Martin S-C

Sir! Be advised this is a pre-grouping thread. What is this magic polythene of which you speak? Canvas sheeting of a very fine weave perchance?

The fireplace has a sufficient chimney - what's the problem. Though I agree the bedding looks a little lumpy.

Along with your homework?

I can't fit under my hot tap to run or walk, so should I stand in the shower for a while?

Motip acrylic white. It was an e-Bay buy so it could be that. I only use it on passenger vehicles and locos to ensure a bright colour. On freight I always use grey as a dull finish is better. I also used this primer on the 4 Victorian 4-wheel coaches I'm doing so we'll see how that works out, though I will brush-paint those. It could also be the 3D print residue. I tried to scrub/wash off all the powder from the model with an old toothbrush but it was so fragile I couldn't apply much pressure.

All done. The painting of the road van almost ended in tragedy. I really can't abide Railmatch paints! At first the colour would hardly adhere at all and even though I went carefully with several thin coats it still pooled around the detail like handrails. In disgust I pulled the clotted paint away physically from the detail using a knife blade and tweezers and then over painted the resulting bald patches with a dirt colour, intending to depict the van in extremely beaten up condition, but then I squirted a little of the rattle can paint into a dish and applied small amounts by brush to cover up the dirt patches and the effect wasn't so bad. The van has a kind of uneven paint fade or peeling effect and from certain angles and in certain light the darker patches take on a sense of those sections of the bodywork being bowed inwards indicating a van that is at the end of its life and in a year or two will become a shed in a farmers field. My usual transfers and a bit of ink wash to dull down the brasswork and oil lamp cover, then a dust drybush and I think I'll call it a day on that one. Since the photos were taken I have tidied up the damaged roof edge with a fresh line of grey. I need to paint the side lamps as well - totally forgot about those The L&Y van worked out well although again I had some paint woes, this time a Mig Ammo acrylic pot that wouldn't dry matt or even very stable no matter how long I shook it for. In the end I threw it away and made up my own mid grey by mixing light grey and black. The fact its variable is not really relevant under the layer of dirt. The HMRS flowery numbers for the ends and solebars were a (not) fun exercise in anger management but I got there and I'm glad I persevered as they give an L&Y vehicle its distinctive look. And then the two monster fitted bogie opens. The 6-door Caley will carry dry goods so I need to make up a sheet to slot over it. I made a bunch of these a few years back for 4-wheel opens using simple drawing paper and shellac to harden them. The 4-door steel will carry minerals, possibly limestone, possibly ironstone both of which were mined in the Forest. And still no progress on the actual layout

You missed "Simon" out of your name as well.

Thanks Chris. More and more I'm finding the concept of a pre-grouping railway company that was forward thinking and built bogie fitted freight cars as standard to be a quite attractive modelling proposition.

My browser is Firefox and its Adblock Plus. I know they make a plug-in (or add-on) for Chrome as well. There are some websites that won't allow you in using an ad-blocker, mostly newspapers or other media but if I want a particular new story I just go elsewhere. Top one: /end. Apologies to everyone for hi-jacking the thread. Back to the trains!

You can also install an ad-blocker in your web browser; all the main ones have the option for this. As a result of using ad-blockers I have never seen a single advertisement anywhere on the internet since about 2001. Watching You Tube videos ad-free is wonderful. I see no end of people complaining about the ads I don't see, especially interrupting music videos. Of course sites do need income and advertising helps generate that but since I would never ever click on a web advert anyway, my blocking them doesn't hurt any websites income flow.

That strikes me as a good candidate for a company something like the size of the M&SWJ. A fairly boisterous undertaking with both local traffic and logical connections at both ends. You could generate a plausible main line atmosphere from that in a severe competition mode with the companies whose lines it cuts across. Having an ally in a big railway company as a major shareholder would help I think, a company that would gain value in invading the territory of another.

I applied once but failed the interview. I don't think they liked the idea that I was a wargamer!

Boxexit? Boxit? Bexit? Or maybe just leave it where it is and discuss it a bit more.

It does however show how you can get a bogie wagon around a 90deg bend using a 4-w wagon turntable - just not something you want to be doing multiple times a day in a big crowded yard.

