William's Workbench - LBSCR, LC&DR & SER in 4mm, and Gauge 1

[hayfield]

3 hours ago, martin_wynne said:

@Lacathedrale Experienced users will know to pack the slots with aluminium cooking foil to get a good fit in the gauge tool for maximum accuracy. Unfortunately batches of rail vary, so this is unavoidable with fixed-slot gauge tools usable on any batch of rail. If you are making your own gauge tool, you could make a spring-loaded self-adjusting design instead.

Martin.

 

A word of caution using roller gauges on standard chairs (not check or wing rail chairs, when using plastic chairs the head of the rail must rotate to allow for the inward cant of the rail. If the gauge is too tight/deep the rail will be held upright. once set and after the gauges have been removed the chairs will relax back into their normal position and gauge narrowing will occur  !!

 

For those using and adapting standard chairs, remember that these chairs are designed to hold the rail at an inward facing cant

Edited December 14, 2021 by hayfield

[martin_wynne]

1 hour ago, hayfield said:

A word of caution, when using plastic chairs the head of the rail must rotate to allow for the inward cant of the rail.

@hayfield

 

Hi John,

 

Not for check rails. Prototype check rails are vertical.* A check gauge tool can be a close fit on the check rail side. The check gauge needs to be set as accurately as possible.

 

 

 

This assumes of course that moulded check chairs have been correctly made with vertical check rails.

 

Note that for Templot Plug Track all rails and chairs are, or will be, vertical. However for Plug Track no gauges are needed, so this issue is not relevant.

 

*except some early pre-grouping designs.

 

cheers,

 

Martin.

Edited December 14, 2021 by martin_wynne
typo

[Regularity]

2 hours ago, hayfield said:

 

A word of caution, when using plastic chairs the head of the rail must rotate to allow for the inward cant of the rail. If the gauge is too tight/deep the rail will be held upright. once set and after the gauges have been removed the chairs will relax back into their normal position and gauge narrowing will occur  !!

Hence the design mentioned on page 2, here:

 

[hayfield]

1 hour ago, martin_wynne said:

@hayfield

 

Hi John,

 

Not for check rails. Prototype check rails are vertical.* A check gauge tool can be a close fit on the check rail side. The check gauge needs to be set as accurately as possible.

 

 

 

This assumes of course that moulded check chairs have been correctly made with vertical check rails.

 

Note that for Templot Plug Track all rails and chairs are, or will be, vertical. However for Plug Track no gauges are needed, so this issue is not relevant.

 

*except some early pre-grouping designs.

 

cheers,

 

Martin.

 

 

Sorry I misunderstood the comment and thought you were talking about all gauges. What has cone to mind many use and adapt standard chairs which are designed to hold the rail at an angle, not upright. Quite a minefield  sometimes

Edited December 14, 2021 by hayfield

[Lacathedrale]

Well, turns out that 1mm styrene is not a great material for the sides of coaches where you have to cut out lots of windows. Lesson learned!

 

 

This was the beginning of an 1888 LCDR Brake 2nd, (an example seen on the Bluebell Railway is LCDR No. 114) - but I have aborted for now and have ordered some thinner material. I am now planning on using 0.4mm styrene for the main body, with window aperatures cut out and frames added from behind with another layer of 0.4mm. The distinctive square-edged beading will either be fretted out of a sheet, or put in place using strip material. With a NWSL Chopper, I think the latter will be significantly quicker!

[Lacathedrale]

To get my groove back on I whipped up an SER 8T coal wagon from 1885 from some basic drawings:

 

 

Unfortunately I've lost my bottle of Tamiya Extra Thin cement, and the wagon is a little soft around the edges thanks to the kind ministrations of MEKPAK and a large brush - but should do fine. Once it's hardened up overnight I'll file back the washer plates to the same height as the side planking.

 

As per the wonderful builds on @ScottW's workbench and inspiration from Chris Croft's MRJ articles I have modelled the side knees and internal washer plates too, but bolt-heads are going to be applied as dots of card glue - I tried using bits of styrene rod and felt myself going mad.

 

This is actually my first wagon in 4mm, the previous four being in S-scale. It feels a little quaint .

 

Looking at the photo I realised I've not tapered the end stanchions - typical!

