Slaters 1/32nd 6 Wheel Milk Tankers

[Simon]

Hi Rob

Sorry for delay, in answer to earlier question here is a snap of the headstock of my milk tank:



The left hand hose is steam heat, I inserted some copper wire up inside it to give it the curved shape that these hoses seemed to me to adopt.

The problem with this has been that the section above the insert takes all the movement and has lost its paint and slightly "uncoiled".

You are right, there are two lamp brackets.

Hope this is some use!

Simon

 

[OzzyO]

Hello Rob, all,

I've just noticed this thread, one thing that you may not know about is black etch primer. I get mine off Ebay from Clostermann coatings (www.clostermanncoating.co.uk). I tend to use this on all of my loco frames, it dries quite matt I like that as it shows the wheels up quite nicely in the satin black finish.

A nice looking build of a complexed kit.

OzzyO.

PS. you could also use metal black for the W irons.

PPS. they also do some other colours in etch primer. Grey, white and black, maybe some more.

 

[taliesin]

Many thanks OzzyO, i have recently picked up on this Black Primer from Heather's thread on etch primer, it does look to be useful stuff.
Recently i have not been giving the tankers much attention due to my shift times and the lack of natural light available to me but i have managed to get the tanks themselves largely completed.




They are now in grey primer awaiting a top coat and i am thinking of using Halfords aluminium wheel paint to finish them off. That said if i could find proof that the 3000 gallon tanker ever wore it i wouldn't mind finishing one off in the rather funky white and orange "St Ivel" livery, just the thing for the 69/70 period, far out man .
It should be possible to get the blue transfers produced somewhere but for the meantime it's back to the fun chassis.
Cheers to all, Rob

 

[taliesin]

Another small step for mankind see's further progress on the under chassis pipe fittings. Having now bent up all four pairs of pipes from copper tube and the ends fitted on it is now time to complete the fittings. Supplied are some rather natty brass castings, four closely coiled springs and nothing at all about them in the instructions, hence the plea to Simon for the picture posted earlier in the thread.



The upper pipe here is the vacuum pipe which has a casting on the end which locks on nicely to a bracket that fits onto the buffer beam and forms it's own curve. The lower of the two pipes is the steam heating pipe which just hangs down. To prevent the spring just sticking out straight from the fitting i first soldered some pre-curved 1/16 copper pipe gently bored out to fit over the end of the fitting then slipped the spring over it and applied a bit of solder to both ends.



Hopefully the above picture shows how it all goes together. It is all a bit out of kilter as none of it has been fitted properly yet, my intention is to blacken the end fittings and give the pipe assemblies a blow over with etch primer before finally fitting. As ever i need to repeat this three more times. Haste is made slowly, very slowly ,
cheers to all, Rob

 

[OzzyO]

Hello Rob,
the steam heat bag should have a bag end (coupling) on it and then fastened on to a chain, like in this photo


OK, I know it's a loco tender, but the steam heat bag is held up just about the same way on all vehicles. Steve got some very fine (40 links per inch) chain from Ambis Engineering that we used to good effect on his Brit.

OzzyO.

 

[taliesin]

Thanks Ozzy, Slaters do not supply the end fitting but i do have some super fine chain somewhere. I am beginning to wonder how this lot will stand up to use outdoors however, cheers Rob

 

[taliesin]

Going "off piste" and replacing the supplied plastic pipe with copper pipe has taken far longer than i anticipated but it appears to be worth it, now firmly fixed onto the chassis it appears to give some low down weight and hopefully better stability once in use. The fittings were treated with Birchwood Casey Brass Black and the copper pipes blown over with etch primer before being attached with Araldite. Hopefully you can pick them out in this picture,


Here is the end view showing the completed fittings,



In all honesty this lot is hardly going to be noticed when running but it does as mentioned add some weight and 'stiffness' to them. Next up will be the brake gear which hopefully will be as per the instructions,
cheers to all, Rob

 

[taliesin]

Some more progress over the last three days see's the brake gear completed on one chassis. I made life more difficult for myself by not drilling through the holes on the brake hangers before fixing them to the chassis so much time was spent rotating a tiny drill bit between my thumb and finger opening them out . The brake levers have yet to be fixed in place as further work will be needed on the solebars but at least the work now goes topside.



