West End Workbench

[earlswood nob]

Good morning all

Good news JW, Woking is close to me to me, so I can visit and see Grantham in the flesh.

I'll mark the date on my planner.

Earlswood nob

[jwealleans]

We shall look forward to seeing you there, Malcolm. We seem to have a full crew so hopefully I'll get some time off to chat.

This week I've been sorting out niggles from the running weekend and moving on or finishing off a few little side jobs. I don't want to dive into anything major in the run up to a show.

The C7 wasn't entirely faultless on test, so it may make an appearance at Woking on a through train but is unlikely to be tried on shed. I've added a front vac pipe and coupling as well as some weight in the rear of the front bogie. The bogie may be of interest: there's very little room behind the cylinders on many of these Raven NER types and following a suggestion by Barry Oliver I've altered this so it pivots from a point in front of the bogie instead of behind. Hopefully you can see the idea in the photograph.





It seems to work up to now, we've not had any problems with it shorting to the cylinders.

I had a package through from 51L this week which included some etched ladders. That was what I was waiting for to carry on with the brass refrigerated van from a few pages back. It now needs the strapping tidying up and bolt heads adding.





At Redcar show, David Scott kindly gave me this LSWR 3 plank from his former range as a donation for Ormesby. I've fitted OO wheels, repainted to LSWR, weathered it lightly and now added a sheeted load.



I've had a bit of a weathering session on Grantham wagons today, including the two coal wagons we saw above. These need some black powder adding, maybe a bit of brake dust, then they're ready to go back to the layout.



In parallel, here are a set of LNER vans I bought when Hattons were doing a bulk deal. As they are the D 171 of 1940, they're no good for Grantham (shame they didn't make the ventilator removable), so I've repainted them for the Wickham Market stock. These bulk packs are a good way to build up trains if you don't mind repainting, renumbering and fiddling with wagons to make each one slightly different. These will have torn off labels, chalk marks, maybe a sheet over one and scattered along the length of a train they'll look similar without being simply a procession of identical vehicles.





Finally, a couple of wagons from a collection Tony Wright sold on earlier this year. These have simply been repainted.



Slaters MR 3 plank



D & S GC guards van. This kit is now available from the GCRS. I've left the roof off so I can add a guard before sticking it back on.

[Woodcock29]

Hi Jonathon

Lovely wagons as always. The only comment I have is you might want to check the rod in the brake gear between the two V hangers on the Refrigerator van - it appears to be angled the wrong way.

Regards

Woodcock29

[jwealleans]

Thank you Andrew, now corrected.

In my defence, I did fit it the right way up - it's just that the rest of the underframe was upside down at the time.

[Atlantic 3279]

Reminds me of following certain kit instructions relating to underframes and bogies. Once they've told you to invert the whole assembly, what then counts as "up" and "down"?

[Woodcock29]

Loved your reply Jonathon

Regards

Andrew

[jwealleans]

Most of my time since Woking seems to have been taken up with servicing and repairing stock. I had a whole afternoon at it today, though, so I fancied something new:



We're not overendowed with brake vans on Grantham, so this was the first one from Danny's last production which came to hand. It's a 6 wheel 10 tonner (yes, the centre axle assembly is missing). Lovely thing to build although fiddly as all brake vans are.

I've also painted and lettered the refrigerated van. If he's at Warley I shall try to find out from Jim McGeown if this is his etch, although I'm more or less sure it is.

[jwealleans]

GN brake van now going through the paint shop. I did enjoy building this - I may try to get another done before Warley.



I was demonstrating plastic kit building at Ormesby over the last weekend, so there will be some cattle wagons on show before long - again, the aim is to have them done for Warley, but I've had to order some brass W irons for them, so we're dependent on those arriving.

A quietly momentous event on Friday evening - the very last carriage from the Grantham building programme we devised some two years and a few months ago.

This is BTK (6) 41361 to D 178, which works to York in the 13:40 ex-King's Cross. It caused some confusion at Woking as it's already in the set remarshalling instructions despite not existing at that point in time. It will be there for Warley, with a fair wind and a bit of enthusiasm.

[manna]

G'day Gents

Did I just hear a big sigh of relief. They look so good.
manna

[Atso]

Congratulations on just about reaching the target on the coach building programme. I bet you can't wait to get that one through the paint shop!

When you do, is there any chance you could go through the process you use to 'teak' the coach? The effect you achieve is very good.

[Danby Wiske]

... is there any chance you could go through the process you use to 'teak' the coach?

Request seconded - along with the congratulations!

[jwealleans]

Request for teaking noted. I thought I'd done it before, but maybe that was on RMWeb. There will be a slight delay as when I went for the roof I found I only had short ones. Dart Castings are kindly sending one through but it may be next week before I have it.

41361 was relatively new in 1938, so the teak will be fairly pale and uniform, but I'll try to remember to point out where and how you can modify that.

[Atlantic 3279]

it's already in the set remarshalling instructions despite not existing at that point in time.

"Aspirational instructions", if expressed in management gobbledigook?

[jwealleans]

Taking a helicopter view, I'd run it up the flagpole to see if it had legs. I then thought I might leverage the paradigm by leaving it there to see whether the relief operator could think outside the box.

BINGO!

[jwealleans]

No carriage roof as yet, probably in tomorrow or Tuesday's post. In the meantime, these are two Parkside cattle wagons I built at our Ormesby Hall model railway weekend where I was demonstrating plastic kit building. These are very much under discussion at the moment, of course, so I decided to make these the unfitted versions - an early one with the GN-style drop door and a later one with the three part full height door.



There's very little modification required, really. I used Tatlow part 4A, Steve Banks' article in MRJ 87 and Steve's website. I have used MJT W irons as these need to be shunted on Grantham, so they have to run square and freely. They also need weight low down. Brake gear came from the spares box - one set is MAJ, I think and the other is handily supplied in the new Parkside LMS cattle wagon which I also built over the same weekend. Buffers from LMS, door bangers using the Masokits etch.