Review Of The Year - Part 3

July

And so to the second half of 2018 where there was much excitement at the arrival of our first ready-to-run model, the Bachmann 590 Baldwin.

I've never made any secret of my enthusiasm for the mainstream manufacturers discovering 009.

The intensity of the debate online around this has been second only to Brexit, but unlike the latter subject I can see only positives in this development for our scale.

I'm hugely excited about the next project in the pipeline, the small quarry Hunslets (especially the cab-less versions) and for what this innovative firm might decide to do next.

In this month I began work on a project which had been on the back burner for a while, to make models of the hybrid BZ wagons made at Boston Lodge for infrastructure trains on the FR.

I decided to make masters and cast them in resin, even though only two have been produced so far and they are far from identical.

July was also the month where, quite by chance, I discovered that the last two Backwoods NGG16 kits produced were available to buy.

We had to dig deep to avert the possibility of them being offered for sale in an online auction, but we'd been looking for a number of years for the opportunity to complete our Garratt fleet and it was too good an opportunity to miss.

August

The first of the BZ wagons had been cast and was being put together.

The fold-flat end doors are a right pain because I had to scratch build the triangular support brackets in styrene, which was a very fiddly job.

Himself had been putting together a Chivers kit of a tiny Hunslet diesel to replace our model of Harold, the Boston Lodge shunter, which had been stolen when we were exhibiting Dduallt in Leeds a number of years ago.

And to have a bit of fun for when we took Bron Hebog to show at the Welsh Highland 'Super Power' weekend I decided to add a very contemporary scenic feature - a reminder of the day when a driver tried his luck racing a Garratt to Bron Hebog crossing - and the Garratt won!

September

Himself had taken an executive decision to invest in panoramic photographic backscenes for the show at Dinas.

The result was very effective indeed!

We had a fabulous time - as we always do - showing Bron Hebog in the goods shed, this time in its finished state.

The Lynton and Barnstaple Baldwin Lyn was the star attraction on the railway and Himself pulled out the stops to get the Backwoods kit we had been given running.

Once again we couldn't resist being cheeky and double-heading it with Lyd knowing that the real locomotives were not being allowed anywhere near each other that weekend.

Back home the production line of superbarns continued with a start being made on assembling number 120.

Ashes To Ashes

The new BZ wagons will be ready to make their appearance on Bron Hebog this weekend.

Himself has been busy over the last few days painting and lettering them.

The lettering incurred some unfortunate, unforeseen expenditure.

You may not have considered it before - I know I hadn't - but on most sheets of lettering you don't get equal numbers of letters, and certainly not many Z's.

Which is a bit of a hinderance when each of these wagons requires at least 4 of them.

Thanks to the modern marvel of internet shopping Himself was able to get in fresh supplies in time to get the wagons ready for the show at Dinas.

They've also been filled with a removable load of locomotive ash, which is how they were being used when we photographed them at Boston Lodge last year, and this is quite often tripped along the WHR to be spread at various locations so they at least have a prototypical purpose for appearing on the layout.

Pipes And Hoses

I dropped the BZ wagons off with Himself at the weekend for finishing off the brake pipes and the couplings and told him there was no hurry.

Works a treat, every time.....

As you can see, the pipe run, which is visible from the side view of the wagon on the track, has a lot of bends in it and the vacuum hoses on these wagons are very long and curvy.

Unlike most other ones which hang vertically these curl around horizontally so that the end doors can fold flat and connect when the wagons are being used in drive-through mode during engineering works.

Apologies to devotees of fast food joints for spelling drive-through properly.

On second thoughts, no, actually.

Fully Loaded

Himself has decided that too many of our BZ wagons have been running around empty for too long.

So for the show in a couple of weeks time at the Welsh Highland Superpower weekend he's made up some loads.

These large utility wagons are given all sorts of jobs around the Ffestiniog and Welsh Highland system and these show one being used to carry loco coal with another couple full of scrub from a lineside clearance train.

We'll probably fill some other ones up with loco ash, which is how many of them are deployed.

All of the loads are removable.

They sit on a false floor made from sheet styrene which is raised up on stilts.