Edited December 30, 2021 by Lacathedrale

[Lacathedrale]

Put the angle into the stanchions and it's looking alot better:

 

I realise that my S-scale wagons didn't actually get underframes - so while I'm comfortable attempting to scratch build them, this one is going to get EMGS W-irons and 5and9 SER axleboxes/springs/buffers.

[Lacathedrale]

Ah, added bolt heads and nuts all over with dots of rocket card glue - sure, they aren't hexagonal and they are a bit wonky, but under a layer of primer and a few layers of paint and weathering it's just texture at that point and it's good enough for me:

 

 

It's missing the hooks for horse haulage, but other than a couple of nuts on the solebars that's it! I'll get the blighter undercoated and we can see where we stand.

 

I must admit, the addition of inside ironwork really does make wagons pop - I can only assume it's a cost-reduction thing in injection plastic dies, and after all - few people notice. Did you notice that the wagon was a scale 6" too narrow? Precisely!

 

Anyway, I've had nothing but success from Vallejo acrylics, so I'm going to pursue those further with this. Thankfully this far in the past colours are notional and as long as I keep to a rough palette then it'll look fine.

 

Next up is an LCDR Low-sided goods wagon. I built one earlier in this thread in S-scale if you want to see it in progress, in the thread I'll hopefully show it once I've got it to a state of completion as the SER 8t wagon above.

[Lacathedrale]

LCDR low-sided goods wagon done (at least, from a styrene perspective!):

 

 

I'm not sure when dumb buffered wagons finally died out, but they are characteristic of the early railway scene - so I think that will be my next build.

[Lacathedrale]

@Mikkel may I ask your recipe for the inside of wagons? I know you're a vallejo user and I think I've decided to stick with them going forward.

 

I sure do love wagon building in styrene - at least this part - it really isn't too hard at all and comes together quickly - both of these done in a few hours over the last few days.

[Mikkel]

Hi William, I'm very impressed with the quick progress on those two wagons, and not the easiest designs either.

 

For the interior I use a pragmatic approach (as usual): A base of Vallejo pale sand, and then brush rich dark black weathering powder evenly all over it. This creates a basic greyish look which is then followed by other powders as required. Note that this technique doesn't look good if there are glue stains inside, as the powders will then just highlight them!

 

The process is illustrated towards the end of this post:

 

 

[Lacathedrale]

Excellent, thank you - duly ordered. Both wagons are unusual but I'd not say difficult per-se.

 

The SER wagon has the curved ends, but I have a compass with a scalpel blade attached so it was just a case of determining the radius and cutting it like that. It also has the benefit of almost nothing at all on the solebars except some bolts and the horse rope hook.

 

The LCDR wagon has no corner plates or knees to worry about, and everything is quite straight and neat.

 

Overall, not bad for a couple of evening's work I'd say!

 

 

Those crown plates are slivers of tube sliced off the end of a rod and sanded as flat as I could get them - not fun at all. I'm happy to make most of this stuff, but crown plates/coupling hooks/etc. are particularly hateful so I have ordered some from Comet/Wizard.

Edited December 31, 2021 by Lacathedrale

[Lacathedrale]

My lord, there are so many planks...

 

An SER 8t Covered  Goods Wagon of 1878:

 

Honestly the outside framing really threw me on this one - particularly with the headstocks as part of the framing! I'm hoping against hope that the solebars are going to fit properly

 

[Lacathedrale]

Well, this  outside framed van has become a bit of a pigs ear. Hopefully it will end up OK in the end.

 

40g added with diving ballast (15g removed after this photo was taken!) for an average of 25g per axle:

 

 

A 20 thou brass roof cut and rolled (using a hot sauce bottle a dining table chair cushion):

 

 

As you can see I've tidied up the ends too, but a fundamental dimensional issue has surfaced - the ends below the curve of the roof need to drop down by about 2mm to allow a proper chassis and W-irons to fit underneath. I should be able to get the overall dimensions correct with judicious application of styrene strip, but it will end up with an oversized headstock whatever happens.

 

I definitely underestimated the complexity of an outside framed vehicle and I think this van is destined to become a 'background' vehicle. For better or worse, all SER and LCDR vans were outside framed so I'll have alot of time to apply the learnings found here.

