Daddyman

Without detracting from yours and Mick's sterling work building the kit, surely this is the definition of flogging a dead horse, Mike? It's presumably not going to be sold any more cheaply as a reflection of its deficiencies in so many areas? What's needed is precisely a complete new design, drawing and development phase, perhaps even taking advantage of 3D-printing technology to make sure fittings that should be round are round. And symmetrical. And the correct shape.

The "wrist-breaker" tool boxes disappeared in the early 1930s (clue as to why in the name). As Simon says, Dave Bradwell offers the later tool boxes in various kits.

Guessing from photos, ex-NER stock seems to have 5' long battery boxes, which don't really match the single D&S ones or any others I know of. Isinglass said he could print some of his at 5' long, but they looked a bit "groovy" to me. I was going to scratchbuild but then made my carriage gas-lit instead. Photograph them if you like and I/we will have a go. It looks like the steps have been removed on the "water column" photo above: Though this one at Whitby still had them in early BR days: It might be quite difficult to fill the apertures in the etched end for the steps; if you choose to go ahead with steps, note the arrangement of the handrail, which stops in the top right corner, rather than going down the RHS to end level with the LHS (note also that this photo isn't reliable for pipe arrangement on the ends as it's 1936 and the PP gear has been removed): There's no reason why this arrangement of pipes from LNER days would have changed (though note that the step position is different as this vehicle has the large square windows): I'd suggest 0.45 for your trussing; 0.7 will be a bit thick, I think.

A bodyside window, I'd say, seen through the glass. The Transport Library has a lot of photos of Sentinels in the range NS207576 to NS207594, with xxxxxx81 and xxxxxx86 in that range being particularly clear on the front ends. Photos are £0.89 to £0.99 each digital, so well worth the investment.

What form did you get this in, please? Was this an email to all customers, or something SLW said when you enquired. I'm asking because I've never had any communication from them about my order, though they do occasionally send me newsletters referring to me as a "customer". I'm wondering if I did actually order one of the original batch of class 25/3s as I can't find anything in my email inbox. What kind of communication did other people get? - order confirmation? Did they charge a deposit? Thanks. EDIT: I've actually found a receipt from Rail Exclusives from March 2021 (and nothing since then!). But it's not clear if payment was taken then, or I'll be charged once the model is in stock - does anyone know? If the latter, I notice the price has gone up by £25, so the next question is: is the pre-order price going to be honoured? My card at the time, like most people's I imagine, has expired - has anyone been contacted for new card details?

I think your carriage is electric-lit, John, judging by the lack of gas taps on the porthole end. That would mean a battery box close to the left-hand bogie when viewed with the driving end to the right. Dynamo diagonally opposite I think (i.e. close to l/h bogie when viewed with driving end at left). Hopefully the kit comes with some etched supports for the trussing? - these should go from side to side between the inner faces of the solebars; use these with an electric-lit vehicle, rather than the cast w/m queen posts (but omit the sort of triangular shaped riveted covers). The position of the truss supports should be marked by bolts etched on the underframe overlay. Do you have vee hangers in the kit? If not, get some of these: https://www.wizardmodels.ltd/shop/carriage/c11/ and use them with Lanarkshire 21" vac tanks. Normal position is, say, 6mm bogie-wards from the truss supports; this vee unit doesn't stretch across the whole underframe (see my S4 thread), but each vee unit is hard up against one solebar: when you turn the model upside down, one is against the NE solebar, and the other against the SW solebar. Alternatively, I have a picture of a toplight brake on the GE with one centrally mounted vee, presumably stretching across the whole width of the u/f and with two tanks coming off the single cross shaft. If you want to go that way, you could these these vees from Wizard: https://www.wizardmodels.ltd/shop/carriage/c63/ Re the roof, some ellipticals had two vents diagonally opposite in each compartment, but the D.162 in Record 2 seems to have been built with them along the centre line, two vents per compartment, with each vent central above the comp windows. Since the trend seems to have been to go from diagonal to in-line on other ellipticals, I'd say go with the in-line option. I have no idea what happens on the brake roof.... Just go with the photo EDIT: drawing on the box? - though notice that it has lamp tops between each vent over the comps; I don't think there was any outward sign of lamps on electric-lit vehicles, so would suggest omitting those "pips".

