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Ian Smith
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Brilliant work on the Horse and cart  I love the sort of nonchalant way you refer to re-sculpting the horse. The drive looks good two. Just a little detail but so well done.

 

Don

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Hi Ian,well we managed to meet at  the Ukfield show and i must say it was truely worth it .Your model diarama what ever you wish to call it was amazing . I still cant think how you can write this blog page and do the amount of really excellent modelling into the time that you have between the models and articles . The Locos are a true art from start to the finished item.Nice to chat to you even it was for a short time considering you were very busy.Look forward to seeing you and Modbury in the future.

Best regards Ray. 

Ps Thanks to your 2mm members helping out at Ukfield over the weekend the show was very good and it now shows that things are returning a little back to normal.

 

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6 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

I too had the pleasure of seeing the layout at Uckfield. I was impressed by how small everything is: from the amount of detail apparent in photos and videos, one might expect it to be 7 mm scale...

Stephen,

It was very nice to meet you at last and put a mask to a name :D

Thank you for the kind comments, I hope you enjoyed Modbury (and Sherton Abbas, Wadebridge, et al).  You are not the first to comment that virtually the stock and layout have a "bigger" presence :lol:

 

Ian

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Excellent views, Ian. I have noticed before that photos from the "wrong" side can be just as good or even better than the normal ones. I wonder if it's because the angles are less "designed" and therefore in fact seem more natural.

 

Anyway, that hose over the rail fence is a nice touch, haven't seen that before. I've enjoyed watching the layout in videos from Uckfield too, sounds like it went well.

 

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On 29/10/2021 at 14:37, Mikkel said:

Excellent views, Ian. I have noticed before that photos from the "wrong" side can be just as good or even better than the normal ones. I wonder if it's because the angles are less "designed" and therefore in fact seem more natural.

 

Anyway, that hose over the rail fence is a nice touch, haven't seen that before. I've enjoyed watching the layout in videos from Uckfield too, sounds like it went well.

 

I quite agree about “non-normal” viewing angles. Some weeks ago I casually thought about turning Modbury around, and adding 6” to what is currently the front of the layout, so that it would be viewed from the yard side - I quickly discarded the thought as madness :D

 

The Uckfield exhibition was very enjoyable, it was really nice to have a degree of normality back, and to see old friends again. Modbury for the most part behaved itself, there was an odd derailment coming onto/off the train table fiddle yards, and the occasional problem with the DG couplings used. All of the locos performed well (including the steam railmotor).

Ian

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Hi Ian, I agree it does make your layout look different taking photos from the other side, it shows that you have not skimped on the buildings that you can shown  either way round. Yes as I said at Uckfield I wish I had a liittle more time that Sunday afternoon , we may have a bit more to to have a chinwag about railways and modelling. Best regards Ray.

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40 minutes ago, Gareth Collier said:

Must have taken ages!

 

If you watch the linked film clip, you'll see that loading at least was pretty swift. Of course nowadays it would be faster with pallets but how do the bricks get onto the pallets in the first place?

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The other thing I noted was the huge variety of different wagons. Even though it is a whole train from a single starting point, wagons seem to come from just about everywhere. Prototypical justification for modellers building an assortment of wagons!

 

Duncan

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13 minutes ago, DuncanFogg said:

The other thing I noted was the huge variety of different wagons. Even though it is a whole train from a single starting point, wagons seem to come from just about everywhere. Prototypical justification for modellers building an assortment of wagons!

 

This is a natural consequence of the pooling arrangements for ordinary opens and vans introduced during the Great War. In Modbury's time period, any foreign wagon would have been returned promptly to its home system (along with any sheets and ropes), by the same route it had arrived by. So one has to be a little careful. But for the modeller of the inter-war period, you are right, wagons from pretty much any company could be seen anywhere, although of course one should weight towards the largest companies and, to some extent, the home company.

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2 minutes ago, Ian Morgan said:

I really liked the pyramid stack of bricks on the low sided wagon.

 

brick_load.jpg.31888768c3fef20286dfedec73856350.jpg

Ian, I too like the pyramid way of loading the single plank wagon, although I think if you did that on a model it would raise a few eyebrows so you might need to keep the “still” from the film handy to satisfy the non-believers :D

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2 hours ago, Ian Smith said:

Ian, I too like the pyramid way of loading the single plank wagon, although I think if you did that on a model it would raise a few eyebrows so you might need to keep the “still” from the film handy to satisfy the non-believers :D

 

Over on my wagon-building thread, Simon @Regularity posted a sketch of how the pyramid stacking is done:

Looking again at the still, I think the edging bricks are standing on their ends. An even more labour-intensive way of loading than the hand-stacking seen elsewhere in the film!