The above picture shows how little of this detail will actually visible in use, i think it's a case of "well i know it's there".
This next picture shows the brake gear from underneath, lots of etches to be cleaned, folded up and fitted. The instructions recommend using loctite but 145 solder was used where possible.



With this amount going on underneath it's a pity that it cannot be run upside down . Hopefully getting the next three to this stage will take less time having figured out how it all goes together and with this amount going on it might pay to paint the inner workings before going any further. A can of Halfords aluminium paint was purchased today for the tanks but the weather needs to improve a bit first before using.
Cheers to all, Rob

 

[S-Club-7]

A can of Halfords aluminium paint was purchased today for the tanks but the weather needs to improve a bit first before using.

This one photographed in 2003 doesn't have much silver left on it! In use at Mangapps Farm as a water tank hence the hosepipe.

And no, you can't see much of the brake gear, even at 12" to the foot...

 

[taliesin]

Thanks Dave, although when i first spray them i suspect that they will be super shiny a combination of weathering followed by a coat of Dullcote should do the trick. It's my intention to get them sprayed well before they are needed so the paint will have hardened off nicely although it looks like the idea of finishing one off in the funky St Ivel livery will be abandoned due to only being able to find pictures of the 2000 gallon tank in this livery.
Cheers, Rob

 

[Phill Dyson]

There were some 3000g St Ivel tanks Rob. There is a pic of an ex-LMS end ladder type on page 52 of 'BR General Parcels Rolling Stock' by David Larkin, so I would assume there were others

Phill

 

[taliesin]

Thanks Phill, ideally i would like to find one of this type, just one will do........
cheers Rob

 

[taliesin]

The tedium of batch building is somewhat countered by the speed gained through familiarity and just a couple of hours see's the basic brake gear fitted to chassis number two,



Although it has been somewhat windy today at least the temperature has been fairly good and in the main its been sunny so i chanced spraying one of the tanks,



Its fair to say that it is somewhat shiny but more importantly at this stage its round and smooth giving a good start for the weathering that will come later. If all four tanks end up like this i will be one happy bunny ,

cheers to all, Rob

 

[iploffy]

Keep up the production line mate you know the saying less means more well sod em get more and enjoy it more. Lol

 

[Simon]

That looks great Rob

Simon

 

[lancer1027]

They look very nice indeed

Rob

 

[taliesin]

Further progress has seen the brake gear fitted to all four chassis and so the next step begins, starting with one chassis i decided to paint the inner workings with matt black Humbrol whilst it was possible to get in from all possible angles then attached the six etched primed splash plates as pictured below,



Having reached this stage i looked at the tank support packing pieces. Now according to the instruction sheet two types are supplied, either six small ones or parts to make up four large ones. Both the pictures supplied and Paul's web resource show both variants and i decided to use the six smaller ones on at least one of the tanks but the required parts were not in the box, or any of the boxes . I contacted Lorna at Slater's who looked into it and reckons that there is a problem with the packing check list which just describes them as cradles without a part number rather than the description of tank support packing pieces as used in the instructions.
Her theory is that this has caused lots of these kits to go out with only the large four packing pieces.
She has said that the other pieces will be posted to me and fingers crossed we are not at cross purposes and the correct ones are supplied.
Hopefully one of life's small mysteries has been solved but in the meantime it's back to the matt black as there is three more requiring attention, cheers to all, Rob

 

[Simon]

Mystery indeed - the instructions made no sense to me whatsoever on this point, I only had the four large ones so used those.

If there are other bits then I reckon Slaters must have a huge stock as I suspect that they have never been supplied in the kit since introduction

I'll be interested in the outcome, but in the meantime this is a great build

Simon

 

[taliesin]

The instructions show six and gives the measurements for their fitting but only the alternative four are supplied.
Lorna hinted that they were sitting on a big pile of them so hopefully the right ones will turn up Simon, cheers Rob

 

[oldravendale]

Both the pictures supplied and Paul's web resource show both variants and i decided to use the six smaller ones on at least one of the tanks but the required parts were not in the box, or any of the boxes

I've built a few of these in 7mm, Rob, and in all cases both sets of tank supports have been included. The ommision of these parts from your kits is clearly an error. In fact I've built with both four and six supports to give a bit of variety.

I hope to hear that the missing parts have arrived very soon.

Best regards.

Brian