Rob's 7mm Rolling Stock Workbench

[Robpulham]

Rob, British Railways Illustrated October 2015 has a couple of salt van pics on pages 26 & 27 which may be of use to you noticed them after reading my friends article Derailment at Duns.

Many thanks, I will look out for a copy.

[Robpulham]

Over the weekend I put together one of the LNER Guard's ducket's.

Actually I did two, but the first was with a solid backing piece to test/see how it went together.



I had some paint to hand so I went over it to make it better to photograph and to say that it's cut from 10thou, now that it's assembled it's remarkably sturdy

[Robpulham]

Getting back to conventional modelling the final details were added to the pipe wagon over the weekend - I will add the vac pipes after painting it. - Chains from twisted and squashed wire.

[Robpulham]

I cut out much of the CCT last night and was really impressed with the quality of the cut and the small details



To give an idea of the sizes involved the piece with the hole in to the left of the image above is 1mm wide

Now I need to remove the sides from the cutting mat to see how I fared cutting 20 thou material.

[Robpulham]

I have spent quite a bit of time working on the NER CCT this weekend.

Like a complete numpty, I forgot to take either drawing or photo so despite spending all that time cutting detail for the ends I had no idea what went where without them......

But the main body and the side details were another matter.







Sadly white Styrene isn't the easiest to take photos of but you get the idea - It all went together just as I envisaged and the only thing that I changed was to ease a bit more from the ends of the inner sides/supports and the scored louvres which were very much an experiment to see what they looked like didn't cut it if you will pardon the pun

[Robpulham]

A session last night saw some of the end details added with the aid of the drawing - still some to go but I need to make up the chassis next because some of the detail overlaps onto the headstocks.


I am still struggling to get decent photos with the white plastic....

I also had the brainwave of attempting to cut a roof using the Silhouette reasoning that if I scored lines where the planks would be on a wooden roof it would make the styrene easier to bend. I wasn't quite prepared for just how much a success it would be.



The very nature of scoring it made it curl as soon as I removed it from the cutting mat. A bit more help from a couple of different sized rods and it fit perfectly.

Another thought was to attempt to create the gutter by using my Olfa cutter deepen the score line adjacent to each edge and then use my hold and fold to bend it into shape - another success.

[MikeTrice]

Looks brilliant. I too struggle with the white so when I need 20thou styrene I often use Slater's Cream which provides a nice contrast with the white details.

[Robpulham]

Looks brilliant. I too struggle with the white so when I need 20thou styrene I often use Slater's Cream which provides a nice contrast with the white details.

Thanks Mike, I am really pleased with how it's come out for my first crack at it. I am now busy drawing up an early NBR 8 Ton van that was assigned to the Singer sewing machine co.

On the subject of styrene sheet, I have been getting mine from EMA models the 20thou is £1.98 for a 300x 600 sheet which I think is very reasonable but to be fair I haven't compared it to Slaters or anyone else. I do have some sheets of black obtained some time ago from someone on eBay but they are 30thou. - The roof is just under 30 thou to be fair so I hope to make use of them at some point.

[Robpulham]

Although I haven't done any more construction I took advantage of an early finish to get a coat of primer on the pipe wagon so I squirted a bit at the CCT to make it a bit better to photograph. The coat is far from perfect because I still have some detail to add and will be re-priming it once I have it completed.
I also made a start on painting the inside a dark colour so that you can't see white from the inside once the windows are in.

[Robpulham]

I am still beavering away with the CCT having started looking at the underframe. While doing that from studying the drawing and the photo in Historic Carriage drawings (the only photo that I have found so far), I noticed that the wheels seem to have a different type of rim. There are similar wheel sets in various photos in North Eastern Railway Brake Vans by Ian Sadler (whom I was stood chatting to at Wakefield show last year but didn't know who he was until he had gone and a friend told me who he was). They are described as "cushioned"

The wheels are also 10 spoke which I don't have in stock but I will get some from Slaters if my local model shop doesn't keep them.