 

Another point discussed there was the density of the load and hence how full the wagon can be. (A general consideration not confined to bricks, and which works both ways as the volumetric capacity of the wagon can often be the limiting factor.) Density of brick varies with type; the Fletton bricks are, I think, one of the less dense types. I think Ian's got it right; noting that the depth of the load looks greater in the 10 ton 4-plank wagon than the 8 ton 3-plank.

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When an apprentice at 16  (1965) I was with a Pipe Watcher (supervisor of the contractors laying ducts and building joint boxes. More bricks were need and I was sent to assist the lorry driver. We pulled into the yard next to a stack of bricks . One of us would throw 4 bricks at a time for the other to catch and stack. After the first throw when the 4 bricks all managed to hit different parts of the driver I was the catcher. I did have thick gloves on but I suspect H&S would have a fit these days. It didn't take that long to load 500 bricks.

 

One way bricks were judged was by the amount of water they coud absorb. Weigh a brick empty and then drop it in a pail of water and once it had time to absorb the water again re weigh the bricks. 

 

Don

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Hi Ian,

 

Thank you for posting the link to that video.  It's really useful for me as I am planning a small layout based around a 1900-1910 brickworks.

 

Your brick wagon loads have given me some inspiration too.

 

Thanks!

 

Mark

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  • 2 weeks later...

I'm kind of in a quandary as to where to post this particular update - here, in the "3D Printing" thread or the "On My Workbench", - but in the end it's for Modbury so here it is ...

 

Some time ago, I shared the STL files for the Outside Framed Van and 3 GWR Cattle Wagons (W1/5, W2, and W3 diagrams) that I'd drawn up and had printed by Shapeways with Richard Brummitt.  In exchange for this, Richard very kindly printed 2 of each on his home printer for me (which I regret to say I've not as yet done anything with!).  However, Richard also very kindly included a "surprise" among the 3D prints - a pair of Iron Mink (diagram V6) bodies.  This post relates to the first of these.

 

Among the wagons I have running on Modbury are 3 Iron Mink built from Association kits, in fact 2 of them date back to my first (aborted) venture in 2mm Finescale modelling in the 1980's.  They were both originally fitted with compensated Colin Waite W Irons (which I eventually glued up solid with packers as I feel that better running can be had in 2FS with fixed underframe on short 4 wheel underframes - there just isn't enough mass to allow the compensation to work properly).  

 

All 3 of my existing Iron Mink have been modified / back-dated by replacing the kit wooden doors with the steel doors of the early vans, but all 3 also suffer from the major faults in the 2mm Association kit (primarily that they are too long, and that the vertical stanchions are too wide, meaning that the panels are slightly narrow which is a bit of a pain when trying to fit the 25" G W in but the fact that the vans are nearly 2mm too long actually helps in this regard!)

 

At the time I drew up the artwork for the Cattle Wagons and Outside Framed Van I also started on a true to scale Iron Mink of my own but shelved it because of the layered effect noticeable on the Shapeways prints - you can almost get away with it on wooden planked bodies as it is possible to convince oneself that the layering looks like wood grain but on an all metal slab sided body like an Iron Mink I felt that it wasn't worth the effort.

 

Anyway, back to the "surprise" that Richard had provided me with ...

The two bodies were printed in a creamy coloured resin, and the only noticeable layering that I could detect is on the vents on the ends of each wagon - I decided that I would deal with that at the painting stage.

 

1.JPG.603c4ab6eb81772e240d91e81c2c146e.JPG

One of the bodies that Richard provided me with.  The layering/stepping is just about visible on the vent on the body, as is the lip that Richard has designed inside the body to allow the body to seat down level on an underframe.

 

Richard had kindly cleaned all of the support material from the 3D print, but there were just one or two places that needed the merest dressing with a very fine file where the roof would fit.  I had no idea whether Richard had designed the model with any specific 2mm Association underframe in mind, but I elected to use a 2-324 SNCF 9'0" wheelbase Mineral wagon one as I have a couple in my gloat box.  I only wanted the floor with the fold down inner sole bar and W Irons anyway, once fitted with bearings, the V hanger was removed from one side and the W Iron stays were removed from between the W Irons and cleaned up.  Because the Iron Mink is only 16'6" over headstocks, it is necessary to remove about 1mm from each end of the floor (after the etched bend-down headstocks have been removed from the etch by bending back and forth along the half etched line).  Once the underframe was a snug fit within the body, a couple of pairs of wheels were dropped in so that I could check the running height - it transpired that some packing would be required between the underframe and the lip within the body to raise the body a little - I used a piece of 0.010" plastic sheet but could probably have used 0.015" really (clearly my Iron Mink has a heavy load inside making it sit down on its suspension).

