[Rob Pulham]

While I have been steadily working on Nellie (not much progress this week due to being worn out and not having the patience) , Chris has been weaving her magic on the Connoisseur Implement wagon that I built some time ago.

And last but not least I did this earlier today - I have an almost complete Parkside LMS Brake van on the go. And while I built most of it at the cottage I brought it home to solder some of the brake fittings together.

While rummaging in a drawer for the backhead for Nellie I remembered that I had bought a few cast brake van stoves from Slaters at one of the shows. So I got one out, soldered some copper tube in for the chimney and then gave it a good clean with shiny sinks. Then I immersed it in Carrs brass black.

Once I had rinsed it to stop the reaction I dryed and rubbed it with some paper towl resulting in this:

Which to my mind gives a great representation of the black lead that my mother used to use on our cast stove when I lived at home.

 

[Rob Pulham]

While I have been catching up on painting my back log of rolling stock, Chris my good lady has been weathering some of the ones that I have put the transfers on.

And last but not least, this is my favourite from this batch of photos

 

[kiwionrails]

V.nice wagons you have there

Regards,

Cameron(Kiwionrails)

 

[Brian Considine]

Nice work - I especially like the rusty tractor.

 

[Brake Compo]

Very nice, just one point - shouldn't the staining on the cattle wagon planking and underframe be white? (Cattle wagon interiors were frequently sloshed round on the inside with limewash to ward off disease).

 

[60134]

Aye, the cattle wagon could use some limewash. Rather unfortunate juxtaposition of the meat van next to the cattle wagon!

One other small matter, Holstein cattle are a relatively recent introduction to the UK. Although almost every dairy farm now sports black and white cows today, before WW2 they were not so common and the majority of dairy cattle were channel island breeds or shorthorns and the like. Glad to see that they have horns, again, polling of cattle and the use of polled breeds is a post-war development.

60134

 

[Rob Pulham]

Thanks for the comments all.

Re the lime wash it was/is my understanding that it was discontinued in the early 20's due to something or other that I forget.....

 

[Rob Pulham]

The promised tractor photos - this one is mucky rather than rusty.....

 

[john woodall]

Hi Rob,

Well they dont look to bad. Subtle weathering wins every time, personally I am not a fan of some of the more extreme weathering efforts that you see occasionally that are lauded.

However I have some hopefully constructive criticism bout the stock wagon. I have watched this thread for a wee while and tried to compose some thoughts. Overall it doesn't look to bad, the roof has a great unevenness that really highlights how the rain has run off the roof. The chassis is a good even/uneven grubby look, personally I would have put some oil/shiny paint on the axel boxes to portray oil/grease. The ends are ok. The upwash off the the track bed isn't subtle enough but thats ok .

The sides leave me perplexed. And it has taken me a while to work out what I consider to be wrong. As background they didn't look right to me but it was hard to work out what was wrong. I think there are three parts to it. The first is the lack of upwash from the trackbed on the base of the wagon, this should be a subtle curve effect between the wheels on the side of the wagon. The weathering is to heavy along the roof edge of the wagon side. Dirt doesn't accumulate there like it has been painted on. The weathering on the doors just doesn't look right. The round holes have to much on the top of the curve. The edges of the doors have too much as well.

While my own weathering efforts are modest, I have found that using a photo of the real thing as a starting point creates a better effect rather than using the minds eye.
Hope this helps

John

 

[Rob Pulham]

Hi John,

Thanks for the thoughts they are appreciated.

I certainly agree about the use of photographs as the starting point, the problem being finding suitable photos. Despite having a few of the rolling stock books - Tatlow, Essery et,al. Finding photos of rolling stock and particularly cattle wagons that are of sufficient resolution to pick out the subtleties of weathering on them is like searching for hens teeth.

 

[Rob Pulham]

Work on the turntable has come to a temporary halt. It's almost ready for painting but I need to change the filters on my spray booth extractor.

So to keep my hand in, I started this kit on Saturday. It's one that my good lady bought me for Christmas last year - a Connoisseur North British 20 ton brake van.

Jim only provides a floor for the veranda section (not really a veranda on this one but you get the idea). So I made one up from some brass sheet. To bring it to the same level as the other floor I used some spare angle bracket from the turntable. Waste nowt!

And inside the van

I reinforced the roof with some square section nickel bar to make it clip into the roof. I will also add some longer springy bits down the sides to help the middle sit down properly.

I also added some scrap etch strip to the back of the step supports and the brake brackets.

.

This is where I got to last night.

Today while sitting in the smallest room in the house, I had the thought. "I wonder if I have any photo's in my Tatlow LNER Wagons volumes that might give me any missing details." Have you ever wished that you'd had that thought earlier......?

Tatlow revealed a second set of handrails below those on the non veranda end. Not too difficult to add thought I. Then I noticed the very distinctive curved ends to the vertical handrails and the fact that they don't sit at 90% to the side of the van.

Oh Bovver!!! Says I.

So the next job tonight is to see if I can make a jig to bend 4 of those - before I take the ones I made earlier off.

 

[Rob Pulham]

After discovering the different handrails, a pleasant couple of hours was spent over the last couple of nights creating these - I finished them too late to post last night.

Tonights task is to put them on the van I hope.....

 

[Rob Pulham]

A busy couple of days ultimately meant that I didn't get the handrails fitted on Thursday night, despite my best intentions.

Today has seen them and the additional lower handrails added.

Although I haven't taken a photo yet, Thursday did see the rain strips fitted to the roof.