And if you're wondering how he got the coal in there (which is real coal, by the way) he put a layer of cling film inside the wagon before inserting the false floor, spooning in the coal and then pouring a diluted PVA mix over it all.

That way the inside of the wagon was undamaged.

Just Brake Pipes To Go

As far as my part in them goes the two BZ wagons are done.

The main thing that they're still missing - apart from colour, of course - is the brake pipe runs and the vacuum bags, but that's Himself's speciality so I shall pass them over to him to complete that job.

As is quite often the way I never really appreciated how different the two are until I studied them in detail for making the models.

Not only are there very different side door solutions on the two designs but they have their brake cylinders on opposite sides.

I've also come to the conclusion that the one nearest the camera is derived from a cut down B wagon while the one at the back, with the remains of the hinges on the frames, was built up on the chassis of a DZ wagon.

Oh yes, one more task I forgot - fitting couplings to the bogies.

That might help.....

Black Spot

I'm ready to make the first casts of the Mk2 BZ wagon.

The side piece has been finished off with its rivets.

These are tiny resin dots fixed onto waterslide transfer film, produced by the American firm Archers, and they very simple and effective to use.

I brush a coat of clear varnish over them before I cover the whole thing in RTV to try and stop them being pulled off when I removed the cured mould, which mostly works.

As with the first wagon the ends are going to be a two-stage process because of the differences in the hinges / supports where they fold down flat on the real wagons.

I will cast two copies of this piece - which has all the details common to both - and use them to make another pair of masters.

Looky Likey

Well, up to a point..

Over the last few days I've been getting on well with the second of the BZ wagon sides.

It's got to the point where all it needs before it can be used as a master is to add the resin rivet transfers along the bottom of the frame.

(Yes, I'm afraid I do count them, but it's only a handful of them.)

The FR currently has two of these hybrid wagons but - inevitably - they're very different from each other, meaning I need to make separate masters for each of them.

In the picture below they're posed one above each other.

So how many differences can you spot?

BZ Together

I've been gluing the first set of castings for the BZ wagon together.

All went very smoothly.

The crucial thing with a wagon with different ends is that you get them on the correct end of the chassis - this is because the vac cylinder and reservoir are on different sides beneath the chassis.

In the picture above you can see the slanted struts which I added in styrene.

I fix both the end pieces on first and check they're sitting centrally and vertical before adding the side pieces.

These days my adhesive of choice for working with these resin kits is 60 second superglue - you get a decent amount of adjustment time without the long wait - and the risk of slippage - which comes with even the most rapid two part epoxy.

I think I shall set this to one side now and start work on the masters for the other type of BZ wagon, which looks a lot less straightforward.

BZ Progress

Because one day somebody had the great idea of making the new variant BZ wagons 'drive-through' they have asymmetric folding ends, which means people like me can't get away with making just the one master.

I started off by making one basic end with no hinge details - cast two copies of that - and added the parts which make them different from one another.

The only bit that it's not really practical to cast is the triangular bracing struts which go on the one with the longer hinges - or more that it's not doable in a one piece flat mould like I use.

So I've had to form these up out of styrene strip, which was a rather fiddly job which I will not look forward to on the second one.

At this point I have the basic kit of parts to form the wagon body.

I've cast a second side section and added the grab rail at each end.

Time to see how it goes together now,

Being Bee-Zee

I hope you've enjoyed the posts showing off some of my favourite models while I was away on holiday over the last few weeks.

Now I'm back I haven't wasted any time in getting on with the BZ wagon project.

I'm starting with the simpler of the two which follows the same pattern of struts as a B wagon with a small central door.

I've made the masters for the side pieces and also a first stage for the ends.

I say first stage because the ends on the BZ wagons - which fold flat to form ramps between them when they're coupled together - are not identical.

So what I've done is made an initial master with the details which are common to both ends, then I shall cast two copies of it and add the extra bits which are unique to each end, and use them as the final masters to cast from.

It's A Start

Things are progressing quite slowly at the moment - I blame the weather.

However, I have done something about beginning the 'Erics' project, casting the chassis so that I can begin making the masters for the sides and the ends.

I've decided to use one of the B wagon chassis as a base.

They differ slightly from the DZ wagons which are a little longer, mostly on account of the way the kits are put together.

