Birmingham & Gloster Rly, Slatted Wagon (my title)

[Rob R]

Jon,
Have cracked it. Both editions downloaded, PM your email address if you want them.
In the meantime, the text to go with the drawings

Rob

 

[Tim Birch]

Tim,
That would be very kind of you, thank you.
I did look on HMRS just now in fact but couldn’t find anything.

Jon

Jon, it sounds as if Rob has found the source.

Are you aware of the series of articles in Vol 20 of the HMRS Journal on wagons of the 1840s? All the past volumes are in the members' section accessible through the website. I have recently been going through some of these volumes and there really is a huge amount of researched information there.

 

[Jon Nazareth]

Tim
Thank you, I had a quick look just now but, they are all out of stock. Without flicking through though, it's a job to know what's in them.

Jon

 

[Jon Nazareth]

I want to make some brake lever brackets as per drawing. After a bit of deep thought, I came up with this idea to make a pattern. I need four so, I thought it worth the effort. I’ve soldered a draw hook plate and a washer onto a piece of brass. My cunning plan is to file/cut away the waste and shape the junction between the two soldered items with a round file. I can then draw around the finished shape, cut out and file or, bolt the shape to four pieces of sheet and shape them all at once. Watch this space, as they say.

Jon

 

[Jon Nazareth]

Here they are filed up as a block and separated. They aren’t quite concentric but that won’t notice once the brake lever is fitted l.e., it’ll hide that oddness.

Jon

 

[Jon Nazareth]

I made a bit of a cock up with the co-ordinates for machining the rebates for the cross beams which meant a scraped sole plate. However, as Fred Astaire once sang, ‘Pick yourself up, dust yourself off and start all over again’. I’ve made another solebar, complete with all necessary holes, and worked out the co-ordinates again. I’ve double checked them and they are correct. Mind you, I double checked the others and they were wrong. Still, I’m going to have a dummy run using the defunct solebar to make sure.

Jon

P.S. There are more rebates here as I was using it to check on cutter widths after the failure.

 

[Brian McKenzie]

Have just done something similar.
"I cut it twice, and it was still too short".

-Brian McK.

 

[GrahamMc]

Looks just like the sheep flakes, slats, added to ordinary open wagons on the Highland Railway for the annual sheep fairs. Early cattle wagons didn't have roofs, cattle being waterproof, so as suggested the flakes would do for that as well.

 

[Jon Nazareth]

Said in a cheerful way. I know nothing about railways nor their practices but, it would have been fun getting sheep into this wagon as it has no drop sides.

Jon

 

[Jon Nazareth]

Mike
Not sure if you’ve missed it but, there are ten spokes on these wheels.

Jon

 

[GrahamMc]

Said in an equally cheerful way, the Highland Railway used specially made ramps for their double deck sheep wagons. You're quite right, loading livestock would have been a pain and the wagons would have been used for all types of load. Then again if it's all you've got and there is a demand to move livestock that's what you'll use. As you'll know the alternative in that era was droving. I have a 1951 book, 'Wales in Maps', University of Wales Press, that tells how a cattle drove from Llyn to London would take two months so perhaps they were used for livestock until the development of a wider range of rolling stock.
Your beautiful models illustrate a time of tremendous change.

 

[Jon Nazareth]

The rebating went okay and here are the completed sole bars complete with the cross beams.

Jon

 

[Jon Nazareth]

This is the strangest underframe that I’ve ever made. I’m almost certain that I’ve interpreted the drawing properly but it doesn’t compare at to a conventional frame.

Here I’ve made a start on putting it together. I machined up this oblong of brass to act as a spacer as I couldn’t find anything else that would suit.



An end view of the buffer beam. Note that it’s not the same height as the sole bars but it is a lot deeper. This can be seen in the first picture.



Next will be locating and fixing in the cross beams.

Jon

 

[Jon Nazareth]

The cross bars in place on the sole bars ready to be fixed. I machined up a styrene spacer to keep the bars equidistant across the sole bars. This can be seen on the inside of the jig. There is also a simple spacer mid-way to stop the sole bars bowing inwards.


The second picture showing a nice bit of weight to keep all flat while the mek-pak sets.

Jon

 

[Jon Nazareth]

Cross bars nicely fixed in place.
I now need to give some thought to the sides and ends and how I’m going to make them up. There are two diagonal fixings per slat per upright which may turn into just the one. I may be some time.

Jon