Passenger Brake Van C1860

geoff_nicholls

Western Thunderer
My method of forming G3 springs is similar in principle to Jon's, but cruder, and probably meant more burnt fingers. The former is plywood, the brass rod pushed in a hole in the centre becomes a part of the spring with soldering. It's held in a vice during assembly of each spring. I try and pre-form each spring leaf to make the job easier.
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Jon Nazareth

Western Thunderer
First picture showing the build so far. Brake blocks with their hangers suspended from even more hangers (?). Not sure what they would be called
I wasn't sure how to fix the springs in place. Normally there would be pins fitted into the backs of the springs which would be fitted and glued into holes in the W irons. I have done this on whitemetal springs but, I thought that I may break too many twist drills drilling into the laminates of the springs. I was thinking about this problem while in the shower and the idea came to me to solder the springs to the W irons. Each spring/W iron was placed and clamped into position and then soldered. With the first attempt, the heat travelled up the screws melting them very slightly into the styrene which meant that on disassembly, I had to unscrew the screws. I'm sure that you know what I mean. With the others, I clamped tissue, soaked with water, to the W irons which acted as a heat sink. After the soldering, the screws easily pushed out this time.
In the picture, the spring/W iron units are held in place with 14BA machine screws and nuts with the spring hangers simply butting up to the solebars. I'm thinking that on final assembly, I may place a drop of Araldite on the hangers gluing them to the solebars but, they seem to sit okay at the moment without any glue. I'll have to give that one some more thought.
The next job will be to machine up some small tubes which will be silver soldered to the backs of the brake hangers and will eventually take the brake rods.
Second picture showing those whatdoyoucallthems.
Third picture showing a goods brake van in the background. This build will be very similar except it will be painted green instead of grey.

Jon

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Jon Nazareth

Western Thunderer
Does this help?
View attachment 148396
Sorry about the messy scribble. The inner brake blocks are pushed on by the cranks on the central shaft, exactly like wagon brakes, and the outer blocks are pulled by the rods onto the outer face of the wheels. There doesn't appear to be any compensation in the linkages so it relies on equal wear on both block of each pair to work effectively. The pull rods can only be on one side of each pair of blocks to avoid the pull rod of the other pair. My elevation shows them offset vertically for clarity while the GA shows them at the same height, which makes sense so they have the same mechanical advantage and therefore all brake blocks exert equal pressure on the wheels. There are lots of reasons this arrangement didn't become widespread.

Overseer
Pondering the braking system and the position of the push/pull rods and their connections to the brake blocks. There will have to be some very long spacers not only in order to make those connections but also to be able to clear all of the other gubbins like axle boxes et al. I can understand your statement when you said that this system wasn't very popular!

Jon
 

Overseer

Western Thunderer
Overseer
Pondering the braking system and the position of the push/pull rods and their connections to the brake blocks. There will have to be some very long spacers not only in order to make those connections but also to be able to clear all of the other gubbins like axle boxes et al. I can understand your statement when you said that this system wasn't very popular!

Jon
While the drawing seems to show a pull rod outside the W iron it is more likely that they were actually close to the wheel face and behind the W iron.
 

Jon Nazareth

Western Thunderer
Thanks, Overseer, as you can see, this is what I've done with this mock up.

The fixing points for the brake rods have been silver soldered onto the brake hangers and the first connecting rods have been made and tried in situ, they fit! There's another on the other side. The rubber bands are to hold the blocks in the closed position while everything is tested and fitted in place. The rods as per drawing are shown as 2" wide and that's how these scale although they look a little over scale, ah well.

