2020 Review - Part 3

July 

 

As we moved into the second half of the year Livingston Thompson had been painted, lined and weathered and taken for its first test runs on Bron Hebog with the formation recreating the train when it was first towed from Minffordd to Blaenau Ffestiniog to try and kick start the restoration.

 

After a false start that ended up with the locomotive on display at the NRM in York where it remains.

 

The Double Fairlie story continued with Himself trying to keep pace with Boston Lodge on progress with James Spooner.

 

 

 

We're doing out best to adapt a Backwoods brass kit - although there will have to be the inevitable compromise on scale. 

On my workbench I was getting to grips with a new project in resin....

 

August 

Those Hula Hoop shapes were turned into the body of Maenofferen water tank wagon which sits on an extended 3 ton slate waggon chassis.

 

 

Almost immediate I was inundated with requests to produce a kit version....

 

And Himself used the first lockdown to reach the finishing line on another long term project, finally completing the painting and lining of our Backwoods Lyn.

 

 

 

The latest of our WHR saloons rolled off the production line, too.

 

 

September

 

Trying our best, once again, to stay synchronised with real world developments, Himself began painting our 130, starting with the bunkers and tanks which received their lovely crimson/plum colour and straw lining. 

 

 

After completing work on the tank waggon I was engaged on a request to produce a kit for the FR's small ex-MOD bogie wagons.

 

The first task was to find a way to produce the bogies.

 

The solution I hit on was to cast a piece which could slip over the very free-running Hudson bogie sold by Dundas.    

 

 

 

In fact, Dundas was doing very good business out of us with Himself deciding it was time to replace a lot of our slate waggon fleet as the 30 year old bodies became brittle.

 

This time instead of a uniform grey he decided to make them a little more colourful.

 

Multi-Coloured Waggon Show

Himself is getting perilously close to running out of modelling projects.

If the situation does not improve he may have to resort to overhauling the collection of Steve Coulson animated dioramas, with all their fiendish cams and fishing line mechanisms, which is a task he's been putting off for years.

The last job on the To Do list is to paint the latest 3-ton slate waggons which have been brought into the fleet to replace some very old and brittle Dundas waggons.

This time he's decided to liven up the fleet by finishing them in an array of authentic, contemporary colour schemes, all to be matched their their correct running number.

Sounds like hard work to me, but it should lived up the gravity trains on Dduallt no end, shame they'll never be used on Bron Hebog.

Tank Talk

I'll soon be in a position to start production of the Maenofferen tank waggon now I've successfully produced a master and test casting of the chassis.

As I explained in a post a couple of days ago, this uses the Dundas 3-ton waggon floor which has been extended at each end.

To make it easier to fit the wheels, however, I opted to design it to use the solebar and axle box part from the kit which slots neatly into place.

The waggon kit will be a relatively simple one, with two big blocks of tank to fit together - and fill / file any obvious join mark - and the floor part.

The other vital bit is the domed cap of the tank filler which is done as a separate casting.

For simplicity for customers I am thinking that for this kit I will look at supplying the kit with the wheels and Dundas parts included.

However, I don't intend to carry a large stock at any time so expressions of interest now would be helpful so I can gauge how many bits I need to buy in.

Emails to the Boston Largs Works address, please.

Sole Man

After a visit to see Himself - and his vast collection of leftover kit parts - have in my possession the bits I need to complete the chassis master for the tank wagon kit.

As with the version I made for our layouts it's going to be based around an extended Dundas FR 3-ton slate waggon chassis.

I intend to fit the extension bits to the floor plate in styrene and cast that piece in resin, but to complete the rolling chassis I'll be using the solebar and axlebox mouldings from the kit, plus the wheels of course.

Hopefully later this week I'll have the first example completed.

Stacked

Many years ago when we built up our rake of slate waggons I made loads for them the hard way - what's new?

I cut hundreds of pieces of slate-sized styrene and glued them in rows onto a length of thin strip and repeated the process dozens of times until I had a unit which filled neatly inside one of the Dundas wagons.

