Darwinian

No offence taken, just wondered if anyone knew if any of the S.Wales pits took them. I am assuming the pit(s) above /near Cwmhir did supply loco coal for the GWR hence the loco cola wagons passing through the sorting sidings.

Apologies that it has been so long since the last post on Cwmhir. I have had some significant changes in my life but things are settling down a bit now. One consequence has been that I have re-evaluated the location of Cwmhir in our loft. It's too cold on winter, too hot in summer and the access ladder gets in the rest of the family's way. So this year Cwmhir will be moving to a new home in the garden. This is a basic, reasonably priced shed that has been put up on a base of an old shed that was falling apart. To make it habitable, hopefully all year I am lining it with Ecohome triple foil insulation (the framing is too shallow to take Kingspan or similar). It has proved fairly easy to install, mostly done today with my wife's help. Here is the inside with just the roof sections and ends gables left to do. The plan is to batten and board out the walls at least (might do the ceiling too). Fit LED lighting strips on a board in the ceiling apex. Not decided on flooring yet but thinking of laminate flooring seconds over a cheap underlay. At the moment going inside it feels like visiting the international space station (except for the presence of normal gravitational effects). .

After some fun and games getting the GWR coach brown right and getting used to using acrylics instead of enamels in my air brush I have managed to put on reasonable base colours. The bogies and underframes are Halfords rattle can satin black. The paint chips are because I dropped the box with them in, fortunately only minor damage occurred and I'll touch up the paintwork. The bodies are painted using Vallejo Air paints. I used the base colours set and mixed my own colours. This is made much easier as the paints are in dropper bottles so once the right mixture of drops is achieved it can be repeated and the volume scaled up and down as needed. Bodies, roofs and underframes are just rested together for their photo to be taken. There is some paint creep under the masking that needs to be removed/touched up, single black line added and the droplights need painting. Then I can varnish them (the finish is matt) and start applying transfers and all those luverly G- handles

There was a GWR County tank too. Straight frame version at least. I have one I built many years ago. It needs a better drive train than the one I fitted then.

There looks to be lettering / number on the buffer beam, maybe this is clearer on the original? It is rather indistinct so may be an artefact.

So the saga continues. All coaches have been primed with Halfords rattle can etching primer (other makes available no doubt). Then when I went to reassemble them I realised I'd not checked the clearance between the bogies and the brake rod safety hangers, beacuse the bogies would not fit. Out with the soldering iron and move the offending hangers inboard. One thing this did demonstrate was how much better the etch primer sticks to brass than the standard primer, it took a bit of scraping with a blunt instrumnet to clear a patch of brass to re-attach the hangers. I have plonked the subassemblies together and taken a few pictures ( might have overdone the image size reduction a bit as I cropped these too). I realised when I looked at these that i put the body of one of the composites the wrong way around. Anyway this is where I've got to. My plan is to add the lower sections of the side lamp irons in microstrip and then stick some Archer rivets on these and the end step fixings. There is some tidying up to be done on the rooves too. The bogies will need a blast of standard primer from below as I masked them off and only sprayed from above and side on as I was concerned the etch-primer might damage the plastic wheel centres.

Craig W Yes I believe you are correct. I have one I built back when they came out and comparing with the diagrams in Russell GWR wagon plans the well is too short although the overall length is correct for a G1. I suspect the issue with the holes along the side rails was that they line up with the floor as well as making them very weak. It sits a bit low too although I am not sure why, maybe the wheels it was designed for were slightly larger than the ones I used (early ultrascale I think rather than Gibson).

Rather depends what you consider a jig. The top loop was formed around a small drill bit that was clamped in a vice. Wire persuaded around with pliers. Then the set put in and the 90 degree bend below the loop. The curved bit was worked around any circular object of smaller radius and held up against the end of the van to judge the line. The bottom bend to fit into a hole in the coach end was made last. Then bend another to match using the first as a guide.

I don't like doing the curly grab rails on the ends of GWR coaches, never quite get the pair to be perfect mirror images. However here's what I have managed and with the jumper cables too. For the latter I just filed off the locating pip on the back, that fits into a hole in the comet coach ends, and then superglued them in position making sure everything was clean first using a fibreglass pen. I'm thinking I'll give them a blast of etch primer next to see what needs to be cleaned up or fettled. The roof of the right hand coach is fitted a bit too far to this end, it doesn't have to overhang quite that much, honest.

Oh bother! I've just also noticed that that photo shows that the end step handrails go across as far as the inner edge of the steps. I made mine only reach to the outer edges , thought they looked a bit far apart on the roof. I'll have to do them again now, hope I have enough 0.45mm wire left .

Just had another look at the picture in Warwickshire railways referred to by Miss P and the jumper cable is clearly visible on the brake end. That will do for me.

The E131/D98 sets I am modelling had standard drawgear. Like coachmann I expected them to have the jumper cables but cannot see them on the pictures.

Detailing of the bodies is now largely completed, photos once in works primer. However having purchased some jummper cables from Wizard models I am now doubting whether these were fitted to the non-corridor stock, at least in my period (1929 ish). I cannot see them on any of the views that show part of a carriage end in Russel's volumes and they don't show up on the side views either (which they do on corridor bow end stock). Any ideas before I clean up the bodies and prime them? Thanks.