Jim's instructions have you using 0.7mm round brass rod. However I found a short length of 0.8mm square nickel rod in my stash which was just long enough to do the two rainstrips.

I ran them through my rolling bars to get the curves even while matching the dimensions quoted by Jim.

Regards Rob

 

[Rob Pulham]

A busy couple of days ultimately meant that I didn't get the handrails fitted on Thursday night, despite my best intentions.

Today has seen them and the additional lower handrails added.

Although I haven't taken a photo yet, Thursday did see the rain strips fitted to the roof.

Jim's instructions have you using 0.7mm round brass rod. However I found a short length of 0.8mm square nickel rod in my stash which was just long enough to do the two rainstrips.

I ran them through my rolling bars to get the curves even while matching the dimensions quoted by Jim.

Regards Rob

 

[Norman Byrne]

Hi Rob,

Only just come across this thread of yours. Very nice recent build in progress there I must say. I also really like the weathering job Chris has done on your earlier wagons & in particular the "muddied" tractor very very nice indeed. The aditional detail that you can achieve at 0 guage really makes a big difference when done well.

Great stuff, have a good xmas & look forward to the return of the turntable, Cheers,

Norm

 

[Rob Pulham]

Thanks Norm it's almost there, just one of the locking levers to fit and the bridge is ready to paint. I have stained all the deck boards that they are sat in the garden shed letting the spirit smell fade..

What an interesting and enjoyable build this is turning out to be.

While researching in Tatlow and reviewing a drawing supplied by a friend, I picked up that up to 1931 these vans had quite prominent sanding gear. Having resized the drawing to 7mm scale and taken dimensions for the sand boxes from it I deduced that the ones in the veranda compartment would be visible when viewed from normal model railway viewing angles - above and to either side.

So I gathered some bit's of scrap etch from the turntable and made a couple. I made the hinges and soldered them onto the lid using the microflame. I had just nicely got to soldering the lid onto the box using sprung tweezers as clamps, when it all sprung apart and one of the hinges disappeared into thin air....

An hour later when I had made up a new one and the boxes were fitted to the floor, my good lady found the one lost in space.

I also beefed up the brake yokes. The photo's that I am working from show the main cross bar of the yoke to be quite substantial so once again scrap etch to the rescue. That was done after this set of photos was taken so they will probably be on when I show pictures of them.

 

[Rob Pulham]

A couple of hours yesterday saw the brake van complete (or as complete as I plan to make it). I deviated from Jim's build methods by using some WEP compensation units, although I have fitted other vehicles exactly as Jim suggests without issue before.

I rolled some microbore tube in my rolling bars to ensure that all four sand pipes were to the same profile and then made the distinctive safety loops for the brake yokes from fine scrap etch. Besides painting the only things to complete are the springing of the coupling hooks/buffers.

As with the other Connoisseur wagons that I have built, this was a joy to put together even if you don't want to add any additional details.

 

[Rob Pulham]

Continuing on the NBR theme I put this together once I had finished the brake van.

It's a Majestic Models NBR/LNER Floor Cloth Wagon. aside from the etched strapping strips it only consisted of about a dozen individual parts so it went together in no time at all. In the absence of any detailed information on this I built it straight from the box with little deviation from the instructions.

What I need, if anyone can provide the answer is the placement of the lettering pre 1937. George Dawson had struggled to find this information and had guessed at post 1937 livery (according to his notes with the kit).

 

[Rob Pulham]

Since finishing the Floor Cloth Wagon and still being on holiday I haven't rested on my laurells. Next up on the workbench is another of last year's Christmas gifts, a Connoisseur Diagram 416 Midland Milk Van.

For once Jim seems to have provided more in the way of details than is necessary for this diagram of van.

He provides torpedo vents for the roof and their positions but referring to Midlad Carriages an illustrated review by Jenkinson ad Essery reveals: "However, in 1904, the MR decided to fit many of its fruit and milk vans with torpedo ventilators to imporve matters. We have no evidence that any of D416 were so treated"

The accompanying photo is the same photo that is included in Jim's instructions along with the drawing. Jim also provides a more detailed approx 7mm scale drawing. Both of these drawings show long handles for one of each pair of doors and there are etched T handles provided for the left hand doors.

The photo however only shows ring type handles on the left hand doors and by good fortune I had some nice Griffin castings in stock for these.

I am not sure whether the safety chains would have been removed by LMS days but I like them so I have added them. I opened out the holes in some short handrail knobs and soldered the chain into them before adding the hooks and soldering them to the ends.

Jim's Midland buffer castings are very nice but I don't particularly like the way that he offers to spring them so I raided the spares box and came up with some turned heads and modified them into "normal" sprung buffers.

This is where I got to just as the New Year chimed last night.

 

[Rob Pulham]

Work on this slowed down as I went away for a couple of days at the New Year. A visit to the NRM at Shildon allowed me to see work on the A4 Dominion of Canada which is being cosmetically restored there to garter blue including both side skirts and the bell.

Since returning I have cracked on and finished the milk van ready for painting.

As I got to the final details I was looking at the cast whitemetal vacuum pipes and thinking that they would be quite vulnerable so I got some 1.5mm brass rod a few bits of scrap etch and some 24 gauge brass wire and made up these as replacements

In terms of time spent I could probably have bought some cast lost wax ones cheaper but I did enjoy fiddling about with them and I am pleased with the result.

These are a few shots of the van with the remaing details added. As I did with the brake van I beefed up the brakes with scrap etch to make them a bit stronger.