Key To The Door

Himself's jaunt to Wales last week resulted in him getting that chance to see two of the FR's newest toys in use, which is more than I can expect to do in the foreseeable future.

One of them was Welsh Pony and the other was the replica of carriage 21.

I confess to still being slightly puzzled by this rebuild, given this design's notoriety for not being the most comfortable of conveyances.

I only sat in it for a minute or so while it was in the carriage works at Boston Lodge and could feel the rail of the seat digging awkwardly into my lower back, and on those end benches perched up over the bogies my knees were uncomfortably high.

That was with it sitting still, so I hate to think what it's like 'Bakerlooing' up the line - to steal a phrase from the doyen of FR magazine editors, Dan Wilson.

However, I can imagine it's just the job for the Covid-safe compartment service to Tan y Bwlch, and if heritage means anything it should be an authentic experience, I suppose.

Even so, it still seems a little odd to sell off the tin cars, which although far from the standards of the current saloons were still a vast improvement on compartment stock, and be recreating what is surely their heritage equivalent? (A one-time cheap and cheerful solution to boost the carriage fleet.)

We still don't have a 21 in our fleet, but hopefully that will be corrected soon as I have one of the Worsley body kits on back order.

Early Progress

So I summoned the motivation to try having a go at the bogies for the MoD flat wagons.

These are much more chunky than your standard Hudson bogie and the idea is to make a master for a piece which can slip on top of the Dundas plastic bogie frames.

I've made up the basic frame with styrene channel and strip although I've yet to do anything about the axle boxes and suspension.

Even so, I'm feeling pretty encouraged.

Southern Comfort

 

Before leaving for a week in Wales, Himself was making startling progress on the lining on Lyn.

It was a stroke of good fortune that one of the sets of 4mm scale standard gauge Southern locomotive lettering produced by Fox fits exactly for the tanks.

The same was not true of the numbers for the tenders which were a little on the large size, but we found a set of numbers in yellow in the general alphabet and numeral section of the catalogue which are a lot more suitable. 

The white lining is very impressive, particularly around the nameplate on the cabside and even more so on the oval plate on the bunker.

I'm never really been a fan of the Southern livery on any size of locomotive - it's a bit too 'in your face' for my tastes, and I've never felt Lyd fits in on the FR like that.

I much preferred it in the spoof BR black, or its original pre-grouping livery would be even better in my mind.

Somehow the loco which suits it best is this big, boxy American interloper.

Flat Share

The tank wagon kit has been a diversion from the project I'd intended to be getting on with this summer, which is a request I received to make (and reproduce) some models of the modern ex-MoD flat wagons in the FR fleet.

The body should be relatively straightforward but the challenge is going to be the bogies.

These wagons were produced by Hudsons and share the same wheelbase as many of their older designs, but these ones are very beefed up and have a very chunky horizonal handbrake lever stuck on one side.

The plan I have in my head is to try and produce a casting which will somehow glue onto, or slip over, the plastic bogie frames produced by Dundas.

Resin is a poor material for casting the entire bogie as it doesn't flex as much as injection moulded plastic, and that makes them liable to break at the weakest point when fitting in the wheelsets.

I have a spare set of Hudson bogie parts to begin experimenting on, I just need to summon up the motivation....

Sliced And Diced

I've given into public demand to attempt to make a kit for the Maeofferen Tank Waggon.

OK, well more like a couple of Facebook comments, but I'm a soft touch.

It's a challenging thing to try and reproduce.

My approach with my own model, you'll remember, was to cast a series of hollowed out rings, but I ended up wrapping them in very thin styrene to avoid any hint of the joints.

That would be too complicated for a kit because you would have to align the rings very precisely.

So I wondered instead about whether I could split the tank in half at its widest point?

I chose to go across the middle - rather than top to bottom, because this way I could cast the tank filler and the support brackets more easily.

Again it was a two-stage process,  stating with one relatively thin ring and joining four copies of that together, then using that as a master to create three sections which put together are the correct length.

Because I use open back castings the tank is a solid block of resin this time, instead of being hollow.

There was another stage where I filled and smoothed any obvious ring indents before adding the extra details.

As you can see from the picture at the top the result is quite effective.

It will require the builder to do a little filing and smoothing to fully disguise the join between the two castings but I think most modellers should be able to make a reasonable fist of it.

Onto the chassis, next.

Lining Lyn

Himself is making steady progress painting our Backwoods Baldwin Lyn.

He's reached the lining stage of the process.

Although its the white which stands out most in the picture there is also some black lining there, forming the neat edges to the green.

This was applied first and has been varnished to provide a better key for the narrow white lines.

They're a lot simpler to apply that on many of the FR locos because they have 90 degree joins instead of inverted corners which can be a real pain in the backside.

Brass Bands

I've been adding the fiddly brass details to complete the Maenofferen tank waggon.

Himself kindly provided a sheet of brass boiler bands which are just the job for the metal strapping which is a very distinctive feature of this waggon.

They're about 1mm wide but, inconveniently, don't wrap all around the tank but instead have a joint at the top which means they have to be made out of four pieces rather than two stretching right around it.

This required a lot of bending and shaping before they were super-glued in place, and the same went for the struts at each end.

Incidentally, have you noticed that isn't positioned centrally but overhangs the chassis more at the filler end?  

I wonder why that might be?

The last pieces I added was a handle on the top of the filler and locking screw, both of which I formed out of brass wire.

Now I shall hand it over to Himself to attach the couplings and paint it.