Over time - and we're talking decades - the plastic on the wagons has become brittle and Himself is renewing some of the fleet and is looking for more loads.

I was asked whether it might be possible to cast them this time, so I've brought one example home and am about to cover it in RTV and see what happens.

In theory it should be a good way to reproduce them, but my only concern is how well the deep, narrow valleys between each of the slates will be replicated?

3 Ton Plus

The plan for the Maenofferen tank waggon was always to try and use a 3 ton slate waggon chassis, the question was always whether the wheelbase would be right or if it would need a lot of hacking about to make it fit.

Himself provided the chassis after purchasing a pack of Dundas waggon kits to renew our fleet and when I compared it with the drawing I was delighted to find the axle boxes in precisely the same place as on the regular waggons.

The tank waggon, is longer, however, but all the extra length is at the ends rather than in the middle, so it wasn't difficult to add some styrene extensions.

The other thing I did was to thin down the main base of the chassis as it was a little too thick, just by rubbing it over fine grade sand paper.

Fortunately the wagon doesn't have anything as sophisticated as brakes, so there's very little that required to be done underneath except extend the frames.

Up top, on the tank, I've made up the tank filler using my ever-handy selection pack of styrene tubes and formed the domed top of the cap with a drop of resin.

 

Remarshalling

Himself has been giving the Gravity Train some TLC ahead of the exhibition in Perth at the end of this month.

At the previous show in Troon we had a couple of rather impressive pile-ups at the bottom of the spiral, the cause of which we eventually traced to 2-ton waggon with ageing wheel centres which were moving on their axle.

Himself was also anxious to finish exchanging all the original BEMO couplings for the rather less bulky Greenwich type.

Having done this he did a little bit of research and re-marshalled the train into what he assures me is the correct order for braked / unbraked 2 ton / 3 ton waggons on the present day demonstration gravity train, and marked them underneath accordingly so the train can be put away in the correct order in the stock box.

I'm not going to double check this and shall take his word for it, because it's getting dangerously close to rivet counting as far as I'm concerned.

The more important thing is that he has done some test running and tells me that it is running very sweetly downhill through the points now, which may, or may not, be less entertaining for the punters in Perth in a couple of weeks.

Restore Or Replace?

Aging stock brings with it a dilemma.

Some of our Dundas slate wagons are more than 25 years old and starting to get a little brittle.

This weakness is most apparent around the very small axleboxes which have a tendency to break off.

The wheelsets are also showing their vintage with the plastic wheel centres shrinking ever so slightly and allowing the tyres to moves, affecting the back-to-back measurements.

The question is whether to try and fix them up or replace with new.

Himself has discovered a pack of 3 tonners in a drawer and made them up just in case.

Waggon Tracks

Lilla will be one of the models getting a first run on Dduallt at an exhibition this weekend, having only been completed last year, long after the layout was last shown.

It's been used to give our slate waggon rake a test on the layout, here seen double heading with Moelwyn (one of my favourite models).

I'm told that Lilla is able to haul the full rake around the spiral unassisted, which is rather impressive for a very lightweight 3D printed body, I think.

The slate waggons are starting to show their age.

They're made from Dundas plastic kits and some of them are getting on for 30 years old, and inevitably that material starts to get brittle as it ages.

This is manifesting itself around the axle boxes which are the most vulnerable parts of the model.

Himself is taking about a rolling replacement programme for the fleet.

We shall see.

Happy Couplings

Himself is on a mission at the moment to standardise, as far as possible, all our couplings.

This has gone so far as to fit brass Greenwich couplings to the lead and tail waggons of our slate train where they couple up to the locomotives.

Previously these were fitted with chunky plastic BEMO couplings which for a long while were the standard in OO9.

The most vital thing with couplings in any scale, but especially this one, is that they are aligned properly for height with one another and you can see in the picture how we use a little jig knocked up out of styrene to set the height of the bottom of the coupling face.

The advantage that the Greenwich design has over all overs is that because the shaft is made of brass it is easily bent either upwards or downwards to make fine adjustments - the key thing is to make sure it is fixed very firmly to the model, otherwise you will pull it off when you go to bend it.