7mm Rob's Rolling Stock Workbench

Rob Pulham

Western Thunderer
I had a few days off this week which has allowed progress on quite a few items.

The first is a long time shelf queen - a Slaters Tar tank. I even got a coat of paint on the tank and then made a complete hash of applying the transfers so I will need to repaint one of the panels and obtain some more Yorkshire and Lincolnshire Tar distillers transfers - anyone want to swap for some Walkers or Shell Mex/BP?

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I made a while back a discharge pipe for a class B tank that I am scratch building (another shelf queen but completing this one gets the wagon shelf queens down to three!) having spent a while making it I discovered that it wouldn't fit but the good news is it fits this one perfectly.

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Rob Pulham

Western Thunderer
Despite having failed miserably with the tar tank transfers I had more success with the NBR open.

To ad a little variety I decided to do this one in NBR livery - according to Tatlow it seems that quite a few NBR wagons made it to the mid 30's still in NBR livery (that and I have a few sets of NBR transfers and it would be a shame not to use any of them).

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Further following the photo in Tatlow I even managed to find some small enough black transfers to add the paint date in the crescent.

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I have tried several methods to get weathered but unpainted wood for wagon interiors and this is the one that I am most happy with so far. I had an exchange of emails with Bob Alderman after seeing his superbly weathered cattle wagon on the guild gallery. Bob's suggested method was build up lots of dry brushing, this was done with various shades of bleached bone, rotting flesh etc. before being finished with a wash of much diluted Dark Sea Grey.

I just need to finish weathering the outside now, more of the same...
 

Rob Pulham

Western Thunderer
Help, I've become a bolt counter.....

During the last two trips up north while waiting for underframe parts from Parkside for the NBR wagons I made a start on a conversion of a Slaters Gloucester 5 Plank open to this -

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This is a scan of part a page from Essery's Midland Wagons Vol one and copyright in the book is attributed to British Rail. Shown her purely to illustrate what I am attempting to replicate.

Next is a shot of the Slaters Gloucester 5 Plank side, end and solebars so that you can see what I needed to change to get to where I wanted to be...

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Rob Pulham

Western Thunderer
Well, my thoughts on MR or LMS transfers were sidetracked by not really getting to the bottom of what these wagons might have been used for post war. That and a friend coming up with the suggestion of finishing it in W^D livery with secret contents - along the lines of "if I tell you what it's carrying I would have to kill you". Anyone who knows me well will understand how much this appealed to my sense of humour so here we are.

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Once again the transfers are home made and printed on white decal paper.
 

OzzyO

Western Thunderer
It's a bang wagon, for carrying munitions. Eg. L1 cordite, L3 the shell (warhead) and in L2 the detonators and firing caps. All three (well two) of them are stable if kept a way from fire.

It's an idea.

OzzyO.
 

Rob Pulham

Western Thunderer
After a heavy week last week supporting the election in Wakefield I had a steady weekend on the modelling front.

A plea on the guild want adds had supplied me with some spare transfers for the Tar Tank and by golly I needed them:oops::mad:

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Now I need to decide how to weather it - the sides of the tank are still glossy from the transfer coat.
 

Rob Pulham

Western Thunderer
Despite using the NBR 4 plank to "show off" the packing case that I built from coffee stirrers it was never it's intended load.

While browsing the NBR section of LNER wagons volume 3 (as I was detailing the 4 plank and making up the body for the drop side version) I noted that when carrying barrels the NBR had made use of what I can only liken to the plaited rope fenders that ships and barges etc. use to protect the sides of the vessel whilst docking.

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Using an idea given to me by Bob Alderman, I used short strands of sisal string for the straw and Chris kindly plaited some longer lengths of string that had been separated into individual strands and I then coiled them up and glued them into a flat cushion. After colouring them with dilute paint and trying them in the wagon with the barrels I found that two together created a better effect.
 

Rob Pulham

Western Thunderer
While reading up on the WD wagon in Essery I also noted a few pictures of a Midland Railway shunters truck similar to the ones that the GWR had. I wondered if the LNER or it's constituents had anything similar.

An enquiry on the LNER forum revealed that the GCR has a couple and the NER had built one. No photos or drawings have emerged for the GCR examples but by fortunate coincidence I had (unbeknown to me at the time) I had a copy of the drawing for the NER example which is included in the Railway Snowploughs in the North East book by David and Claire Williamson.
I had to use a bit of modellers license in this one because although the NER built it in 1902, in 1907 it was rebuilt into a double ended snowplough (hence it's inclusion in the book).

This is a true multimedia build:
The floor and step boards are coffee stirrers
The rest of the timber work is styrene strip
The handrail stanchions are brass split pins with piano wire rails
Brass handrail knobs and nickel wire make up the lower handrails.
The hand brake column is a Slaters casting
The W Irons and V hangers are Slaters from the spares box as are the axle boxes but I did modify them with styrene.
The springs and hangers are scratch built from styrene strip and angle
Buffers are Haywood Railway and the couplings are Parkside.

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Rob Pulham

Western Thunderer
While I was off for the last week I also did more work on the NBR 4 plank Dropside wagon. It's a good job that I did because since returning to Wakefield with big plans to crack on with the G5 my mojo seems to have taken a holiday too and no modelling has been done for the last couple of days:(.

Sorry about the poor quality of the photos the white styrene is quite difficult to photograph and I am not yet at the stage where I can give it a coat of primer.

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The door bangers had me scratching my head - the Evergreen strip kept snapping as I bent it to shape (despite using a coat of solvent to soften it). My solution was to use the broken ends of styrene as the outer strap and cutting about 2/3rds of the circle from a small length of styrene tube to use for the main protruding part of the door banger.
 

Rob Pulham

Western Thunderer
Before the mojo deserted me and in between building the G5 (pretty much in the thinking time when I needed to work out the next step) this just about fell together - It's a GER Wool Wagon from Andy Beaton's Ragstone range that I picked up at Telford last year during what seemed like a GER frenzy (I ended up with 3 GER wagons, one D&S, this one and a Powsides GER 5 plank open).

I have a couple more of Andy's kit's in the stash and if they go together like this one I will be very pleased.

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All the strapping and brake gear are lovely brass castings and a dream to fit.
It will be finished in very faded and worn GER livery as part of my engineers fleet.
 

Rob Pulham

Western Thunderer
Has your mojo deserted you Rob?.....you still seem very prolific ;)

Phill:)

Hi Phill,

I hadn't had the inclination to do anything at all for 4 days - that's desertion of mojo for me, but I guess it might not be the case for others.:rolleyes:

I did a bit last night which seems to have restored the enthusiasm though, so the mojo seems to have been found again:thumbs:
 
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