7mm Highland Railway Dia K Fish Trucks.

[Sandy Harper]

I was recently given a pair of 7mm scale cast resin wagon bodies for a Highland Railway Dia. K Fish truck and asked if I could turn them into running models. The trucks were designed by David Jones and were built around the 1880/90 era for transporting fresh fish from the north of Scotland to cities in the south and were intended to run in express trains. They were therefore fitted with 3' 8" coach wheels, piped to accept both air and vacuum pipes and painted in the HR coach green livery with yellow lettering. The fish was transported in barrels and covered over with a layer of turfs for insulation.

The resin castings were quite well detailed and square, always useful! I had to scratch around for bits to complete them but still ended up scratch building some of them.

This is the first one and is ready for the paint shop.

 

[Overseer]

Good to see one of the fish trucks being built and that the resin is still in good condition. They were cast in 2000, in Sika BIRESIN G26. The kits came with an etch for correct W irons and brake gear, and white metal springs, axle boxes and brake pipes. If you have two bodies without instructions and the other parts I think I gave 2 reject bodies to Phil Giles so you will probably need to fill some bubbles before painting.

See here for more information -Highland Railway wagons

I still have the masters for these, and the other Archibald Works wagons so could make another batch if anyone is interested.

 

[Sandy Harper]

Hi Fraser, thanks for the info very interesting. From what you say it would appear that the pair of casings came from Phils estate as there are a couple of air bubbles present that I will need to fill.
Considering their age the fish truck castings are in good shape without any sign of bending or twisting. The LNWR Special Tank, from an Eric Underhill kit that I recently completed, probably of a similar vintage, had suffered from significant bending and twisting of the cab roof and footplate and took a bit of straightening out.
I had one response from a facebook follower asking if the kits were still available.
Kind regards
Sandy

 

[Sandy Harper]

Fraser, I spent a pleasant hour yesterday afternoon going through your Highland Railway Wagons post again, as I had forgotten about it, and to my surprise, in the photograph of Kyle station on page 2, with the rake of empty type K' s in the foreground , what should I spot lurking in the background but what looks suspiciously like a Dia 25 Road Van, 1 of 2 built with the side lookouts instead of the roof cupola, and which I have recently built a model, converted from the Walsworth model, for Phil Taylor. It was not thought that any photographs existed of this mythical beastie.

Kind regards
Sandy

 

[Overseer]

Fraser, I spent a pleasant hour yesterday afternoon going through your Highland Railway Wagons post again, as I had forgotten about it, and to my surprise, in the photograph of Kyle station on page 2, with the rake of empty type K' s in the foreground , what should I spot lurking in the background but what looks suspiciously like a Dia 25 Road Van, 1 of 2 built with the side lookouts instead of the roof cupola, and which I have recently built a model, converted from the Walsworth model, for Phil Taylor. It was not thought that any photographs existed of this mythical beastie.

Kind regards
Sandy

View attachment 116462

Sandy, the road van looks good, and looks like the van in the photo. I am pretty sure that photo has been published and hadn't realised photos of the side lookout version of the road vans weren't known. There is still plenty to be found in the background of historic photos, I have been meaning to add a fairly clear end view of a meat van to the thread - it is hiding in plain sight in a wide view of Inverness yard.

 

[Overseer]

Sandy, further to the above and your article in the Highland Railway Journal I realised there is another photo of one of these vans at Kyle, published in 'The Highland Railway' by David Ross (the larger 2010 version), page 75. It is a postcard view so it should be possible to find a non pixelated version to get more detail. Plenty of fish wagons as well.




To me it looks like a Drummond rebuild or build of the Diagram 25 vans rather than a pure Jones design. I haven't seen any information on dates of introduction but they could have been built for the opening of the extension to Kyle of Lochalsh, which would fit with Drummond's arrival.

 

[Overseer]

Looking through 'Rails to Kyle of Lochalsh' by David McConnell today I found another photo which probably confuses things even more. First, the G.W. Wilson photo which started this diversion from fish trucks is also in the book. Two versions of the same image -

This van looks the same as the one in the photo posted earlier. I think the roof radius on the vans in these photos looks more pronounced than the Diagram 25 vans with roof lookouts does in photos.

This is the photo I was looking at for details of the Type T meat vans (third and fourth vehicles in the train). I am not certain but the two brake vans on the rear look very similar to the above brake vans but I think the roofs look flatter than in the preceding photo. The photographs are both taken from exactly the same spot (compare the lamp post above the brake van roof in the first photo) so there is very little difference in perspective. This photo proves that there were at least two of this type of van but it seems there were more than two similar vans. The dates of all the photos are quite close together, around 1900. I would have thought there should be a separate diagram for the side lookout vans.


Apologies to all for the obscure subject matter. At least all the photos have multiple Highland Railway Type K fish trucks in them so are not too far off topic.

 

[Sandy Harper]

Fascinating, well spotted. I would concur about the different roof profiles, significantly more curved than the original Dia 25's.
Sandy

 

[Sandy Harper]

And just to finish off this thread, a photo of the finished model.