The lights don't seem to have been turned on during the day - or even the gloaming: picture of 37022 on Spannerman's Flickr thread at Crianlarich in May 1984 with discernible glow from the headcode markers and nothing from the headlight: Still, if you want two headlights, I have an Accurascale 37043 I've been trying to get rid of for months. You could take the headlight off, fit it to a Bachmann 37 and bin the A/S loco... 😉 I note that although Bachmann have released no other spares for the new 37 well over a year after release, they have the cheek to put the dreadful snowploughs on sale.

I see! (Doesn't help that I looked on Rails not Derails...)

Where are you looking? The only one I can see at that price is an old model of Concrete Bob.

Hi All. I have an Accurascale 37043 in large logo blue for sale. It's in as-new condition, never having been removed from its packaging. Price is NOW £185.00 (cheaper than ebay!) + £5 contribution for second class recorded p&p. Offers considered!

They're all formers I made, yes, Chas. The two saddle tanks were for a metal former, whereas the coach was the former (with the steps later filled with Milliput) on which I laid plasticard "planks" as on a real roof. When annealing 10 thou brass, there's no need to make the curves on the former tighter; N/S is springier so that rule may apply there (I don't bother trying to curve N/S these days - if a kit has an N/S part to be curved I replace it in brass). But even if there's a slight springing back, at least the basic shape is right, and you can always then use rods or tubes to tighten things up; with the saddle tanks, there's also the formers at either end doing their bit. You're right that the built model looks OK as far as can be seen on the WW website. Removing beading is nowt to be afraid of! Yes, I think a test piece to check dimensions - and also to test whether it can be done without formers. When I did the pug this is what I got without formers - can you see how the glint shows the bowing in the middle (present on every pug tank I've ever seen). But then I was doing a lot longer line that you are; you might get away without:

N/S isn't particularly amenable to annealing, especially when it's been half-etched, for some reason. (Though I doubt the armour-plated brass that my Sentinel is made of will be any easier to work with.) My own plan was to make a former. I don't see a problem bending the main curve on the front - it's the corners that would be hard, and where the different thicknesses might cause problems - but you could file the horizontal beading off on the corners and then replace after bending; I've occasionally done that with an N/S part... and then binned it and replaced it in 10 thou brass, which actually bends! . Looking at the piece now, though, I can't make sense of it: I can't see what purpose the "wings" serve, and the bit between the windows and the wings doesn't seem to be wide enough to form the requisite curve. It might be an idea to practice with a bit of 10 thou brass - I think that was my plan - to work out the geometry first, possibly in conjunction with a plasticard former (these are all shown before the filler used to even out the curves):

And got a "pass with major corrections needed". Brown certainly survived until the end of the carriages' lives, so would perhaps be safer than crimson. One or two photos show BR font for the numbers, which might suggest crimson.

Good work, Chas. But I wouldn't trust the Isinglass drawing qua drawing - it doesn't seem to quote dimensions for the windows? And this piece is going to be such a pig to bend that I wonder if it's worth getting Justin in again?

Thank you for the plug, John! I'm sorry I couldn't help with research earlier, but I tend to only research the carriages I have kits of. I am, after all, modelling the ex-NER under duress! Not having a D.162, I've never looked into them. I think this shot of 67340 gives you licence to proceed with the kit as it comes. (Please don't fill in the windows!) I'd say that is definitely-ish a D.162 with portholes and toplights. The giveaway, I think, is how prominent the vents over the doors are on the second vehicle, and how invisible on this one - as Simon has pointed out. You can see something similar on pp. 43 and 44 in David Dunn's Northumberland Branch Lines: 3. Looking at the photos in the book and yours above, I'm beginning to suspect the toplights were painted out/boarded up in later years - as were, seemingly, the windows in the clerestory in some cases. You could possibly ask David Dunn for a higher res image - do you know him? Back to the mystery carriage at Monkseaton [EDIT: earlier in this thread - not the one above], thanks for the Longworth info, Simon. To me, the carriage looks narrower than the second and third vehicles, which might argue for it having been converted from something 8' wide, which a D. 124 is. Simon, I think we can safely say if it has portholes in the ends (and elliptical roof) it's a D.162. Only the NER used that style of window; any later conversion by the LNER would have square windows (I wonder if this was to save the driver having to stand?). Therefore, since the NERA's diagram books show only D.162s (and of course D.116s, but they're clerestories) with portholes, we can say no other carriage had them. Has anybody trawled through Ernie Brack's flickr photos for an album of this area? I haven't looked for such an album, but for other parts of the north east there are often very good shots of carriages - the Brampton album, for example, albeit too early for John.

