4mm An EM workbench - Peckett, The Marshal

[AJC]

A small holiday update. Tanks to dad's transfer collection, my scratchbuilt Coil H is now more or less fully lettered. The lettering features items (almost all no longer available) from SMS, Woodhead and Cambrian via Modelmaster. The thing that's missing, of course, are the 'Empty to' brandings. In this instance, it should be '... SCOW Trostre and Velindre', but they can't be had. In fact, looking around the various, currently available, ranges - Fox, Cambridge Custom, HMRS, etc. - the 'Empty to' and 'Return to' can be had, but not, and this is baffling, any suitable destinations, rendering the first elements useless. CCT are an exception, but only to an extent, since thebrandings produced refer only to a relatively limited range of vehicles. All totally understandable, but nonetheless irritating.



By way of a comparison, here's an earlier conversion from a Parkside Iron Ore tippler that's just been in for a refit. The real thing was done at about the same time, for the same traffic, in the same region (South Wales), and shows what must have been a rapid change of thinking. The Coil J was crude, cheap and effective and ideal for short-haul workings from steel mill to docks. You have to wonder why they went to the trouble of the new sides and hood, etc., in the first place.



A couple of ex-works pictures too. First the scratchbuilt Shoc High:



Finally, an earlier build, a Shochood B (branding by HMRS - why the designer failed to stick a 'B' on the end rather than make the modeller line it up by eye I'll never know), all other lettering by Woodhead.



Happy 2013.

Adam

 

[AJC]

Getting back to where we started, a couple of shots of a Plastic PMV on dad's new photo plank.





From the cruel enlargement department. Hope this satisfies your curiosity!

Adam

 

[AJC]

Following on from Dog Star's tribulations with the NLTRT TTA, here's one of a matching pair of recently completed wagon projects. It's not a TTA, nor even a TTV - it's in too early a condition to be called either, and Bachmann have clearly at least seen this Paul Bartlett collection shot - http://paulbartlett.zenfolio.com/brttanks/h7fbfd8#h7fbfd8 - but it shows what can be done relatively easily with the Bachmann OO model.





Above the solebar, all I did was to replace the catwalks with the appropriate version from S Kits. They aren't perfect, but are much, much better than what went before. Otherwise, I added new buffers (ABS on this, MJT - sprung - on the other), brakeshoes (ABS - though I reused the Bachmann ones on the second one), new brake levers and guides (spares from Dave Bradwell), stirrup steps and replacement brake rigging from scraps of plastic and nickel wire with screw couplings from Masokits. Note that, like the real thing, these were spaced away from the headstock. In model form, this eases the process of getting them round corners while coupled, but most of the other vehicles in the rake (half a dozen Airfix kits at present) have sprung buffers so these rigid buffers won't matter. This last shot, showing the wagon on its back should show most of the mod's clearly.



There should, probably, be numbers on the ends to the right of the ladders but I haven't any suitable transfers in hand.

Adam

 

[AJC]

I dug out a couple of things yesterday evening that I'd started over Christmas but had no time to get back to. Not that I've actually done very much; just fitted a set of bogies acquired at the Southampton show to a Christmas-started scratchbuild.



... well, one of a pair of scratchbuilds. When you're working from a few measurements from a weight diagram and a handful of photos it makes sense to use the measurements twice - it saves marking out and loosing the bit of paper you've written the things down on if you want to make another. Anyway, eventually I shall have a pair of these, Coil Ks. These one piece Cambrian bogies certainly make things a lot easier than assembling the old three-part type. The bogie frames aren't really deep enough but they look about right. Unfortunately, Rural Railways only had the one pair in stock so the pivots on the bogie-less vehicle came from a set of Gloucester cast bogies which are going under a back-converted Bachmann BDA. It doesn't especially matter since I'm now out of disc wheels!





