Liver & Fry's workbench

[Liver & Fry]

A month later and I should probably post something to show I'm still alive...

A mix of life getting in the way and lack of motivation when I have had five minutes spare has precluded me from getting up to much modelling.

I have made progress on the cattle wagons for @Herb Garden (as he can attest to, having watched me working on them on a social call last night!) but I needed to get my head back into that project and make some meaningful progress before I started posting about them again (these will appear on Herb's thread in due course).

One thing I have been up to, which kind of counts, is building a spreadsheet of pre-grouping era East Anglian Private Owner wagons that I'd like to model in the near future. This has involved several hours trawling through the Windwood collection held by the Great Eastern Railway Society (GERS) and documenting names of merchants, the types of wagons they ran and where I can source suitable kits/base models from. It's been a fun bit of research to get my teeth in to and I've learnt a few new things along the way.

Incidentally, if anyone knows a source for a 6 plank wagon with side doors and external strapping, please let me know, as that one is proving elusive (most kits seem to be Gloucester types and Gloucester favoured internal strapping).

- James

 

[Liver & Fry]

Exactly a month later, again, and I figured I'd best show my face on my own thread!

Some of you may have noticed I've taken a virtual vacation in Skeetsmere whilst I work on those cattle vans for @Herb Garden, however, things have been developing in the background (namely on the East Anglian private owner 'project' but more on that another time!) and today I actually did something of my own!

You see, recently I went down a bit of a Southern themed rabbit hole that concluded with the need to acquire a fitted Southern brake vehicle. However, at first glance, the only fitted brake vehicles on the Southern were either Queen Mary brake vans, or 'Van C' utility vans. The latter would certainly be interesting, but I'm not sure wholly appropriate for my needs, and the former meant trying to wrangle something usable out of Bachmann's now outdated tooling.

Fortunately I was then made aware that six of the Dia.1541 'Road Vans' were fitted with vacuum cylinders in LSWR days for use on traffic out of Southampton, with one of these, SR 54885, being preserved.

So with that, I purchased the Kernow model (of which many have sold out, bar the variant I was after which is in plentiful supply!).



To this, a vacuum cylinder and bufferbeam pipes need fitting, as well as renumbering.

Today saw the vacuum cylinder going under:





The bufferbeam pipes and renumbering will follow this week between painting the cattle vans.

As a side note, Kernow's rendition of these vans are quite nice; they are detailed but sturdy vehicles and certainly the better of the aforementioned options.

- James

 

[Liver & Fry]

Today was quite successful really, with time found for both projects that are currently on the go (it did help that both required the use of black paint!).

Of course, this thread will focus on the SR brake van, which saw the bufferbeam pipes fitted, those and the underframe painted and finally, the renumbering on one side.



It's a minor side quest, and it's nearly over, but it's been a fun exercise all the same!

- James