I agree with the last few posts, Chas. I have a bowl of water by me, but only dip the transfer in it, and then put the damp/wet transfer next to or below where it needs to go on the model. If it's reluctant to move off the backing paper, I apply a little more water with a brush.

I've been looking into this a bit more and a couple of explanations present themselves. Unfortunately, neither really helps John with his D&S kit... The first is that even when a diagram was nominally a toplight design, that doesn't mean that every carriage built to that diagram had toplights; the builders could apparently go back to the old-style Bain bodysides at whim. This was the case with a number of diagrams: D.161, for example, included one carriage with the Bain body style, while all the others in that diagram had toplights. However, no D.162s are listed as being built with the Bain bodysides. But that doesn't necessarily mean that none were. The other possible explanation is in one of Benham's captions (p.93) in his book on the NYMR, where he says: "For the push-pull operations introduced in later LNER/early BR days a number of new conversions were made from conventional former NER Brake Third coaches." Leaving aside the fact that the caption relates to a toplight-sided D.162 with large end windows, it might explain how the D.213s came to be converted; but could it be that composites were also converted? Diagrams 210 and 124 would have the right compartment arrangement (1+5) and Bain bodysides. Does Longworth offer anything? Incidentally, Benham's book has a photo on p. 32 at Whitby of an A8 with a BR number coupled up to a driving trailer with porthole end windows - so some did survive unmodified. I can't see if the bodyside has toplights or not. As said, none of this much help to John, sorry!

I'm not sure it should be in the water that long, Chas. Don't the instructions say just to dip it in the water and then lay it on the model - to avoid diluting the glue? It's certainly the way I do it. .

I don't think you can make this carriage out of the D&S 162, John - the unfilled windows would be the wrong shape. I'd be inclined to keep the kit for its value. The carriage in question could possibly be easier to make from an eight-compartment 3rd? - if you can get one.

Or the carriage is a conversion from a different diagram? The changes to the bodyside to alter the windows would amount to a complete rebuild from a D.162. Not quite academic if he's trying to produce it from a D.162...

Interesting, Simon. And do we know that such a thing (re-panelling) happened? It's a heck of a lot of work to go to for a superannuated carriage. It occurs to me I haven't seen many photos of toplights in later days, which might argue for re-panelling. However, the Transport Library image LSDC2890 shows a five-comp brake third in the late 1940s/early 1950s on the GE with toplights still intact, suggesting there wasn't a fundamental design flaw (leaking, for example) - or perhaps just that it didn't bother the GE enough to re-panel? I've been looking at some old Expresses but there's not much. An article by T. Smeaton in issue 69 says just that D.162s Nos. 229, 2106 and 21898 were re-fitted with the new PP gear in March 1938 for West Hartlepool-Ferryhill services.

I'd say the carriage in your photo most closely resembles a D.211 conversion as it has no toplights, which the 162s had. Looking in more detail at the photos in your thread, I see nothing resembling a D.162 - unless the toplights were built out in later years?! However, 211s had 5 compartments, and I don't know if a 6th was added on conversion (it's weird that the conversions weren't given a new diagram number); D.213s had even fewer compartments - 4 - and Dawson makes no mention of any being push-pull, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen in LNER days. But really, we're in the dark as info in NERA publications is sparse - the carriage people have never been interested in the LNER period. I'm afraid we're just reduced to parsing photos for later mods. Wright in his book on the North Sunderland has a picture of a D.162 in 1936 still with portholes - not sure if that confirms or disconfirms anything,

Thanks. I'm still getting the same, clicking from his signature and in chrome. EDIT: but I can get there on Firefox!

Anyone else having trouble getting on to the website? Antivirus warns about certificate, and when I continue I get 404 error notice.

Ooh! Wish I'd known that! Drat - the model is still available!