7mm Rob's Rolling Stock Workbench

[Rob Pulham]

Next up came the complex but visually attractive NER door locking mechanism.
Made from scrap etch and brass rod. Although I didn't take any photos the mechanism does work.

Then I made up the basic body and detailed the ends. I was a bit clumsy and managed to melt one of the end post castings so I nicked one out of one of my kits and I will either get a spare from Jim when life returns to normal or make one from brass bar when I get to building it.

 

[Rob Pulham]

Once the doors were finished the rest of it went together pretty much as Jim intended. With the addition of LG vacuum, steam heat and couplings.













I added a floor from the mount board that the kit comes attached to and I made the roof removable so that the back of the louvres could be blanked off should it be required.

 

[Peter Cross]

I very nice wagon.
I'd blank the louvres as a matter of course.

 

[Rob Pulham]

I very nice wagon.
I'd blank the louvres as a matter of course.

I would if it was mine Peter, but I left it as an option for it's new owner.

 

[Rob Pulham]

Finally, here it is with a coat of paint which is as far as I took it.

 

[Rob Pulham]

Last but not least here is a photo of the perishables van lettered in NER livery This photo is not mine but I have permission to share it.

 

[John Ross]

Hi Rob

Looking good particularly like the roof covering and with the modified doors makes a very interesting conversion of a well known 7mm kit.

 

[Rob Pulham]

Thanks John,

The roof covering is spectacle lens cleaning tissue recycled into roof canvas...

 

[John Ross]

Thanks John,

The roof covering is spectacle lens cleaning tissue recycled into roof canvas...

Hi Rob

Thanks for tip, will give it a try on a future build.
Attached is photo of a survivor located in deepest Aberdeenshire.

 

[Rob Pulham]

Moving swiftly along from the brake standard modifications posted on Mike Trice's LNER Coach thread. You may recall further up this thread my making a stove for the brake van using my Silhouette cutter.

Although I proved it was possible, it was extremely fiddly to assemble and I certainly wouldn't want to be doing a lot of them. It's also a perfect candidate for 3D printing so yesterday morning (after amending the brake standard files) I started to draw up the stove.

It has proved to be my most ambitious and ultimately satisfying design project to date.

My apologies for the image overload but I am delighted at how well it has turned out.

 

[Rob Pulham]

The next part of the stove puzzle proved much easier to draw

 

[Rob Pulham]

Back in post 895 in March last year, I had finally got around to painting my hand crane and match trucks after adding additional tool boxes.
I also made some tools to go with the tool boxes. Consisting of a couple of crow bars, a hammer, and a shovel along with a length of chain.

Fast forward to this year and I decided to enter it into the modelling competition at Guildex. At the beginning of last week I thought that I had better relieve the plain black livery with some lettering. A friend had kindly let me have a second set of "Crane Runner" transfers as you only get one set on the HMRS sheet.

A couple of shots taken out in the sunshine this morning.

As it turned out it was one of three cranes entered in the competition and as I was setting it up I knew that it wasn't going to take first place.

In contrast to mine was an enormous scratch built modern crane, complete with a pair of bogie match trucks and a professional paint job, that made a really good model into a superb model. A worthy winner in my view.

I was pleasantly surprised and pleased that mine took the third place "Commended "spot.

 

[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.

View attachment 76651

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

View attachment 73112
I have included some of the missing internal washer plate detail but quite a bit was there to start with on the internal sides.

View attachment 73113
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.

View attachment 73114
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.
View attachment 73115

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.

Way back in 2015 I started building five PO wagons from Colin Ashby kits picked up from the now defunct GOG Executor and Trustee service. Over the intervening years I had slowly added brake levers and guides and ultimately a couple of them just required buffer stocks before they were painted. In my recent quest to move a few of my shef queens along I fitted the last ones with buffer stocks and I have painted them ready for transfers.

.

When we lived in Wakefield we were just up the road from the former Newmarket Colliery of J&J Charlesworth and that's whose I livery Intended to do them in. Powsides do J&J Charlesworth transfers but they are the rub down type so I think that I will get some white transfer paper and draw up my own for cutting on the Silhouette Cutter. Hopefully it won't be another nine years before you see them finished.

 

[OzzyO]

Rob I thought that you had given up on the wagon building.
mind I'm a right one to talk.

ATB

OzzyO.

 

[Rob Pulham]

Rob I thought that you had given up on the wagon building.
mind I'm a right one to talk.

ATB

OzzyO.

No chance of that, I actually enjoy wagon building much more than loco building.

I have done a little work on the replacement tender for the 8F but there's nothing worth sharing yet so I haven't posted anything. Workbench time has been a bit limited recently because up until the last couple of days, the improvement in the weather has had me doing outdoor jobs that I had put aside while finishing the Princess.

 

[Rob Pulham]

Back in 2017 I started a pair of Connoisseur NER V1/3 and an NER V4 Brake vans, which for reasons that I forget, were put aside. Then in 2021 I painted and lettered the the V1/3's but only painted the V4 which was left unlettered and again they were put aside.

Since setting up my home office I have deliberately left a number of my shelf queens on display in the hope that eventually their unfinished state would irritate me into doing something about them. This last week in preparation for lettering some wagons for a friend I decided that I would get the V4 lettered, more on that later.

I also took the opportunity to glaze and finish the V1/3's. Having glazed them I noted that the step boards were a bit on the thin side being etched from the same material as the body. Had they still been unpainted I might have soldered a second layer of thin etch strip to the bottoms to beef them up a bit but with them being painted I looked for other options.

I did consider adding coffee stirrers but they would have been too thick and then I remembered that Brian Dale (@oldravendale ) had kindly let me have a bag of offcuts of veneer. Strips of veneer were enough to thicken the step boards without making them appear grossly over scale.

I cut the strips and glued them to the existing steps with pva, holding them in place until they dried with mini wooden clothes pegs. These were bought on a whim from a craft shop thinking that they might be useful at some point.

 

[Christian]

What did you use for the canvas roofs?
I had a go with some very fine material glued to a plastic roof, but it looked a bit fuzzy once painted.
Yours looks a lot more real....

 

[Rob Pulham]

Hi Christian,

The roof canvas is used spectacle lense cleaning tissue stuck on with pva. Once used and dried, it becomes quite a tough material. With the bonus that its quite coarse grained paper so it also takes paint well and looks like canvas.