A while ago Himself was given a gift of a Nine Lines Lynton and Barnstaple bogie brake van.
Obviously enough this is not our prototype, so the question was what to do with it?
While dropping in at his place at the weekend he showed me the result of some tinkering to convert this into a track cleaning wagon - which is a very handy thing on a layout as large as Bron Hebog with sections which are beyond the reach of a human arm.
The business end of the wagon is this pad slung beneath the chassis, covered in thin cloth, which rubs along the rail tops as it is pushed / pulled around the layout.
On any mobile track cleaning device you need some way of keeping this in contact with the rail, which in this case is done with a spring pushing it downwards from the bottom of the wagon.
The spring he used here is a relic of his former career as a piano tuner, and is part of the mechanisms he used to fettle as a side hustle.
The critical thing is to make sure the spring is not too strong to push the wagon off the rails, and for this reason the inside of the van is heavily weighed down with lead.
So heavy, in fact, that it needs two engines to top and tail the wagon to get it up our hill!
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