Anyway back to the "cushioned" wheels I reasoned that I could make some in the same manner that I have done balance weights - plasticard fronts backed by milliput. In the past I would have used my olfa circle cutter but it seemed much easier to have a go at drawing them and then cutting on the Cameo. 10 minutes later they were cutting.



What isn't visible on the the wider rimmed ones is score marks for bolt heads.
The idea of the two sizes is that two or three layers of the narrow rings will sit inside the rim of the wheel to bring it level with the front face and the wider ring with the bolt heads will overlap onto the wheel face slightly. In theory I suspect that it should be recessed into the face of the rim but I haven't the means to do it and the rings are only 9 thou thick.

[Robpulham]

3 weeks away on holiday and then a busy week at work didn't left much in the way of inclination to do much in the way of modelling last week.
That changed this weekend when I made a bit more progress on the NER CCT, adding more end details and the basic underframe.





I even manage to made the door locking mechanism work on one end - the other end must have got a drop of glue in there somewhere.






I did attempt to cut some springs and hangers but the jury is still out as to whether they are succesful or not.

Worst case I can see me doing a crash session in 3D modelling to see if I can get some printed.

[Robpulham]

Before I went on my holiday I drew up and cut out parts for an early NBR 8 ton Van using this drawing as the basis, I believe that it's one of the Kenneth Wherret drawings that used to be found in the Model Railway News in years gone by.



Sadly the weekend before last I forgot to take the main parts with me so I continued to work on the NER CCT as previously posted.

On Friday I made sure that I packed the box with the parts in and managed to spend time getting the sides and ends prepared to go together over the weekend.

The sides and ends are made up from 3 layers of 20thou with the hinges and plates cut from 10 thou. The beading is Plastruct 0.8mm half round rod.









Before getting the Cameo cutter I had planned to scratch build one or two of these and I had even got as far as marking out a sheet of 1mm styrene for the sides and ends. With the aid the aid of the Cameo I now have a pair of vans in the same state as the photos above from two afternoons and evenings work.

[Robpulham]

There is a thread on RMweb called "it's grim up North" well last weekend it was.....at least in Bishop Auckland.

At about 10am Chris said look out the window I did and it was snowing, then came the famous last words from me, don't worry it won't stick....

By mid afternoon this was the view....





And as the light was failing



All told a good 5" inches fell.

So that meant that we had to stay in and play.

By the time I was ready to leave on Sunday here's where I had got to with the NBR Jubilee vans.













Lastly I cut and curved a couple of roofs - one I scored with my Olfa cutter similar to the NER CCT roof that I did on the Silhouette the other I just curved with the rounded end of a Swan Morton knife handle.

The second van isn't quite on it's wheels yet but it's not far behind.

[Robpulham]

The silhouette bug has well and truly bitten....

Whilst looking through LNER wagons volume 3 for more details on the Jubilee vans that I built last week I realised that the match-board sided version is actually the same van and more importantly with the same hinge and strap details.

In true Blue Peter fashion, here's one that I built earlier. My example being the Avery Tool van variant by Dragon Models. - Dragon also do the standard match-board sided van too (under the Celtic Connection banner).






Seeing as I had Parkside NBR underframe goodies in stock, it seemed rude not to. So a quick change of the art work later and I had sides and ends drawn for a couple of examples. Then came four hours of cutting out. and a few hours of construction over the weekend giving this as the result.





I now need to crack on and get them all detailed and up on their wheels but that will be the other side of Christmas now and may well depend on what goodies Santa brings. Oh the easily distracted......

[Robpulham]

The weekend was probably the most productive that I have had in modelling terms for months or so it seemed.

With the success of the matchboard Jubilee vans I decided to have a go at assembling the body for an NBR (another NBR subject I know...... and I don't even model the NBR). Bogie CCT.

I had noticed this while checking out prospective subjects in Historic carriage drawings volume 3 (the blue NPCS book page 57) and what appealed is that they made it to BR days and they got down at least as far as Bridlington (the photo accompanying the drawing was taken at Bridlington in 1953).

I have had a go at this primarily as a prelude to having a go at a coach.









And finally to to give an idea how big it actually is - this is it with the Jubilee van sat on top of it.