 

I decided to fit this first Iron Mink with Grease Axleboxes, so made up a set of 2-318 MR Grease Axlebox/Spring, and then employed a file to try to get a slope to the top and generally square the axle boxes up a bit to look more like a GWR version.  The springs needed tweaking a bit to minimise the gap between them and the bottom edge of the solebar, but I'm pretty happy with the result.  Brake gear is just one side of the 2-324 set, the brake handle being fitted after underframe and body were united permanently as this needs to be fixed into a hole drilled into the resin solebar.  Prior to permanently uniting the body and underframe, I did a couple of things.  The first was to drill the horse hook holes in the solebars (which I also transferred to the etched underframe where I drilled slightly larger holes so that the inner etched sole bar couldn't be seen through the holes in the solebar proper).  The other thing was to fit a roof, fitted before uniting body and underframe so that I could get to the underside of the roof to apply drops of superglue.  The roof itself was formed from a piece of 0.008" tinned steel - in a moment of madness I had thought about soldering on thin strips of shim to represent the re-inforcing strips across the roof - in the end sanity prevailed and I simply glued on narrow strips of 0.005" plastic sheet after the roof was fitted!!!

 

Once the body and underframe were finally glued together, the brake handle was soldered at the V hanger end and glued in place in a hole in the solebar at the other.  A set of 2-072 buffers completed the build.

 

2.JPG.f36df2c14c03c23fa2594a9e401f915f.JPG

The completed Iron Mink ready for the paint shops.

 

3.JPG.4c0bec3f6d499082caf659099bf686bc.JPG

And posed alongside a contemporary Outside Framed Van which was a similar size and one of my 2mm Association Iron Mink (with back-dated doors) still with unfinished lettering/numbering.  I think posing Richard's rendition alongside the Association offering illustrates the slight size difference, in fact the Association model might do well as a Taff Vale Railway Iron Mink as they were 17'4" over the headstocks!!

 

It is now my intention to build up the other Iron Mink that Richard provided, but this will be fitted with OK Oil Axleboxes as it is my intention to paint the first Red and the second Grey (probably with identification plates rather than 25" G W) - somewhat contentious I know as there is still (and always will be) debate as to what colour the wagons were when fitted with plates!  However, I placed my stick in the sand several years ago when I scratch built my first 4 plank open (that's grey with plates), my view is that there are photos of grey wagons with 25" lettering but still carrying their numbers on plates, and that brake vans with plates were also grey (yeah, I know they were always grey even when everything else was red! :D)  However, it's my train set and I want my plate carrying wagons to be grey, so there!!  xD

 

Thanks for looking

Ian

 

Edited by Ian Smith
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30 minutes ago, Ian Smith said:

It is now my intention to build up the other Iron Mink that Richard provided, but this will be fitted with OK Oil Axleboxes as it is my intention to paint the first Red and the second Grey (probably with identification plates rather than 25" G W) - somewhat contentious I know as there is still (and always will be) debate as to what colour the wagons were when fitted with plates!  However, I placed my stick in the sand several years ago when I scratch built my first 4 plank open (that's grey with plates), my view is that there are photos of grey wagons with 25" lettering but still carrying their numbers on plates, and that brake vans with plates were also grey (yeah, I know they were always grey even when everything else was red! :D)  However, it's my train set and I want my plate carrying wagons to be grey, so there!!  xD

 

At least the plates get you out of the To Carry 9 Tons and Tare X-X-X between the stanchions!

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Just to be cheeky (and with no disrespect to Ian), some years ago I 'improved' the Association iron mink by turning it into a CR Dia 78 7T gunpowder van, for which it was exactly the correct length! :)

 

1062929703_8tgunpowdervanmodel.JPG.bc016a7380883c74c64a0f2c81761bdf.JPG

 

Jim

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On 27/11/2021 at 20:15, Intraclast said:

Hi Ian,

 

Thank you for posting the link to that video.  It's really useful for me as I am planning a small layout based around a 1900-1910 brickworks.

 

Your brick wagon loads have given me some inspiration too.

 

Thanks!

 

Mark

You may care to look here: https://www.scalefour.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=101&t=4339&hilit=brick+works

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