magmouse

Thanks, Rich - very interesting to hear about your experience, if disappointing that you haven't made it work so far. Please keep us updated with any further attempts you make - I am sure I won't be the only one interested. Nick.

Thanks, Mikkel. The wonders of elastic! The EZ Line is stretchy, so you can give it a couple of turns around the tie-off point, pull it tight, and dap on a tiny drop of thin CA glue to lock it in place. I guess in 20 years it might all go slack... I know the feeling - but at least this way you have something to grab hold of, and can get it painted in one go. Nick.

I am pretty sure wagon 4 is a GW wooden mink. The left hand edge of the right hand letter slopes slightly relative to the verticals of the framing, suggesting a W not an N: The letters scale correctly to be 25" high, relative to an approximately 6'8" high side, which would be right for a GW mink. Wagon 6 may also be a mink, with reversed diagonals. I have seen only one photo of a GW wagon with diagonals going that way (high at the ends, low in the middle) - on p.117 of Slinn's Great Western Way. All drawings I have seen, and other photos, have diagonals as wagon 4. The arcane matter of the framing diagonals on these covered wagons has been discussed previously: Nick.

Thanks, Dave, and yes, they grew them big up north! Actually the diagram 84 types also dwarfed the earlier LNWR wagons. Nick.

Thank you! I am aware of some people using the Tunnocks wrappers, but for me the choice of material is restricted to what I can print onto. Some people hand paint the lettering, which can be OK for later, simpler designs, but with the complexity of this LNWR design, and the GWR one for my period, printing is the way to go. It might be possible to do one big waterslide transfer, of course.... That's a neat idea. Yes, when the load was taller - for example: https://lnwrs.zenfolio.com/p148651598/ebf55e5ab But for a load that doesn't go above the height of the sides, there would be a huge amount of the sheet hanging down below the curb rail, needing to be furled up. In the GWR General Appendix to the rule book, there were instructions on sheeting, including the need to avoid puddling wherever possible. I assume the same would have been true for the other railway companies, including the LNWR. However: This is an excerpt from https://www.midlandrailway.org.uk/derby-registers/DY1697 although the links seems to be broken at the moment. Nick.

