7mm Rob's Rolling Stock Workbench

[Lyndhurstman]

After a heavy week last week supporting the election in Wakefield I had a steady weekend on the modelling front.

A plea on the guild want adds had supplied me with some spare transfers for the Tar Tank and by golly I needed them
Now I need to decide how to weather it - the sides of the tank are still glossy from the transfer coat.

You've done bloody well there, Rob. I was asked to put some of the Y&L Tar Distillers on one side of a 4mm Slaters Tar Tank. I gave up after 4 hours. By that time, I had managed to get 'Yorkshire' into some sort of alignment with itself, but the decals never took to the surface... I had to send it back to my client, unsullied. I packed it in several layers of abject failure.

Cheers

Jan

 

[Rob Pulham]

I had last week off but it was a bit of a working holiday.

Turning this:



or rather that's the neighbours back garden, because I forgot to take a before shot of ours which is a bit wider.
into this:





The top section of decking is 5m x 2.4m and the lower one 3.4 x 2.4 (but we didn't actually plan on the second section it just developed from the first as they do

Before my energy deserted me completely, I did manage to complete the NBR 4 plank dropside ready for painting. - While the paint dries I will solder the links on the couplings and do something about all the turning marks on the buffer heads.

 

[iploffy]

Leave the turning marks alone add some globby black paint as it it was grease.

 

[Rob Pulham]

Here are a couple of the NBR trio all together.





Next are a few that are the result of messing about with image stacking - each shot has 5 images that are stacked. - apologies for the repeat subjects but they were what I had to hand while experimenting....

 

[40126]

Hi Rob

Have you worked from a picture for the truck with the crate inside ?.

Great work as usual

Steve

 

[Rob Pulham]

Hi Rob

Have you worked from a picture for the truck with the crate inside ?.

Great work as usual

Steve

Hi Steve,
It depends what you mean by worked from a picture? For the wagon itself I worked from photos of NBR 4 plank dropside wagons in Tatlow's LNER Wagons Volume 3. But none of them had a crate as a load - that bit is modellers license but based on the wagon being a dropside so easier to get it in and out than either the side door or fixed side variants of the wagon.

 

[40126]

Hi Steve,
It depends what you mean by worked from a picture? For the wagon itself I worked from photos of NBR 4 plank dropside wagons in Tatlow's LNER Wagons Volume 3. But none of them had a crate as a load - that bit is modellers license but based on the wagon being a dropside so easier to get it in and out than either the side door or fixed side variants of the wagon.

I was just interested to see an old pic of a crate in a wagon !!. Lol .

It's weird that in all my years from about 5 years old I've only been interested in taking & looking at pics of loco's, but the last few years with taking modelling to new depths, I look more for everything else in pics before the loco's now !!.

Steve

 

[Rob Pulham]

I hear you on that one Steve, me too. I also find that I get much more interest and pleasure from building wagons than locos too.

 

[Rob Pulham]

Over the last few weekends in odd moments in between gardening I have put together and painted another Slaters Salt van.

In contrast to the one I built earlier which was depicted as faded and worn I wanted this one to be in a recently out shopped version of the livery so I started by giving the wagon a good coat of paint (as opposed to the deliberately patch finish on the first one).


Next I pondered on how to get over the fact that the transfers which are homemade and printed on clear decal paper have a tendency for the colour to wash out of the yellow when applied over a green base coat.



While it worked brilliantly for the faded livery it doesn't for a newly painted livery so I thought that I would have a go at over painting the yellow bit of the lettering by hand.

I used Vallejo Sunshine yellow but found that it took a few coats to get it to cover on the slippery surface of the transfers. In all it took six sessions over two weekends to do both sides it's far from perfect but I am happy with the results and I will use the technique again.







Finally a shot of them both together.

 

[Dog Star]

Rob, how about a coat of matt varnish over the transfer before applying the yellow?

 

[Rob Pulham]

Rob, how about a coat of matt varnish over the transfer before applying the yellow?