Jon

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Jon Nazareth

Western Thunderer
The rods are in place and, I must have done something right as they are all the same length. I started to fix in place the cross shaft with it's collars but, I noticed something didn't look quite right. I hastily removed the collars and shaft and wiped off the loctite. I'm not sure what it's called, the lever that can be seen in the third picture, is, according to the drawing, supposed to be connected to the rod that connects to the right angled lever that sits below the wheel and shaft. From what I can see, it can't do that as it would foul the wheel on the right hand side. I'll need to make another, (ah, just thought of it's name, 'actuating arm') actuating arm that connects just to the brake blocks and the one shown in the photo can be slid along in order to make the whole thing work. If you page up to the drawing, hopefully it will be seen what I'm babbling about. :D
Because of the way that the brake rods are set up and in order to clear the wheels, I had to make up two lots of spacers, some 1/16" and some 3/16"

Jon

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Jon Nazareth

Western Thunderer
P.S. There is a bracket that holds the elbow crank, which connects to the brake standard, that needs to be made. The drawing doesn't show the said bracket so, I've got to work something out for that.

Jon
 

Jon Nazareth

Western Thunderer
All of the cranks and rods have been fitted. The brass collars were originally held with loctite but, on assembly, they one by one fell off, these have now all been soft soldered into position. The next job is to make and fit the shaft and housing in order to have the brakes working. The making and fitting of the brakes et al have proved a bit of a trial, fitting and applying the nuts and bolts especially so. I'm hoping that I can get it all back together again after all has been removed for painting.

Jon

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michael mott

Western Thunderer
Lovely work on the chassis so far. It is so nice working at a scale where one can use real nuts and bolts, it gets tricky when one needs to make the square ones though.

Michael
 

Jon Nazareth

Western Thunderer
This is my method for bringing all of the various pieces to length.

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Here is the first side frame all assembled. The framing jig is the same one that I used to make up the underframe. Also in the picture is a small square that I made up so that I could fix the uprights vertically.

Jon
 

Jon Nazareth

Western Thunderer
I suppose that I've been avoiding this project simply because of the link up to the braking system. Well, I'm back on it now and have made some progress. The walls and ends have been assembled together with some short pieces of flooring. The sides of the box that the brake operating shaft is fixed to has also been fixed in place. Before doing the latter, I made sure that it lined up with the link under the body. I'm trying to assemble it all in a logical manner but still expect something to go wrong. Everything would have been much easier for myself if I hadn't decided that the brakes were going to be a working item. It takes very little movement for the brake to come off, finger pressure on the lifting arm, which means that the trunnion won't have to rise and fall too much. The next job is to make the linkage that connects the trunnion to the lifting arm, I may be some time.
If anyone is thinking that the brake shaft is very close to the door then they are right, it is. But that is how it is shown on the drawing and a tight squeeze for the guard if he came into the compartment through that door!

Jon

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Jon Nazareth

Western Thunderer
P.S. By this stage, I've usually fixed the body to the underframe but, because of the brakes et al, I've not done that. In fact, I shall keep them apart and paint them individually.

Jon
 

Jon Nazareth

Western Thunderer
I have spoken with chaps far more knowledgeable than myself and it appears that this Van was never built as a passenger brake and there is no evidence that it was ever built at all. A very nice, if sometimes confusing, drawing exists but that is no evidence that it was ever used as a construction drawing. Having got this far with the model, I shall carry on and finish it and then sit back and have a think as to how I shall finally treat it with regards to paint colour. Some have said paint it as a Goods brake van but, I already have one of those of a very similar design and don't particularly want another.

Jon
 

Mike W

Western Thunderer
Records can show that something was built, but it is a brave man who states that something was never built. 30 years ago a well respected author of wagon books discredited the Henson LNWR wagon drawings as being fiction. Today we know that they are pretty accurate.

If it was intended as a passenger break then I think it would look good as just that .. if that's what you want.

Mike
 

Marc Dobson

Western Thunderer
Jon,
A few years back I did an archaeology course run by our local uni and there was a mantra that "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence". Your van appears on pages 109/110 of volume 2 of the LBSCR coaches book. it doesn't say they weren't build it just says that there is no evidence that they were. It could just be no one has found the photo yet!

Marc
 
For what it's worth, if I had built such a lovely model and it turned out to be just a 'might have been', I would still be very happy to run it. At the moment, I can only dream of scratchbuilding to this standard.

John.
 
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