EDIT: Just noticed that there's a pair - among a cut of Shochood Bs by the looks of things - of these Coil Ks in the backdrop of this shot of Oxley:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/71592768@N08/6980202629/in/set-72157629939452747/lightbox/

Adam

 

[AJC]

The other item cluttering up the workbench at the moment - and it's that long that it does get in the way - is this Bogie Bolster D, back converted from the Bachmann BDA. Yes, I know that there's a Cambrian kit for this vary type, but the little underbody gussets on the solebars are the very devil to do (though not all had them), and well, it was quite cheap. The principal differences between the BDA and a diagram 1/484 are the bogies and the number of bolster. Oh, and air brakes but that's by the by.

Here's the full thing:



The Cambrian bogies with the 'one piece' mainframes aren't too bad, but the bolster detail could be a lot better (and should stick out more). The spoked wheels are temporary; they're there to set up the ride height on the new bogies. Anyone want a pair of untouched Bachmann Y25s?



View showing the new bolsters, built up from plastic strip. Note the Vac' pipe.



A rather better view showing the modifications to the deck. The chain rings are inset into the deck - tricky, but worth the effort. The technique is to mark out where they go, cut into the deck all around with a scalpel and using the same, make a series of nicks at an angle. Some form of 'micro-chisel' does the rest, in my case the sharpened remains of a broken jeweller's screwdriver. The chaining rings themselves are simply lengths of tinned copper wire about 0.4mm diameter wrapped round a 1.5mm drill and carefully cut off one at a time with a scalpel (be very wary while doing this). These are secured into the deck by means of a 1mm hole and a split pin made from the same wire. The theory is that I'll be able to chain a load to the thing in prototypical fashion. Don't hold your breath. The other bit of plastic with the square hole, by the way, is the spare location for the moveable end bolster.

The next puzzle is how to make the oblong holes for the bolster pins. Any ideas?

Adam

 

[AJC]

Returning to another earlier theme, the colours of Charrington-liveried hoppers, Justin Edwards on the BR wagon research Yahoo! group has pointed me in the direction of this (from a slide on eBay):

35mm SLIDE OF BR STEAM LOCO 80137 - 1960's | eBay



Adam

 

[AJC]

Roight! I'm with @Pugsley and @Overseer on this and, having re-reviewed the Castledine picture, I'm of the view that the background of the lettering is the same as neighbouring hopper - see below:



The band certainly doesn't match the loco's buffer beam (which near contemporary shots in colour show to have been red). Thoughts before I rub down and start over on the band?

Adam

 

[AJC]

And here, I think, is an answer, from a picture by Gordon Edgar at Weetslade:

All sizes | Weetslade Coal Preparation Plant | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Note the hopper (LNER dia. 100) in the back right hand corner. The two tone finish is clear as is the boxed lettering on the brown (thank goodness) lower half replete with figure 5 in the square box to the right of it. If you squint, the middle letters of the Charringtons brand are just about visible in the centre panel, I reckon, red. My suspicion is that the band is a pale grey?

Adam

 

[AJC]

I'm not sure how to post a link to flickr, or what unintentional copyright issues I might infringe if I re-post it here, but I have just found a colour image of a Charringtons hopper on Geoffrey Tribe's flickr site!

The number of the pic is; 15884436063_5df21d9c01_o It is a downloadable image too!

Cheers,

Pete.

Ah, this one!

Denbigh Hall Hoppers by Geoffrey Tribe, on Flickr

Result! Thank you Pete!

Adam

 

[AJC]

A couple of slightly indifferent pictures in this lovely morning light showing the BR hybar in its painted condition. Obviously it isn't actually finished; a final coat of matt lacquer and weathering, not to mention paining the insides, will follow, but a sense of what the finished vehicle will look like is clear. The painted view shows off Justin's tarp' rail etches to their best advantage I think.





More exotically, we also have - not complete because, if I have Rail Alphabet style lettering for wagons I can't lay hands on it right now - my 21 ton hopper, liveried for Charringtons. I think it's fair to suggest that the coal factors in question certainly got their monies' worth!