Hi Graham,

That was my first thought too, but sadly it didn't seem to make any difference to the coverage. In the end I had to dilute the paint to get an even coat without leaving brush furrows but had to go over it several times to build up the depth of colour.
As with many such tasks, initially it was quite nerve wracking, especially the smaller lettering at the bottom but by the final coat I did the whole of a side in one go. - a wrist rest did make the job much easier.

 

[Rob Pulham]

Following the wagon load theme, after someone pointed out that you wouldn't get terracotta pipes of the length depicted by the Skytrex wagon load I have repainted them black to suit iron pipes.

 

[Dog Star]

You just need to make some transfers Staveley Pipes....

 

[Rob Pulham]

You just need to make some transfers for Staveley Pipes....

Were Staveley around in the 20's/30's?

 

[Rob Pulham]

Finally for me on last weekend's endeavours, I also managed to get a bit more paint on the Salt wagon.





I do need to sort the couplings an then get a touch of weathering to tone down the newness..

 

[Dog Star]

Were Staveley around in the 20's/30's?

Much earlier, see here, which says that casting of pipes started circa 1877,

 

[Rob Pulham]

At the Guild summer show I collected some kit's that I had reserved with the E&T service.

In amongst them were some Colin Ashby PO wagon kits in between doing other builds I have slowly been putting them togther.

First a note from Colin that was included with the kits.



This makes the kits quite ancient history but that said the detail is pretty good for the age of them.


I have included some of the missing internal washer plate detail but quite a bit was there to start with on the internal sides.


I did have to scribe the floor detail though - which is a reverse of some Slaters kits which have planks on the floor but no internal side detail.


I also had to raid the spares box for the brake safety loops indeed not having enough I had to cut some from styrene sheet.


The brake levers and guards were one piece mouldings which I will replace with a mixture of Slaters/Parkside and Bill Bedford etched spares.

Overall I am quite impressed with them, the only minor discrepancies are that they seem slightly longer than the equivalent Slaters 7 plank wagon and the moulded buffer bases. The size I can live with but I am undecided about the buffers at the minute - the heads were plastic so either way they will get replaced.

 

[Rob Pulham]

Tonight I managed to get a shot of them all together - not the best photo in the world but you get the idea



All in all they were worth taking a punt on.

 

[Rob Pulham]

You may recall last Christmas I took advantage of a Skytrex offer ad bought various wagon loads? Ones of these loads was some pipes which I originally painted to look like ceramic pipes but then after being advised otherwise I repainted to represent black iron pipes. After a brief discussion on a suitable wagon to carry them Jim Snowdon suggested that I might backdate a Parkside 12 ton pipe wagon. An email to Parkside sorted a kit and the relevant extra bits for LNER clasp brakes to be collected at Telford.

Having collected it the desire to build it got the better of me so last weekend I built the basic body and then I did a bit of research to get the details correct. In his collection Paul Bartlett has by good fortune shots of both sides of DE187868 so digital copies were duly purchased. These in hand I did a little more this weekend in between adding further details to the Colin Ashby opens.


I had to remove the plates where the dropside supports were located on the body because in LNER days the supports were located against the some of the hinges.




Next I had to add some extra washer plates in the middle of the dropsides and some triangular support gussets under the body from the solebars. Imagined that making 8 identical would prove challenging but by making use of my "Chopper" and it's ability to cut angles it was much simpler than I thought. I still need to add the plates to one side top and bottom to replicate the 'C' section that these were made from.

Lastly I had to modify one part of the LNER brake mechanism to accommodate the extended wheelbase





As you can see I did this by splicing a section into the middle of the shaft and then added a thin overlay to increase it's strength finally drilling through and adding a piece of styrene rod to represent the pin.

 

[Rob Pulham]

Quite a bit of progress was made on the pipe wagon this weekend in between popping in to the S7 meet up at Shildon.









I took it along to the S7 meet up to specifically ask whether my recently acquired Plastruct Hex rod was actually noticeable (I could feel the difference as I was cutting it but even with my reading glasses on I couldn't tell whether it was hex or round once it was applied to the wagon). I tried quite a few times but this was the best shot I could get.


Still to do are the vacuum pipes and the chains for the drop doors.