Rob's 7mm Rolling Stock Workbench

[Robpulham]

Still tinkering with the wagon weathering backlog, the next up is an LMS Steel Bodies vent van.

[Robpulham]

I took up the building reins again in between bouts of weathering over the wet and dismal weekend.

Next up is another simple project in the form of a pair of CR/LMS 8 ton Timber and Ore wagons. One is the original Majestic Models kit and the 2nd is the same kit as produced by Dragon Models under the Celtic Connection banner. The kits are a little basic but form the basis on which to add some additional details if you wish and come in as a very cheap addition to the stock box - £8 for the first kit via eBay and £20 for the second from Dragon.

The sides are formed from two layers of etch which have separate hinge detail applied (I also added some rod to represent the hinge pins)and the ends and sole bars are whitemetal castings. There was a sheet of brass supplied with the Majestic kit for the floor but Dragon supply a sheet of planked plasticard. I replaced this with a bit of scrap nickel etch from the 8F kit which was just the right width. This allowed me to solder all the way making for solid construction - they weigh a bit too!

[Robpulham]

Meanwhile I managed to finish painting, weathering and adding the details to the tender truck.





The pieces of timber are coffee stirrers cut lengthways, and I am particularly pleased with the bundles of rope which are made from 4 strands of 32 gauge brass beading wire, twisted together in a couple of pin vices. This was them wound around a lolly type stick to get the length of coil and further wound around itself then it was blackened and dipped in the mix of paint that I used for weathering the inside of the cattle wagons featured earlier.

The lamp is by Slaters and the hammer another one of the Peter Roles castings.

[Robpulham]

A bit of time over the last couple of evenings has seen the two timber and ore wagons up on their wheels and the buffer stocks fitted. I had to drill out the hole for the buffer shanks on the Dragon castings but this didn't present any problems.





The next bit of fun is going to be the brakes because at the moment neither sets of brakes will line up with the wheels so a bit of improvisation will be needed - watch this space....

[Robpulham]

As I mentioned in my last post, the next job was to sort out the brakes which are one sided on these wagons - they usually ran in pairs giving access to a brake from either side.

This is what was provided in the two kits - the casting with the base being the Majestic offering and the rest came with the Dragon kit.


The idea being that you solder the brass strip to one of the brake shoes with a few spares in case of accidents.

Me being me, I didn't really fancy that so I went for a strip of scrap etch bent to shape and some modified etched shoes from the spares box (suitably filed to an approximation of the cast shoes).

My apologies for the rather poor first photo the camera kept trying to focus on something else.....





I also managed to get the lever made up for one of them but the work bench "ate" the locking nut for the second so more scrap etch needed for a replacement.....

[Robpulham]

Last night saw the Timber and Ore Wagons completed.



The chains that hold the sides up severely tried my eyesight and patience - my £7 magnifying specs really came to the rescue! The rings that hold the chains on the ends were spare rope rings from the Connoisseur sand wagon kit. The fine chain is from Slaters (David Parkins kindly pointed me at the source after using the fine chain in the MMP Glass Wagon).







On the one photo that I have seen there are quite prominent wagon plates on the sides. I am not sure if these were replaced by the LMS but I found four badly etched loco build plates that looked about the right size and added them. Once they are painted and lost under some weathering they should look the part.




Next up is the paint shop.

[Robpulham]

A quiet day at home resulted in my getting the timber wagons into primer - two colours no less. I have read a few posts about people using black primer for underframes so I gave it a go along with grey for the bodywork.

Then I made a start on the next one which is another Dragon kit. This one is the NBR/LNER 'twin' tank travelling gas wagon. I emphasise the twin because I have asked Chris Basten if he can supply another kit with an extra tank so that I can do a triple tanked version too.

This is another one that originated in the Majestic models stable and so far the tanks have made up very nicely. The only adjustment that I needed to make was on the outer tank wrapper which has two half etched edges to make a smooth seam. When I tried them the left too much of a gap between the wrapper and the cylinder so I cut of one of the half etches plus an extra 0.5mm this allowed for a much better fit and the slight overlap from the remaining half etched section is hidden under the tank.

What has come as a bit of a surprise based on the other former Majestic kits that I have built is that the bulk of it is etched (I had in my mind that the chassis was cast much like the 4mm SE Finecast versions that I built previously - perhaps that's where the false idea came from....).





All the rivet strips are separate items giving a nicely reinforced appearance.

[Robpulham]

A busy week hasn't allowed much time to progress this but I managed a little last night.

