in an open wagon; but anything that could possibly be damaged by weather would be sheeted over. The sheets were also used to restrain loose loads and may have helped avoid pilfering. The oil barrels might even have been sheeted to ward off sparks from the locos.

Inventing loads that don't need sheeting is fairly taxing. I'm planning to run quite a few wagons of building materials, given that my location (London) saw much development in my period (c. 1908). I'll have bricks, roofing slates (Cambrian Railways wagons), roofing beams (on bolsters), stone setts for paving the roads (in the PO wagons of the quarries, possibly from Clee Hill) and probably some building stone (1-plank wagons, either PO or railway owned). Cement may also feature, but that did travel in vans.  

Much coverage of Windows 10 on this site: http://www.theregister.co.uk/. The consensus seems to be that you shouldn't use it yet - it's still broken and urgent fixes will be around soon.  If you do need/want to try it now, don't install with Microsoft Update as that is very broken; instead, download an ISO image and install from that. (And if you don't know what an ISO image is, I'd suggest waiting until they get it working from Microsoft Update).

If you did a Humber keel in 2mm scale I'd buy one, possibly two. I'd prefer 1:152 but British N scale would do.

It would be nice to have, in view of the many pre-grouping locos now available, a definitive 1907 RCH goods wagon. 

Presumably you mean the 10-ton mineral wagon to the RCH's spec c. 1907? If so, then I second that.

For me, "definitive" would mean that the body was the right length and width; that the exterior detail was accurate for one of the major wagon-works; that the interior was fully modelled with proper planks, ironwork and bottom doors; that it was available in end-door and no-end-door variants; and that a range of pre-printed liveries was available, either from the original manufacturer or from a 3rd-party. I'm less worried about the running gear as I'd be replacing that anyway.

If the wagon was good on the outside but one still had to model the interior, it would be less attractive as we can already get such wagons as kits from POWsides. If it was accurately detailed inside and out but the livery had to be done as transfers, then that also would be less attractive as we can already that from Cambrian.

What people don't realise is it cost a few hundred pounds to ship a container from China to UK . As you say it probably costs more from Port to Warehouse! One of the side effects of these huge Containerships. It's also relatively easy to track them.

It's a couple of thousand pounds now for a 40ft box from China to Europe (according to my neighbour, who, until this year, imported goods from Chinese factories).  £200 per box is a last-decade price at best.

Cant really when I cant afford a decent soldering iron and cant find flux. Nor do I know how to properly take care of am iron either. All guides say stuff but dont explain it.

An Antex XS25 is a decent iron and not too expensive. You need a stand for it, but they're cheap; you don't have to buy the Antex one. You don't need an expensive soldering station for most work and you don't need a 50W iron for working in thin metal.