I hadn't realised that there were such vigorous attempts to go the American route and introduce bogie freight vehicles by so many different British companies. It does seem a lost cause given the craft-shop style nature of so much British industry and bigger facilities like docks and major goods sheds with their turntables wedded to the 4-wheel wagon and the short journeys compared to the USA. The UK didn't see mass bogie freight traffic until well after the steam era but a what if scenario where that was not the case would make for an interesting layout. http://www.lyrs.org.uk/images/uploads/D59_upper_web_version.jpg https://www.g1mra.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/LYR-bogie-Van.pdf http://www.railway-models-and-art.co.uk/blog/?cat=64 Getting back to livery, has anyone got colour photos of model D.3 vans or other L&Y goods vehicles to give me more info? I am tempted right now to weather directly on top of the Halfords undercoat which seems as good a mid-grey as any other.

Thank you Jim. I do appreciate the words of support. And, yes, do please place your judgement aside wherever you wish to! Almost certainly such a wagon on a secondary company's line SW of Gloucester would mean coal though the humble PO wagon to the various Forest collieries would have that market cornered, especially because of end-door discharge arrangements at the S Wales docks. That would leave ironstone or limestone as possible freights and both were mined in the Forest, though a 50 t capacity wagon I admit is unlikely as many of the mining concerns were small. There is also of course timber which was moved in all kinds of sizes, lengths, diameters and other parameters, but again such a large vehicle is unlikely, I admit. For the purpose of moving around my layout with an operational reason it could be a rare visitor to the wood distillation works, stuffed full of cordwood. My fiction is that it was a prototype build, intended to capture freight post WWI but it would have remained merely a good intention once the company was submerged into either the GW or the LMS in 1923, and no more would have been built in the scheme of standardisation during the 1930s. I'm not overly tough on myself over such matters - its the fun of building interesting models and seeing them rolling along on my layout that is my main interest and in case I need to remind everyone yet again, the Madder Valley system is my inspiration and bogie freight wagons were very evident on that model. On that note I do very much want a model of one of these: http://www.railway-models-and-art.co.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/DS-NER-Bogie-Road-Van-2-1024x466.jpg http://www.railway-models-and-art.co.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/DS-NER-Bogie-Road-Van-1-1024x674.jpg Or the L&Y version which was essentially the same. Hmm. Right. Is the suggestion then that the grey in the image Annie shared is not correct? To my eye/monitor combo it has a distinct bluish tinge (esp. vs the GNS van left of it). If so can you say what grey tone is correct?

Thank you Annie - for the grey that is very helpful. A fairly deep bluish tone lighter than GWR but darker and bluer than BR. I'll try a tyre grey wash over the Halfords base for that. I am modelling 1919 so grey is the livery I need to use, rather than the pre-1903 stained raw wood (much as I'd love to have wagons appearing like that in model form). Stephen - thanks for the note about the end number, I can see in the goods yard photograph I link to again below that the van at extreme upper left does have a number where you state, but the other two visible ends do not, though perhaps the paint has disappeared under layers of grime. The image in Bob Essery's book shows it beautifully. I probably have the necessary digits on one of my NMRS pre-grouping sheets. The goods yard photograph shows a real mix of roof tones so I suspect white is correct as each van rolls proudly out of the paint shop but would quickly turn to that very helpful "whatever grey the modeller wants" tone.

Here is the current state of play: These images don't show the roof slats very well but they do show a little "in the flesh" which is perfect. Given what a bodge this was and that almost everything came from the scraps box its turned out to look enough like the actual van to satisfy me. What grey was the livery? Was it a little lighter or darker than Halford's primer . I have some transfers so tomorrow ought to see this one done and dusted. The two fitted "express freight" bogie opens the NMGS built as prototypes in 1918 are coming along. The wooden open will be a dry merchandise wagon and will be sheeted most of the time (so I need to make up a paper sheet for it) and the steel open will carry minerals ... what sort I am not sure yet. As you can see I used up my last NMG letters with the ex-Caley wooden open and struggled with the rub-down lettering on the LNE steel. Without any Ns Ms and Gs, Gs are converted from Cs and the Ns and Ms began life as Hs, Vs and Ws ! That was challenging fun in a masochistic kind of way. I should be able to recover something half-decent looking from this with a bit of judicious signwriting/fixing. I need to overpaint the lettering in any case as its the wrong yellow; I need GWR mustard rather than Magic Roundabout daffodil. I might rub off 513's number and do it again to the right of the left hand door so the pair look more consistent. One thing I forgot is a representation of the inside knees on the Caley 50 ton mineral. The interior looks awfully blank and bald without them. Another job for tomorrow, or maybe this evening. The passenger-rated road van is looking like an over-ripe strawberry this evening after its first coat of EWS maroon! Its not even remotely presentable. I will give it a second coat tomorrow when it might begin to look better. I chose to give it this colour as though its a freight vehicle I didn't want the WELR to own a third goods brake van so this will be a hybrid vehicle and on quiet freight days may well just go up the line on its own behind the tram engine.