The solebar overlays went on like a dream.



The challenge came when I got to soldering the solebars to the underframe. The underframe has a broken half etched line to show where it's located but getting it to solder in an upright position tested my ingenuity. In the end a piece of rectangular tube backed up with a strip of scrap etch under the lip brought it vertical so I placed it under one end while I tacked in and then repeated at the other end before completing the seam.

[Robpulham]

The timber and ore wagons have been through the paint shop and are now at the transfer stage.

I had a little hiccup with the painting in so much as a large section of the pain on one side of one wagon came back of when I removed the masking. This is the first time that this has happened and I can only assume that I didn't do something right....

Instead of being dismayed I got stuck in and repaired it. This was achieved very quickly with the use of a hairdryer to dry off the paint in between coats - it took longer to clean the air brush between coats than it took to redo the painting....

[Robpulham]

The last couple of evenings have seen a bit more progress on the gas tank wagon (so has this afternoon but I haven't taken pictures yet).

[Robpulham]

Good progress has been made on the tank wagon over the weekend.

Everything went together nicely with the tanks held on in prototypical fashion via the strapping. The only bit I changed was the pipe fittings that come out of the ends of the tanks. There are nice castings supplied but I doubted that I could solder in a piece of rod for the pipes without melting the fine whitemetal tube so I modified a pair of Connoisseur clack valves - Once lost under paint and weathering they should suffice adn stand a bit more handling.

With a bit of luck I should have it on it's wheels tonight.

Here are a couple of shots of where we are to date - it still needs some cleaning up though.

[Robpulham]

A complete lack of any energy this week (as opposed to lack of mojo) has meant that I didn't do anything further on the tank wagon until last night.

This is where I had to do the first major deviation from the instructions.

In the photo below the slots that you see in the bottom of the solebars hold the W Irons. The problem being that the flanges at the top of them are not deep enough to touch the underside of the floor and as they are, they don't sit flush with the back of the sole bars either. This means that if you were to solder them to the underside of the solebars then the thin strip on the inside would make them very prone to being bent out of position with very little to anchor them to.



How I got around this was to solder four strips of scrap etch to the back of the sole bar and then solder the W Iron flange to that giving a nice solid fixing. I also found that I needed to file to points of the axle ends in order to make the W Irons sit upright without bowing outwards.



Once I had this sorted getting the other wheels on was straightforward. Lastly I added the brakes. Which unless I have missed something, just leaves the brake levers/guards, the ends of the cradles and the vacuum pipes before a good clean up.

[Robpulham]

I mentioned in one of my threads that I would do a posting showing some of the stages of my weathering processes

Starting from this:


I started by giving the body work with a coat of Ronseal satin hardglaze the water based variety.

A couple of days later I coated the entire body work in a 'grot' coat made up from Vallejo Flat earth, Dark Sea Grey and a hint of black.





Once again I left it for a few days- I had done this much while up at the cottage but the rest from this point was done at home.

Next I started to remove the 'grot' coat using a flat ended brush dipped in Meths a bit at a time.







At this stage I left it for a few more days while I decided if I had finished.

I decided that I wasn't, so I did a bit more using the same technique of flat brush and meths.

[Robpulham]

With the other van that I built and painted at the same time I tried a different technique.

Here is a reminder of what it looked like at the outset.



This then had 2 coats of Johnsons Klear (the original variety) brush painted on and left over night.

Next I mixed up a mixture of Vallejo 'Dark Fleshtones' which was the colour that I used for the bauxite finish and my mix of 'grot' described in the last post.

The body work was liberally coated with it and again it was left to dry while I got home from the cottage. Then I set to with the falt brush and meths....







The eagle eyed amongst you will notice that I managed to knock of the steam pipes while weathering and again no door handles or guard irons......









This has given a completely different look to the vehicle than the other one so I now have a few different techniques under my belt.

Now I need to master subtle....

[Robpulham]

Yesterday saw the build of the gas tank wagon complete.

My clumsiness when fitting the finely cast horse hooks saw one of them break in half in my hand so I fabricated some more from scrap etch they don't look as good as the cast ones but once under the paint and grime they will be almost unnoticeable.


I also made up some more vacuum pipes from 1mm brass rod bound with 28 gauge brass beading wire and some rings of scrap etch. this gives the advantage of being able to secure them firmly to the bottom of the wagon floor as well as making them a bit more robust when being handled.







The following are both sides and ends as they stand.