Red stripes are also wanted on the axleboxes but the impression, courtesy of John Isherwood's transfers, is in place.

Adam

 

[40126]

Hi Adam

Love the 21t hopper, as well as all your other work. I Searched Google to find a prototype pic, but only found these....





Do you have a full size wagon pic ?.

Steve

 

[AJC]

Hi Adam

Love the 21t hopper, as well as all your other work. I Searched Google to find a prototype pic, but only found these....

View attachment 60877

View attachment 60878

Do you have a full size wagon pic ?.

Steve

A couple of course - there's a nice one on p. 41 of Malcom Castledine's Industrial Railways in Northumbria and County Durham in the latter days of Steam (Booklaw, 2004). The grey-liveried ones do seem to have been the more common if photographic evidence is anything to go by, but having seen a handful of pictures of vehicles obviously in freight brown, I thought that I might as well. There's a little more detail in this thread over there http://www.rmweb.co....ches/?p=1246131 with a scan from Jon Hall, of a news item in Modern Railways from August 1963 marking the opening of the depot - note the hoppers, said to be of a dedicated rake of 19 - shown in the accompanying pictures. And there's this, which I posted a couple of pages ago:



This is a crop from a BR official picture published in Railway Bylines used for illustrative purposes (the wooden-framed wagons are internal users).

Note that it's coupled to a riveted, BR-ordered vehicle with welded-pattern supports and RCH long link brakes (Hurst Nelson built these - there's a glorious picture of a recently repainted example in '71 at Fenwick Colliery, here: No. 6 at Fenwick Colliery Weigh Cabin). I have plans, and the sacrificial Parkside kit for the purpose, to model one of those. I'll have to do a grey Charringtons vehicle - all the pictures I've seen are of welded vehicles - at some later point perhaps. Only one of Paul Bartlett's pictures seems to show one: http://paulbartlett....00716#h3d79ba9a

The Hoveringham version is fiction as far as I'm aware, or at least, on anything resembling an LNER hopper; they might well have had their own fleet of hoppers but not to that design.

Adam

 

[AJC]

Right - in the office and I have been through the archives of the Yahoo BR wagons group. Firstly, from Modern Railways 1963. In the April there is an article about 'House Style'. There are pictures of a conflat - this picture, I suspect: BR Conflat A wagons and containers FAV ZYV ZSV ZRV ZXA ZVV | B504777 Conflat A BD46577B Experimental livery � Paul Bartlett Collection w - with the white square displaying a figure 4 in the centre, and also a standard 12 ton vanfit also with the 4 in a box. There is plenty of discussion about the new colour schemes and to which types of wagon would be repainted, but no comment on the actual box. Of interest is that long wheelbase palvans built at Ashford for Ford traffic in 1963 carried a box with the figure '2' in it, though ex-works pictures of similar vans show a figure '1'. Compare these two pictures:

BR Ford Palvans VQB RRB ZEB ZRW Diag 1/235 | B787044 - work's picture, figure '1'

BR Ford Palvans VQB RRB ZEB ZRW Diag 1/235 | B787047 - in service picture, figure '2'

In November there was an article about a new stricter system of wagon control on BR, it has one very interesting statement, that for Control purposes the wagon stock has been divided into four classes. That these numbers refer to one of the proposed classes is an interesting but, erroneous theory; the 21 ton hoppers have the number 5 in their boxes for a start, but read on...

Ian Fleming supplied information from Minute 5821 of the Wagon Standards Sub-Comittee, dated 28.2.63 and found at the NRM. It details proposed categories 1 to 8, descending in speed from 75mph to 35mph - this ties in quite strongly with occasional photographic evidence such as the vehicles above, and suggested that the figure was, or would have been, painted in the box that in practice more usually contained the 'XP' in the post-1964 [sic - it was current for some new build stock from at east 1963; see the Palvan images linked to above] lettering style.