I have a Mousa LNWR box van and an LNWR 1-plank dropside and both come with brass etch underframes, so I fear they cannot fall into the scope of simple kits for ten-fingered knuckleheads like me. There's a good few white metal kits that pop up on e-Bay from time to time from companies like Geen, Fourmost, Mikes Models and so on and with the modern super glues I build these without resorting to soldering (not mastering a soldering iron is another failing of mine), so their weight and perhaps a few rinky-dinks with the moulds aside they are as easy as plastic ones to get running. A good source of LSWR and LBSC prototypes is Smallbrook Studios based on the IoW. They produce resin body kits with white metal details designed to fit onto RTR chassis or you could slide a Cambrian underframe beneath them. I have an LBSC 8 ton van to Dia.1434 and a rebuilt cattle wagon to SR Dia.1457. I haven't built these yet so cannot say how well they go together.

But are you sorry for using the word sorry twice in the same post?

Looking at your pannier trio bumbling away there I have several locos that wibble about a good deal more than that so as others have said I think they are fine. You will notice it less on the track as the loco is moving and your brain spends less effort watching small details.

This is a first. I have never used dilute PVA and tissue paper while kitbashing a wagon before. I'm taking this slowly and just doing a little work each day and thinking about it in between spurts of work. This is taking a good bit of messing around and I don't want to muck it up nor do I fancy doing any more of these! One is enough. I carefully cut back the roof edge in the distinctive profile the prototype picture shows. It was at this point I wish I'd used a much thinner sheet of plastic or even brass for the roof. @MrWolf very kindly gave me a spare Coopercraft roof and I used that without thinking ahead enough to how important a fine roof edge would be on this particular model. I put a lot of effort into the rain strips or roof strakes or whatever they are as the photo shows these are curved at the ends and chamfered along their top edges in a very marine style so once glued on I spent a fair while trimming these by scraping with a scalpel blade edge to get what I think is a very distinct shape to them. Then using the information given by @Compound2632 I cut out 5 slats from 5 thou plastic sheet and glued these to the roof as they support the canvas cover and presumably had steel or iron guides on the underside ends that slotted in a track in the roof cut-out. Whatever the arrangement was these slats, the canvas cover and the two "rain strips" did not interact, there is a gap of what seems to be about 3" between the canvas and the strips. I then used dilute PVA to glue on a square of tissue paper. Fortunately for photographic purposes I had some in yellow which shows up well. The roof shot taken in the goods yard shows a top or end board on the canvas roof that I interpret as being outside or above the canvas so this was glued on last, covering the exposed tissue paper edge. Finally, set aside for 24 hours to dry. I have left a big overhang of tissue as what I interpret as the closure or locking bar of metal seems to pass across this and I will fashion something up next out of scrap bits, plus the narrower board that helps hold the doors closed.

This is a useless and annoying comment sadly but my Oxford DG runs beautifully. Sorry about that. It has factory sound so will have a different decoder to the non-sound ones which may be relevant but its on my list to take up to the nice gentlemen in Lincoln and get a new sound decoder fitted. There are some well-known and rather horrible errors with the model which is down to shoddy research into the prototype but it is still a very nice toy train.

Wonderful info, thank you. I'll go do a search for those books but as you imply I suspect they will be expensive and overkill for this model build. Here's where I am at the moment. I went with two brake shoes on the hatch side as the photo I was working from implied that - if this is incorrect it isn't a huge job to remove one of them. I haven't put a brake shoe on the opposite side. I can easily add one from scrap bits. I wanted a left hand facing brake lever because it just looks so weird! Haven't started on the roof yet, but holes are all drilled for grab rails and other handles.

Silly me, I have found it now: So ... *squints hard* doors both sides but the canvas roof hatch on one side only. And the van centre left with the figure next to it shows a left-hand brake lever too which is useful. There was quite the extreme arch to the roofs of these, much more so than the Tri-Ang van body I'm using.