I have just finished making an LNWR 4-plank open, to diagram 84. This was meant to be a "quickie", as a relaxing diversion following the complexities of the horsebox and before getting my teeth into a brake van. However, it has taken three months - partly due to a lack of modelling time recently, and partly because it turned out to be a bit more involved than I had expected. The starting point was the ABS whitemetal kit. My first impression was - it's enormous. The prototype was 18 feet over headstocks, and for a moment when getting the kit out of the box I thought I might have got a 1 Gauge version by mistake... The kit is, as is generally the case with ABS, excellent - the castings are clean, detailed and precise. It would be perfectly possible to build the kit as intended, and have a very nice model at the end of it. Inevitably, though, I made some changes, adding compensation, a few missing details, backdating features to suit my 1908 period, and of course adding the LNWR wagon sheet. The build started by making some modifications to accommodate the Ambis compensation units. The axleguards are supplied as separate castings, and these were cut off below the springs and soldered in place with low-melt: The back was then filed flat to remove the remaining axleguard behind the spring, and provide clearance for the etched axleguard: Once cleaned up I had good-looking springs attached to the solebars: Buffers were fitted - in this case, not the supplied ones, as the early examples of diagram 84 wagons had the older type of LNWR buffers, with 3 bolts. Luckily the old ABS parts were still available from David Parkins. The buffer guides were drilled out to take a set of Peco sprung heads; I find it easier to ensure the drill is going in straight with the guides attached to the wagon ends, but before assembling the wagon. I soldered the sides and ends together - it's worth putting in the time to make sure the four corners fit together well, as this is a slight weakness of the kit. A bit of fettling though will get the corner square in all planes. A plasticard floor gave me something to fix things to, though of course no detailing was needed as the inside was to be hidden by the sheet. The Ambis axleguard units were made up, after chemically blackening the visible parts to help the paint cover, and to reduce the chance of missing bits and getting glints of metal. The Ambis etch includes a 'spine' that spaces the axleguards to give the required wheelbase. However, the D84s had an unusual wheelbase of 9'9", so I had to do a 'cut and shut' to get the correct spacing: The fold-up parts at either end position and hold the axleguard assemblies, with one rocking on a pivot rod, and the other fixed. A trial assembly revealed there was quite a gap between the back of the springs and the axleguards. This was partly due to the solebars being very slightly too far apart, and the springs not being thick enough. I increased the spring thickness with 20 thou plasticard cut out roughly after tracing the shape: I glued them on the back of the springs, and then trimmed the excess with a sharp scalpel blade: Pieces of plasticard glued to the floor ensured accurate positioning of the axleguard assembly, which itself was glued on once I was happy everything was positioned correctly. The hole in the headstocks for the coupling hook was too large for the Peco couplings I wanted to use, so I filed of the cast detailing and glued on some etched replacements: The two holes in this picture in the headstock between the end stanchions and the the buffers are for the rings used to tie off the sheet. The rings were made from fine fuse wire wrapped around the shank of a suitably-sized drill. I try to plan out details like this and drill the holes early in the build, but only fit the details later, when there is less chance they will get damaged. It is always a nice moment when you get the wagon 'on its feet' - it feels like real progress. You can also see in this picture I have replaced the cast horse hook with brass wire. I filled some very slight gaps where the ends and sides meet, though as the corners are almost completely concealed by the sheet, I needn't have bothered. I often replace cast or plastic vee hangers with etched items, but in this case I used the ones provided in the kit. The are finely cast, with chamfered back edges to hide the thickness of the material. The double vee hanger arrangement lends strength, and this was supposed to be a quick build, after all... Also in this picture you can see I added a pair of L-brackets to the solebar below where the side knees are. They were made from plastic strip. Also visible is the tie-off point next to the door spring, made from wire. I struggled to find a clear photo of these, but they appear to be L-shaped, coming down from the underside of the curb rail and turning back towards the solebar, but not quite meeting it. There are five each side. The brake gear made use of the kit castings, packed up with plasticard to get the shoes aligned with the wheel centres. I used a piece of brass tube to make the cross-shaft, as this makes attaching the brake lever easy later on - a piece of wire can be soldered through a hole in the end of lever, and slid into the tube at the final assembly stage. The axleboxes were a change from the kit ones, to be the correct type for early D84s; they again came from David Parkins. The wagon was physically complete at this point, apart from brake levers and guards, and the buffers and couplings which I always do after painting: The brake levers and guards were from Ambis parts (I didn't take a picture of the levers): A coat of etch primer reveals just how good the castings are: The top coat was a 50/50 mix of black and white Vallejo acrylic paint, brushed on. Only the underframe and bottom of the body needed painting, as the rest would be hidden by the sheet. The tare number on the solebar and the end numbers came from a sheet of LMS Pressfix transfers from the HMRS, as I didn't have the official LNWR ones in stock. They seem to be passable to my GWR-trained eye! The wagon sheet The sheet was made using my usual method, described in previous blog posts. The artwork is printed onto paper, which is then backed with adhesive aluminium tape. For the LNWR sheet, however, I needed to create my own artwork, and there doesn't seem to be a single authoritative source of information on the design - rather, there are fragments of information, which sometimes conflicts. I have put some references and links at the end of this post for those who are interested. Based on what I could find, I created the artwork in Affinity Designer. This software enabled me to use an existing font for the letters and numbers, and then convert the font outlines into 'paths' which can then be edited. I could therefore use fonts that were close to what was required, but then modify the letter and number forms to get as close as possible to what I could see in photos. I have made the artwork available for anyone who wants to use it: Here is a trial print of the incomplete artwork, to see how it fits onto the wagon: Part of the challenge of fitting the sheet is that the wagon is 18 feet long, and in my 1908 period, LNWR sheets were a non-standard 19'6" X 15'5". This left only a scale 9" overhang at each end, but enough at the sides to hang right down to the curb rails: The problem with the sheet hanging down so far is that it isn't possible to tension it properly with the ties along the long edges attaching to the tie-off points under the curb rail. I suspect the LNWR changed the sheet size from 1910 for exactly these reasons - with the increasing numbers of 18' long wagons, the old size of sheet was no longer suitable. I decided to place the sheet on the wagon with a slight offset. On one side the sheet hangs down less far, and can be tied off in the usual way. On the other side, the sheet is tucked up, held in place by ties attached to the triangular flaps that were sewn into the first seam (sheets were generally made from five strips of fabric sewn together). I made the flaps from triangles of paper, glued in place. You can see them here just above the "381" number and below the line of the "LNWR" letters: As I was modelling the sheet covering a (presumed) load below the height of the wagon sides, I wanted it to dip in the centre. To keep the sheet in the required shape, I made a former in plasticard, to run as a spine along the centre of the wagon: I glued this under the sheet before attaching it to the wagon: You can also see here the ties, made from EZ Line (a very thin elastic thread), glued to the back of the sheet and fed through holes where the prototype's eyelets would be. I attached the sheet onto the wagon, starting by gluing it to the top edges of the sides and ends. Then the overhangs at the sides and ends could be glued into place, teasing the sheet into shape with the aim of making it look like a flexible material hanging under its own weight. I had already done some initial weathering of the wagon, using weathering powders and water-soluble artist's oil paints. One problem I had which I have not experienced with this technique for making the sheets before was the separation of the foil backing from the paper top surface around the sheet edges. I suspect this was down to the amount of handling of the sheet, trying to manipulate it into shape, as well as the short overhangs at the ends. The short overhangs means the sheet is being bent through 90 degrees very close to its edge, and this may have put too much stress on the aluminium tape's adhesive. After replenishing the swear box a few times, and trying both UHU and cyanoacrylate glues, I managed to get the sheet into shape and fix the separation of the sheet layers. I followed this by retouching the paint on the sheet. I alway paint over the black print, as the laser printer print looks too much like what it is. However, with the amount of handling the sheet gets when fixing it, there is always quite a lot of touching up to do. Once the sheet was fettled, the ties were wrapped around the tie-off points and held in place with a touch of thin CA glue applied with the end of a bit of wire. I added number plates printed on ordinary paper with a laser printer and cut out. The artwork was based on that provided by Stephen Lea: And that was pretty much it - final assembly of the brake lever and guard, and the buffers and couplings, a last touch up of paint and weathering, and the wagon was ready for a photo session. The lettering on the sheet is best seen from a modeller's-eye view: And a brutal close-up of the sheet artwork: To make the point about the size of these wagons, here it is alongside a GWR 2-plank: Acknowledgements Thank you to all those who have helped me as I learned about LNWR wagons, particularly those who contributed to the following threads: References and links regarding LNWR wagon sheets There is a drawing of the LNWR sheet design, although it shows the sheet number painted on the ends as well as the sides of the sheet, which I have not seen in photos: http://igg.org.uk/rail/9-loads/9-tarps.htm Sheets were discussed in some detail here, but the images have been lost which makes it hard to follow some of the discussion now, unfortunately: Further discussion took place in the D299 thread: LNWR number plate artwork: You can find my artwork here: Nick.

