richbrummitt

I'm pleased someone could confirm this. The style shouts Bob Jones - an artist can often be identified by his work, even when the name is not present! I also have built one of these vans, but yours looks neater, John.

Mikkel, I'm intrigued: Some of your coaching stock has what looks like a red oxide colour for the wheel centres. A few others are much darker (almost) black. Richard.

If it is it has the wrong number painted on it. You can make out 50020 from the photo. Edit: I've looked again at the original on a better screen and have changed my mind. I agree with Pugsley and TomE: it's 50010

Cheers Don. Turns out it's not quite as finished as I thought: whilst looking in a box earlier today I found an offcut of etch sheet with the lamp irons and the remainder of the brake rigging! It would be rude not to add them...

We got PL-L down our road this year.

In between eating, drinking, partying, visiting, more eating, more drinking, more... (I shan't go on because I imagine we've all had to go through the same thing) I've wangled a day off and managed some time at the workbench. I really wanted to get the underframe finished on this milk brake van so that it was at the stage for painting. The roof and details will be added after the body has the base colour on. This allows me to easily paint the inside - essential where there are windows present. Last time you saw this vehicle here it had little more than the contents of the kit assembled. After sitting idle for about 5 years I had just rebuilt the W irons with some spares that included the brakes and added the trussing. This used nickel silver strip. Next on the list were the lower footboards. I wanted to devise a method that would allow easy and accurate spacing of the stirrups for soldering whilst ensuring they were upright. An off-cut of Tufnol and a few hours on the newest addition to the workbench (a Proxxon MF70 milling machine) produced a simple jig to do just that. First I drilled a series of holes down the centre of the edge spaced according to the stirrup positions. Afterwards I ran a milling cutter to form a groove down the centre for the upright of the step board to sit into against the wire inserted in the various holes. I hope the picture of the jig mounted in the vice explains it better than I can in words. An short length of the reduced angle used for the footboard is sat in place ready for the stirrups, bent from nickel silver wire, are inserted into the holes and soldered up. The ends can be trimmed to length once the soldering is complete. The holes are drilled vertically in the mill and ensure that the wire is upright when soldered on and the spacing will be the same for every one. Various additional holes exist so that I can use it again for coach bogie footboards and horse box steps, which are shorter and have different stirrup spacings. Before fitting the assembled footboards I fixed the whitemetal axle boxes (2mm Scale Association 2-473) and looked at the springs (2mm Scale Association 2-464). I realised that I couldn't fit these around the trussing, and on further observation of the line drawings in Slinn & Clarke to ascertain the size and position of the longitudinal tank I realised that the vacuum cylinder was on the wrong side and that I had soldered the floor in the wrong way around all those years ago (the instructions turned up as a page marker in one of the Russel volumes and were found to be misleading). Major surgery was needed! I unsoldered some items to enable a chunk of floor to be removed for re-insertion with the correct orientation. Before refitting on a new section of 0.010" nickel silver, making a complete floor for the vehicle for the first time, I added the footboards followed by the springs. Lastly the cylinder was added. I had some dowel the correct diameter so it was cut from that. It is cross drilled in two positions and slid onto a U shaped 0.5mm wire. This makes adjusting the vertical position easy. You will see the ends of this wire cut and filed flush in the underside view below. The model is now rested off the workbench with various other items awaiting the arrival of warmer drier weather so that I can get outside with the spray cans whilst I get on with the next item. Greetings of the season and all the best for 2012.

Okay. Brown, I think. Lake was 1912 onwards (or maybe it didn't happen ). Edit: They were originally Grey

Are you sure? According to Atkins et al. the first ones were built in Edwardian times. I had to have 4 made to meet the MOQ so at least two are going spare. The W4 would have been a rare beast.

There are also some 4 wheeled coaches available from scale link. They work out expensive though compared to other options. Last time I spoke to the person developing the Mex kit it was still in progress i.e. not available yet.

I just read your latest posting. I think that whatever roof is the right length is fine. I'm sure I used an LMS/SDJR cattle wagon roof for a GER passneger cattle box recently. I'm not even sure why I had the roof in the first place? If you haven't got anything to hand ensure you have some 0.005" nickel silver sheet to cut to size.

Aargh! You fill my head with too many ideas of things to make and do. A couple of observations but most noticeably I would not consider a diagram with around 100 vehicles in to be particularly rare, even though the most common had several thousand. On almost the same theme I am currently building some W7s.

They look gert lush. As the first comment suggests they will look even better once painted up and weathered running underneath the body. Dark colours can hide a lot of detail!

Do you have a body too? I didn't like the look of the dean goods from Nick and I'm not convinced of my ability to make a belpaire firebox that extends as far as the running plate rather than a pair of tanks as yet.

I have a packet to send to the shopkeeper at shop 2, but it might be just as easy to email him (or Mr. Chief Shopkeeper)

You could do this anyway

Nice work and I find that improving skills are a continual development. (Why is it that humans learn from mistakes - so frustrating when you have to make something wrong to do a good job of the model second time around!) Looking forward to the cattle wagon instalment. I bought the chassis recently having given up waiting for the roof etch to become and was pleasantly surprised that the original style doors are in the chassis etch and not the roof etch as I originally though.

That second pictures is of a bad part. I haven't read the policy but they *might* offer a replacement? On what I had printed there was a kind of diagonal patterning but it is not so pronounced and I think (hope) it will almost completely disappear under paint because it is not that obvious. Not so with that 25 body though! The plough looks smart. 3D printing is ideal for difficult shapes such as this.

I'd take that. By the way; the first of your friend's odd requests is available as an etched kit.

Are they similar to vacuum pipes? These I bend up on a jig from suitable sized wire. There are methods of making more detailed versions in 'Loco bits and pieces' by the late Mr Wright.

I don't see it in the HMRS book either. RWA figure 83 has a good side on and is from a photo dated 1900. It has the push rod brakes and grease axleboxes as you have modelled. No. 12009 and allocated Newport. RWA fig. 304 shows a steam crane putting the roof up a t Shrewsbury, but in the middle distance there is a good, but small view of one of these vehicles from the verandah end. As Nick said Russell's A Pictorial Record of Great Western Wagons (what is this in short?) Fig 238 and 239 show such a vehicle in departmental use. The latter figure showing the non-verandah end.