There is, however, no mention of any 'unclassified' category, which is possibly what an empty box signified at that point. Although only speculation on Ian's part, it could be that an empty box signified nothing more than that the vehicle *wasn't* XP-rated. I think this is extremely likely, at least, in original intent.

The following appeared in LMR WON [Wagon Operating Notices] in September 1963 (information from Mike Hollick). I have highlighted the appropriate bit.


NOTICE TO STAFF.

Limited speed of all four-wheeled vehicles of 10 feet wheelbase or less, and reduced maximum speed of Class 4 trains.

Until further notice all four-wheeled vehicles with a wheelbase of 10 feet or less are subject,to a speed restriction of 50 m.p.h. ,
If it is necessary for any such vehicle to be conveyed on a Class 1, 2 or 3 train, the Guard must advise the Driver and instruct him not to exceed 50 m.p.h.
Class 4 or 4+ trains must not exceed 50 m.p.h. at any point unless indicated in the timetable by a "club" symbol, in which case a maximum speed of 55 m.p.h, (Class 4) or 60 m.p.h. (Class 4+) will be permissible. Should it be necessary for a train so indicated to
carry a four-wheeled vehicle with a wheelbase of 10 feet or less the Guard must instruct the Driver not to exceed 50 m.p.h.

Painting of Freight Stock and Non-bogie Coaching Stock.

It is the future intention that all freight stock and non-bogie coaching stock will be marked to Indicate the maximum speed at which it may run. It may have been observed that a number of vehicles have already appeared in service bearing a white numeral in a white lined square, and without the symbol "XP" where applicable.

Full instructions on this subject will be published in due course. In the meantime it should be noted that the Numerals "1" "2" or "3" are equivalent to "XP" marking.
(21-9-63)

And finally, we have this document, showing that the idea was still live in 1967 but had not been generally acted upon at that date and, if photographic evidence is anything to go by, never was.



If anyone is still reading at this point, all this points to the two 21 tonners being repainted in 1963 (both wagons were constructed in the 1950s: B429561 from Gloucester C&W Co., lot 3159 of 1958, for example) and that this, taken with my previous post suggests with a very high degree of probability - and rarer still, in the world of wagon discussions, with proper contemporary references! - that the photo was taken in 1963.

Adam

 

[Pugsley]

@Overseer Hi Fraser - I agree that in this picture the lettering colour is ambiguous and the ascribed date is plainly too late. In the other picture (which I can scan for comparison this evening) the blackness of the lettering seems more clear cut, or as much as it can be from a monochrome image. In any event, it is probable that the treatment of the grey wagons which were definitely black lettering on a red ground from the colour pictures I've seen would have been consistent with the brown.

To my mind, the top of those hoppers is either yellow, or most likely, grey. I say grey, as comparing the colour of the top of the hoppers with the mineral wagon to the right, they look to be eerily similar. With that in mind, I suspect the that the lettering is red.

Here's a little demo:

The bottom two are the same as the top two, but desaturated to greyscale. On the basis of that, I reckon grey with red lettering is most likely.

 

[AJC]

More plugging away at 51L's 1/166 hopper. I think I've reached the end of soldering for the moment without the risk of damaging what I've already done; it's time to start on the epoxy...



At the vac' cylinder end (I've straightened the lever and guide since), the cylinders themselves have been completely replaced with examples from Rumney Models while the brackets have been knocked up from scratch. The rod between the paired cylinders is a pragmatic decision since I couldn't easily solder the cylinders to the piston rods. The latter are soldered on to the chassis, the cylinders drilled slightly oversize vertically and then cross-drilled allowing them to hang off the rod which fulfils the role of the trunnions either side of the real cylinders. All this is held in with epoxy. On the real thing, the hopper supports serve as brackets for the cylinders and will here but in the meantime, the rod serves the purpose. While I can't say that my work is in the Guy Williams or John Hayes league, it's a world away from the crude whitemetal lumps supplied.



The next step is to fettle, fit and fix the remaining brake parts, axleboxes and springs.

