Rob's 7mm Rolling Stock Workbench

[Robpulham]

Moving swiftly along from the brake standard modifications. You may recall further up the thread my making a stove for the brake van using my Silhouette cutter. Although I proved it was possible, it was extremely fiddly to assemble and I certainly wouldn't want to be doing a lot of them. It's also a perfect candidate for 3D printing so yesterday morning (after amending the brake standard files) I started to draw up the stove.

It has proved to be my most ambitious and ultimately satisfying design project to date.

My apologies for the image overload but I am delighted at how well it has turned out.

[Robpulham]

The next part of the stove puzzle proved much easier to draw

[Robpulham]

I have always fancied building a horse drawn vehicle or two mainly as wagon loads for several Open Carriage trucks that I have on the go. I was put onto the idea by a gent I spoke to at a show a few years ago who subsequently brought me a horse drawn carriage from a company named Brumm. Some of the Brumm carriages fetch crazy amounts of money but I found one that was being sold as scrap for not much more than postage and bought it to salvage the wheels from.

Although my photo is of a Great Northern Railway parcels van, the only drawing I have is for an LNWR example but they are broadly similar. I scaled the drawing on the basis of the wheel size that I planned to use (the Brumm Wheels are slightly bigger diameter than the LNWR drawing).

I drew out the body pieces in Inkscape and cut them out with the silhouette and got this basic body.

Please excuse the colouring of the photos as I had to adjust them to show the white against the white background...

[Robpulham]

Next I made up the underframe and shafts from Plastruct. The shafts I put in a collet in the lathe and then used a file to taper the end. Then once I had them both tapered the same I held them together and kept holding them in boiling water while applying pressure to get them to curve at the ends. Once happy I stuck them into holes in the ends of the under frame.

What will become housings for the harness rings were made by wrapping a 5mm wide strip of 10 thou around an off cut of the same plastruct rod that I made the shafts from and gluing the ends together leaving the piece removable. I held it in a small hand vice until dry. Once dry it was removed from the rod, trimmed to size and tested out on the shafts. At this point it still need to be drilled.

Then I moved back to the body and added beading from 0.8mm half round Plastruct strip following the photo rather than the drawing fr the placement of the strips.








Last but not least the seat, the wheels and the springs were the items that I mentioned that were salvaged from the Brumm model.

[Robpulham]

Finally got it up on its wheels still a bit more in the way of details but it’s getting there.

[Robpulham]

Front steps and a suitable period handle in the way of a nice brass casting from the spares box.

[Robpulham]

I finally got it painted and ready for glazing. The roof was 'canvassed' using my old favourite, used lens cleaning tissue.

I plan to do the glazing with Glue n Glaze from Deluxe materials assuming it hasn't gone off since I used it last.

[jwealleans]

Another absolute gem.

[Dave]

Brilliant Rob.

[Robpulham]

Thanks Gents,

Just to finish of this particular vehicle, here are some shots of it glazed and ready for service.

The slightly rustic look of the 'Glue n Glaze' glazing really suits the period look of the vehicle (to my mind at least).

[Robpulham]

Some of you might recall that higher up this page I drew up an LNER Stove in Fusion 360? This is after my making one from styrene for my LNER Brake van. I had some of them printed in resin by friends with printer and I am highly delighted with the results, but I still fancied seeing what they would look like as brass castings so I asked fellow Gauge O Guild member Mike Hopkins to include some when he next sent items off for casting.

after a short wait, I received the castings last week.





I now need to get them off the sprue and assembled but as they are they look superb and I am really glad I had them done. I have a few brass brake van kits in the stash awaiting them.

[Dave]

Now they do look impressive Rob, I trust the brake will be working.

[Robpulham]

Now they do look impressive Rob, I trust the brake will be working.

I can but dream,
I still pinch myself when I look at them and realise that they were cast from my original creations.

[jwealleans]

I trust the brake will be working.

Ye of little faith. He'll have a working kettle and billy in there, never mind working brakes.

[Robpulham]

I didn't post pictures of the finished article before now because I planned to enter it in the GOG modelling competition. Which was held today.

I am pleased to say it took first place in the Rolling Stock section.