 

As an aside in the Southern Wagons Vol. 3: SECR Appendix it states the avergage age of goods stock on LCDR was 22 years, 20 years on SER and 17 on SECR so though it feels ridicolous to include pre-1880's stock it's probably alot closer to reality than expected.

 

Thanks to @burgundy once this van is complete I've already got my next project. Hint: where we're going, we don't need buffer castings.

[burgundy]

On 02/01/2022 at 19:28, Lacathedrale said:

Thanks to @burgundy once this van is complete I've already got my next project. Hint: where we're going, we don't need buffer castings.

Something like this by any chance?

Best wishes 

Eric 

[Lacathedrale]

Weight glued and roof on!

 

 

Unfortunately 24 hours in the proving drawer has not improved matters with regard to the overall geometry and I'm somewhat backed into a corner.

 

To cut a long story short, the bottom of the outside frames needs to be in line with the top of the headstock, instead of the bottom of it, to expose the right amount of solebar. Unfortunately the side frames are very, very solidly glued on currently, and were I able to remove, I think it would involve re-making both doors and all the intermediate stanchions.

 

I see that I have four? choices.

 

1) I could discard the wagon and re-make it, since rectifying the mistake properly is as much work as re-making it

2a) I could fudge further by by adding 2mm strip under the solebar and headstock in-situ, but the wagon is already slightly too tall and it would make the headstock COMPLETELY the wrong size and shape instead of just 'mostly'.

2b) I could use a razor saw and cut through the vertical stanchions on each side and pry off the side of the bottom frame rail.

3) I could finish it up to a reasonable level, chalk up some lessons learned and build the next wagon better.

 

I'm leaning towards 3 - if anyone has other ideas, please do let me know.

 

Edited January 4, 2022 by Lacathedrale

[Regularity]

Start again.

Don Boreham once said that the railway modellers’s golden rule was to scrap anything which you know not to be the best you could do.

To paraphrase a common saying, no point throwing good time after bad.

[Mikkel]

There's also this option, if it suits the setting?

 

[Simond]

My vote is for 3, with the proviso that the “good after bad” is as little as possible.  
 

you can cut off the underframe, park it in a field heavily weathered, with sheep etc., once you’ve built its replacement…

[Lacathedrale]

Fair play.

 

With the benefit of experience, much like my coal wagons, I think the second one (pair!) will be both more straight forward, and more accurate. I have ordered some narrower strip for the framing (since what I currently used isn't correct either, but which I was willing to overlook).

 

Re: placing in a field - potentially - this picture of Bromley North shows a carriage far off in no-man's land - quite how it got there is anyone's guess...

 

 

It may be time for a palate cleanser. I have just obtained 'David Jenkinson's Carriage Building Made Easy' but a pox on outside framing for now: to the wagon bench!

[Regularity]

6 hours ago, Lacathedrale said:

Re: placing in a field - potentially - this picture of Bromley North shows a carriage far off in no-man's land - quite how it got there is anyone's guess...

There was a kickback siding.

[Lacathedrale]

Quite right, I've just seen it in the 1897 OS Map. It was not present on the original station plans but I see it here: https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=18.68&lat=51.40959&lon=0.01770&layers=168&b=1

 

You've got sharp eyes!

[Regularity]

It’s a prototype track plan of interest to me, ever since I operated Oakhurst many years ago.

[Lacathedrale]

The LCDR Drop Side wagon (of which @Regularity should be familiar ) is now almost complete:

 

 

 

I used Wizard/Comet compensated W-irons and coupling hooks, @5and9models axleboxes, springs and buffers. I also replaced the dodgy half-tube sliver crown plates with some etches.

 

It needs the brake gear, some fall blocks which I repeatedly have forgotten to add, and the buffer castings tarted up before it enters the paint shop for an all over warm grey and a dusty wood interior.

 

The use of castings has expedited the construction a great deal. I am reminded of a conversation in a model engineering club about laser cut steel frames vs hacking frames out of steel stock by hand - at no point does anyone question whether the latter is possible as it's not a very difficult job - but it is very time consuming,. Maybe the effort better spent elsewhere? I'm not sure if that's the case here but overall, I'm pleased with the progress.

Edited January 10, 2022 by Lacathedrale

[Lacathedrale]

And painted:

 

 

I'm very proud of this!