My Morley controler has the 12 o'clock off style of control knob. I also have on old H&M walkabout which has a switch for direction and a vertical slider for speed. Can't say I particularly prefer either method but the More modern Morley does give better control. As an aside one of the inertia settings on the H&M never worked properly and has packed up altogether now. My only criticism of the Morley is that there is hardly any "click" sensation at 12 o'clock on the main controller knobs so it is easy to go just past it and then find a loco crawling off down the track that I thought I'd stopped. The Morely hand helds have a helpfully more obvious click sensation so I tend to use them more.

I wonder if this is as straightforward as I'd like to think? Would all of the carriages in the set, when built, have a plain lamp bracket over the left hand buffer at both ends? Not that many clear views in the various sources I have available but it looks that way to me. I had to cop out a bit with the characteristic waist level lamp irons that clearly were fitted. I've made them from a shaped piece of 2 thou brass strip to represent the flat bit on the end (rivets to be added from archer ones) and a bit of bent staple for the projecting bit. I know they should be a characteristic shape but brass bends too easily and I don't think I could make them consistent and small enough anyway

That’s a sensible idea but complicated because the individually formed bow ends aren’t all consistent. I should have done the drilling on the end blanks first but hadn’t thought about how to build the alarm gear then. I’ve only 3 more to do so will just have to be a bit more careful.

Well I really couldn't live with that attempt at the alarm gear so decided to try something else. 15thou nickel silver fret waste filled down to 1.3mm strip. End 2mm folded over and soldered with tinmans solder. Drill 0.7mm close to edge. File to a D shape with rounded edges, finished off with wet and dry. File off at the back to leave a small tab to fit into a holle in the coach end. Snip off and tidy up the tab. Solder to horizontal rodding with 188 degree C solder Rodding from 0.45mm brass wire. Square union made from 0.2 x1.5mm brass strip folded over the rod, soldered (188 again) and filed to a sqaure section. Holes drilled in coach end and mountings soldered in 125 degree solder. Verticle rodding soldered to end. This is the first attempt and I got the holes in the coach end about 0.5mm out of horizontal. Hopefully it won't notice in the middle of the set. Much happier with these although it took me one and a half hours to produce this one. Hopefullly the other three will be quicker now I know what I'm doing.

I’m not sure the S. Wales coal exports are relevant to these ROD 2-8-0s being acquired by the GWR. The export trade was mostly pit to port, short haul down from the valleys and handled by tank engines. I’ve not seen many pictures of tender locos being used for that job. These were more suited to long haul slow goods. Perhaps to augment the Aberdare class role. Some of the non Swindonised ones only lasted a few years in GWR hands.

Next I am attempting to tackle the train alarm gear. I looked through the Wizard/Comet lists on their web site but couldn't find anything for these. I have attempted a scratch build of the "ears" that hold the horizontal rodding using two sizes of telescopic tube. These put the rods in the middle of the "ear" whereas they should be towards the bottom. They are also rather wide and square compared to the real thing. They are however only about 2mm wide and deep. The middle joint to the verticle conduit can be square tube. I am unconvinced that they look right but I have to make four sets so a resonably quick and consistent method is needed. 16 jumper cables are going to be fun too (although Comet do those I don't have any and postage would be as much as the items themselves). I also keep toying with the idea of making them join up in the set. Not sure how yet. Any better suggestions?

Alternatively was the shed extended at some time. The colour change does look to be about the right angle for a change in the slates used. The house in the background has a very light roof too. Over on ANTB there is a photo of Brent which looks to be similar period and of 3 coaches in view there are 3 shades of white - grey.

I like that local train look at the carriage roofs. One white, one light grey and a dark one. The GWR have even put them in order!

Two years on and now Bachmann announce a ROD condition version of thier ROD 2-8-0. If it is like the picture on thier web site this version would be an absolute doddle once it comes out, correct buffers too. Don't think I can justify two fo the beasts.

Fascinating reading and an intriuging snapshot in the poll results. Personally I model a period (1929-35) 30 years before I was born. This was largely as a result of reading model railway magazines in my early teens to twenties and holiday trips to Devon and the then Dart valley railway. At the time I modelled GWR 1930s Devon as a result. Prior to that I had a typical mish-mash of a train set with various of Triang, Hornby Dublo and kitmaster. I lived backing onto the Ash - Ascot branch so my staple experience was SR electrics. My Grandfather was an SR ganger (although I think he had finished before I arrived) and my Uncle is a great SR steam fan. I currently model S.Wales because it's a bit different to the usual GWR, lots of odd pre-grouping locos, very little RTR available, so I am not spending ages building things that I could have bought cheaper. Also I lived in Cardiff for 3 years and found the Valleys scenery and geography totally different to anywhere I'd been before. Especially before the celan up of the tips and the building of new relief roads over many old track beds.

So these rooves have taken about an hour each to get finished, got a bit quicker for the last couple. I belatedly realised that the ends of the roof handrails should be on one of the inter panel joints, presumably becuase they would be fixed to the roof hoop below. Inevtiably this meant some more filling and re-drilling, although luckily not every hole was in the wrong place. The roof panel "beading" strips are rendered in selotape (other makes available). Simply done by sticking an overlength piece down lightly on a piece of glass (a coaster in this case) and then cutting off approx 1mm strips with a sharp knife and steel rule. I have to admit I did this by eye so they probably vary a bit. All four coaches in correct order: Cruel close up of one composite. Hopefully it will look less of a cobble up once painted.