Number 4, and just possibly number 6, look like GWR wooden outside-framed covered wagons. Number 4 seems to be lettered with the large GW, which would put it after 1904. Is there a higher-resolution version of the image? A known date for the photo? Nick.

Good spot - I hadn't noticed when looking on my phone yesterday, but you are right. Nick.

Great photo. Interesting that the wheels are outside the body, without wheel arches. Presumably the body is narrower than the other types we have seen. Nick

Photos showing pantechnicons loaded on wagons don’t seem to be all that common. The ones I have seen show them loaded on agricultural implement wagons, rather than well wagons (crocodiles, hydras and loriets, in GWR-speak). So, for example, the photo here: And the glorious picture at the top of this page: http://phils-pba-hstry.com/archer-cowley--co/archer-cowley--co-photo/archer-cowley--co-history/acco-containers-on-railway.html As well of course as the LSWR example you posted, Mikkel. I suspect most 4-wheel well wagons would be too short for a Pantechnicon, and you can’t end-load onto a Crocodile or similar. Nick.

How easy it is probably depends on the hosting company’s system. I would suggest having a look at the available settings and seeing if it is obvious (or there is an article in the support documentation). Otherwise, raise a help ticket. Hopefully it is straightforward, as it is a common thing to want to do. Nick.

I have one of those in the kit stash, with a Scorpio diagram G8 GWR implement truck to carry it. Your experience is a useful reminder to check the loading gauge clearances carefully. Nick.