Adam

 

[AJC]

I've shown the beginnings of my ICI chorine tank here and there have been small developments which mean that soldering operations are near complete on this one, barring a couple of plates underneath to accommodate the mounting screws. The end supports for the cross bracing on these wagons were fabricated from channel and angle, as was normal for post-war tank wagons. Now I didn't have suitable channel for these, but I did have some L section which, once soldered in place provided the bones of the answer. The remaining side of the channel is from scrap etch from the chassis kit while the holes are part of an abortive attempt to model the boltheads that hold the real things in place. I had thought of doing this by soldering in pins but will instead use little plastic cubes; there's less risk of everything falling apart that way.



The other ongoing wagon project that I've alluded to earlier. This is another 21 ton hopper - a fairly substantial rebuild of a Parkside LNER dia. 100 wagon into a BR dia. 1/145. These were built by Metropolitan Cammell and also by Hurst, Nelson. They were interesting in their hybrid construction with riveted panels and framing in the same style as the welded 1/146. Here's a link to a Paul Bartlett picture: BR 21 ton coal hopper - rivetted bodies HTO | B416996_Hop_21_diag_1-145__m_ (thanks Paul). I



Now I'm not certain what the handrails inside the wagons were actually for and though Parkside supply them I usually trim them away. In this case, I've chosen to reinstate them in 0.3mm brass. The end platforms are from the Dave Bradwell chassis etch for the earlier chassis with NER style brakegear - which will also yield steps and rap plates in due course - because they are thinner than the Parkside versions - while the corner reinforcement plates are spares from the Rumney Models chassis which went under my dia. 1/107. There's still a very long way to go with this one; perhaps a dozen or so handrails for a start!

Adam

 

[AJC]

This doesn't show current progress on anything very much, but from the depths of a boxfile emerges something completely different. Don't get excited, it's gone back in the box now and will remain there until the other half reaches a stage where it can be useful.



There are lots and lots of things ahead of the associated standard 4 4-6-0 to finish first. Being 'old-school' finescale this is the Mainline version detailed (Comet axleboxes, etched steps and ladder from somewhere or other), rather than Bachmann rewheeled. That'd be much easier but I was gifted the bits long for the whole thing, a set of Sharmans included, before either that or the Hornby version was proposed, let alone released.

Following the discovery that spare valvegear and cylinders from the Hornby version can now be had the loco' might actually get finished, or at least running, this year but don't quote me on that in 2014. The original idea, I think was the the Mainline valvegear would have been recycled. Its sister loco' done in the same way by the chap who gave me the bits worked rather well in this form (and must, btw have had two right hand frames, mine has two left hand ones...).



Given the lamp irons, I suppose this should be in the Western forum - it'll be green too (with a double chimney). Back in the boxfile it goes.

Adam

 

[AJC]

A complete Pipe, allowing for the weather getting anywhere close to being warm enough to paint the thing anyhow. It's amazing, looking at it, how many minute components there are beneath the body - and how little needed doing to that.





Livery-wise, it'll be Freight Brown with boxed lettering and, just for a change, a load of some sort. Cable drums possibly.

Adam

 

[AJC]

I've not had a lot of time for modelling recently, but one day when the morning temperature headed above 0 degrees Celsius the Pipe acquired a coat of primer and has since had a couple of finishing coats; Humbrol chocolate brown on the underframe (mixed with a touch of metalcote gunmetal - I had the mix on the go for something else) and Precision Freight Brown above the solebar. The bodysides have had two or three coats of Klear prior to adding transfers. It's nearly there...



The inside has had a couple of coats - a dark grey and some weathered wood colours. This isn't done yet, there's another couple of passes to go.



Adam

 

[AJC]

Following a visit to the paintshop, having been lettered and dullcoted, the Pipe is now ready for weathering (subsequent to taking this picture, I've silvered the buffershanks - correct for OLEOs - and touched in the vac' pipe in red). I'm not sure what's more amazing; that we had the transfers in stock to do the job or that the sun shone long enough to take the picture.



Adam