I could extend the procrastination by going on to make up the brass bogies and cast the side pieces for them but I think I'll probably pull out my scalpel and start cutting some styrene.

Soon.

Erics

I've been wondering what to build next now that the big effort for getting ready for Bressingham is out of the way.

I've got yet another set of Superbarn castings to be built up into a carriage - 120 - but I rather fancy doing something different.

I've got a notion to make some more vintage WHR carriages from brass kits, as well, but then I remembered there's been another project waiting in the wings - some BZ wagons.

These are the hybrids which have been created by Boston Lodge with the mostly-fixed sides of a B wagon with the more user-friendly height of a DZ wagon.

The two are them are not identical - needless to say - so I won't be casting them by the dozen as I can do with B wagons - but I will still make the master from styrene and produce a mould and a resin cast from it because it will make it more rigid.

If you're wondering why the reference to Eric in the title the answer is, of course,  the Monty Python song 'Eric the half a bee." Geddit?

Sizing Up

My recent visit to Wales (in fact my only visit of the year) was a chance to catch up on the research for all the models on my 'to do' list.

Among those are the new class of BZ wagons which have been built at Boston Lodge.

I'd seen quite a few photographs of the two which have been completed so far and have written posts on here about the differences I have noticed on them.

(If anyone's looking for a business idea to take on Dragons' Den I reckon you could make a fortune out of a series of 'spot the difference' quiz magazines each one featuring a nominal class of FR rolling stock. It would keep the people who buy these sort of things engrossed for hours!)

What I hadn't accounted for is that these two wagons would be different sizes, but looking at them in the sidings at the front of the yard, loaded up with locomotive ash, it looked as if one was taller than the other.

I couldn't be sure that this wasn't an illusion created by a difference in the track elevation, but stupidly I hadn't brought a tape measure with me.

Himself was very quick thinking and headed for the erecting shop to see if he could blag one (thanks Bob!) and together we ran the rule over them.

I'm sure it won't surprise you to know that one of them is 2 inches taller than the other, naturally.

I suspect this is probably because the one on the left appears to have been made by cutting down an existing B wagon whereas the one on the right had new side pieces fabricated at the works.

I was resigned to having to make two completely separate sets of masters for the resin castings of the sides but now it turns out I will have to make different sets of end pieces as well.

Lucky, lucky me!

Enigma Variations

I have posted before about how Boston Lodge has developed a hybrid SAR wagon design which has been dubbed the BZ.

It features a large centre door within otherwise fixed sides, just like a B wagon, but it is built to the much more user-friendly height of a DZ wagon.

It also has another Welsh innovation which is end pieces that are hinged to fold down flat so that, when parked, a rake of wagons becomes a drive-through platform.

Very clever.

Himself saw the second of these nearing completion while he was volunteering on repairs to the works recently, and returned north with the unwelcome (but inevitable) news that they are not identical.

Far from it, in fact.

This second once has been built with a major revision to the side door arrangement.

Instead of a door which was the same width as on B wagon, on this 2nd BZ it has been extended to occupy the space of two of the previously fixed panels either side.

Compare the latest wagon above, with the first version below.

It would also appear that the most recent one has been converted from an existing DZ - the brackets along the side being the giveaway.

The significance of this, of course, is that it scuppers any ideas I held of making one master model and casting a run of them.

Best Of Both

The list of future projects has grown now I've finally got some pictures of the unique BZ wagon.

This is a hybrid that's been dreamed up at Boston Lodge combining the most desirable aspects of a B Wagon (the fixed sides) with the best bits of a DZ (its more user-friendy height).

There's just the one been made so far and it's currently sitting in the new heritage storage shed being used as a place to leave bits of Blanche.

You can see in these pictures that it has been designed with the fold-down, drive-through ramps at each end which are also being retro-fitted to some of the DZ fleet to assist which delivering small diggers and various other pieces of self-propelled equipment to work sites on the lines.

So I think I shall inevitably have to build one.

The question is whether I scratch build it as a complete model or create masters of a kit of parts I can cast?

Will they be making any more?

If they do, will they be identcal? (Stop sniggering at the back!)

And would there be any demand from other modellers for a kit?

What I will do will depend on the answers to these questions.