No problem - if it's possible, it might be worth getting the URL with the www pointed at the site. At the moment, it points to a minimal page that just says "It works!". Then people like me who have polluted their browser history with erroneous URLs would still find your amazing resource. Nick.

I realised that my problem was caused by having incorrect URLs in the browser history, which the browser would then use as the basis to auto-complete the URL I was typing. It seems some browsers with auto-correct the URL to what it thinks is right, even if you have specifically typed something else - another one of those behaviour which is mostly very handy, but occasionally trips you up. I have now deleted all the incorrect entries on my browser histories, so normal service is restored! I don't think it is the browsers as such - URLs with and without the "www" point to different places and will result in the browser fetching different content, as we have just seen. However, in many cases there is some 'behind the scenes' work by the hosting provider so that "www.mysite.com" and "mysite.com" point to the same thing. As you say, the distinction of with and without "www" is getting blurred, and will possibly go away in the end. Nick.

I think I have solved it - as well as using "https://" (secure address - note the 's') you also need to not have "www", so: https://gwrcoaches.org.uk Nick.

This may be browser-dependent. I have just tried using Chrome, and it works. in Safari, it still fails, as described above. I am on a Mac, with latest versions of the browsers and operating system. On my iPad, it fails in both Safari and Chrome. I suspect some kind of security issue, such as the certificate, which different browsers are more or less fussy about. See my post above - it still fails, although differently. Nick.

I get the same, or, if I go to the same URL but with https at the front, a message saying “it works!”. It has been like that, intermittently, for a while. Hopefully it gets fixed, as the site is the most wonderful resource. Nick.

I like this very much - especially (as with your other schemes) the use of strong diagonals to create visual interest. One thought - can you extend the Engineering Out building so you can fit a wagon into it? The more wagons can seem to arrive at purposeful destinations on the layout, the more satisfying shunting will be, I suspect. Even a ‘lean to’ extension or covered area would do it. Nick.

I had to look up that flag code, but now I have…. Cripes! Looking forward to seeing the ship model, assuming it’s acquisition comes off. Nick.

Well, if you thought the matter of red/grey wagon livery was a mystery wrapped up in an enigma, the question of which wagons received cast plates and when is far worse... Having said that, I don't recall seeing a picture of a digram V5 (which I think your model is of) in original condition, so I don't think you need worry too much. Shouldn't it have central ventilation bonnets, though? Nick. [Cue torrent of photos of V5s with cast plates...]

Great news about your improving health, Annie. I’m looking forward to seeing the ongoing work on Minehead, but please don’t forget about Tristyn - the winter scene is so atmospheric. The two layouts make a nice contrast. And thanks for all the cheer-up pictures - always cheering and often inspirational! Nick.

Thanks, Chris - that's very useful. Having said that, care is needed as signwriting styles are not the same as print fonts, but there is presumably some correlation as styles change over time. Nick.

Very lovely work, as always, Mikkel, and a delightful continuation of your 'narrative' approach to modelling. I am looking forward to seeing what stories and characters we may encounter when Bailey's pantechnicon arrives in the good yard at Farthing. For anyone considering loading a pantechnicon on a wagon, as in Penlan's example posted by @jwealleans, it is worth noting that the roof boards were either removable or in some cases hinged to fold down. This reduced to height, to keep within the loading gauge. The HMRS website has their archive of images with quite a few examples of pantechnicons, which are useful for liveries. Also, pantechnicons feature in this discussion on the closely-related topic of 'lift vans' (early containers intended mainly for furniture): Regarding the number of horses, in the pictures I have found, two seems standard. I haven't found any pictures showing four, and given the main use of pantechnicons was the transport of furniture and household effects, I suspect the load would never be that great. I write this in the hope that someone will prove me wrong, and so expand the body of available evidence! Nick.

Rich - if you are able to share, I would appreciate it. I am planning a W4 in 7mm scale in due course. Thanks - Nick.

I think the reason we don’t see lime wash coming through the end slats is that the movable partition would be against that end when the wagon is in Large configuration. And if in Medium or Small, then presumably the unused part of the wagon would not be treated. We need a picture of the other end to corroborate. It would make it easy to position the strips if they line up with the door pillars - it could be done by eye, without needing to measure. Nick.