3mm Scale wagon kits and Fencehouses chassis.

Time to turn attention to some 3mm scale kits. These I have had for some time having bought some body only kits and relevant Fencehouses etched chassis.

Easily folded up and a small fillet of solder on the joints makes a strong freely rolling chassis.

Next the solebars, from spare chassis sprues and not necessarily right for the wagon, were attached after removal of the axlebox mountings.

 The chassis was test fitted prior to fitting the springs.

This van is an ex-Midland railway example which I found without a chassis but included buffers.

Once all was set, a coat of primer was applied- ideal for grey liveried rolling stock- and, again, when dry the transfers were applied. Again, these may be spurious markings but saves buying yet more transfers for just a few wagons.

 

 

One of the wagon bodies completed- minus transfers. The sheet rail is .45mm nickel silver rod superglued in place for strength.

The buffers have been substituted for some whitemetal castings which are more robust than the plastic examples supplied with the kit.

A 7 plank wagon ready for painting, the floor mouldings have been removed to provide a nice flat surface for attaching the etched chassis.

Below are the 3 open wagons completed ready to be united with the chassis and couplings attached.

The Midland van will wait until the next batch of chassis are soldered together.

009- Little and Large. Cattle wagon and Gunpowder van.

 Would you believe that these are virtually the same scale?

The cattle wagon is an 009 Society kit and the gunpowder van is from Rodney Stenning.

Still needing painting, the cattle wagon is the second I have built and goes together superbly. Four holes need to be drilled out, guides already moulded, for the wire safety rails- shown in brass- supplied.

Conversely the gunpowder van is tiny and a bit of a problem, for me, to get the wheels to rotate smoothly even with a lot of lead weight.

The final picture shows the gunpowder van coupled to a Bachmann Baldwin which illustrates how small this wagon is.

Next to paint with some grey primer first.

Very productive weekend- finished 4 00 Gauge wagons.

I managed to get a couple of Cambrian wagons with pre-printed sides.

The first is The North Devon Clay Co. Ltd., five plank. A 9ft wheelbase wagon that was easy to assemble.

As the wagon is ready coloured it was just a matter of a quick waft of matt varnish and the wagon is complete- except for couplings!

The 2 plank Sx SECR Ballast Wagons have also been completed and have turned out very well.

The two plank sides made assembly a bit fiddly when trying to get square corners glued together but the end result is worth it.

Transfers from Modelmaster were applied- yes I know the number series starts with a six but I am not going to pay for another set of transfer.

They make a good pair and willform a short Engineers train.

 Lastly is another S&D coalfield wagon. Again a pre-printed Cambrian offering and this one went together easily. 

The completed wagon only needed a waft of matt varnish and it is complete- minus couplings and some lead weight- up to the loft again!

00 Gauge kitbuilt wagons.

The SR Engineers Wagons have been assembled and an undercoat of Red Oxide has been applied. Actually this will be the finished colour as the livery notes advise that these wagons were Red Oxide.

Once completely dry the chassis will be painted black and the wagon interior a medium brown- what ever that is!

Below is a ready lettered wagon built from an early Cambrian kit. I managed to win a couple on an online auction recently which worked out cheaper than the cost of the kit and transfers. The thing with these early wagons is that you can use coarser wheels than the current kits so for this one a set of Dapol spoked wheels were used.

 

What's next? Bit of 00 gauge kitbuilding!

 Back to some kitbuilding, for a change!. The Ballast Wagons are next, a pair of them to form a short engineering train. They will be finished as used in Southern Railway days. The only Southern Wagon book I don't have from the series of five is, you've guessed it- the SECR one. Luckily there are a couple of images in the fifth volume which illustrates most wagons I am building.

009 Festiniog GEM Coaches completed!

Last to go on are the roofs- no roof ventilators as there are vents atop the doors.

My usual roofing material is slats from a disused plastic venetian blind which unfortunately came apart.

They are secured with UHU glue and bound with rubber bands whilst curing.

Final thing to do is attach the bogies, already fitted with PECO couplings. The bogies are ex-N Gauge coach bogies- cheap and cheerful!

 

 

 

Checking that the couplings are at the correct height- Ready for service once Woody Lane or Gwartha Vellan Tramway emerges from winter storage!

 

009 Festiniog coaches progress.

The whitemetal Festiniog coaches have had the transfers and a waft of Satin varnish applied- different from my usual Testors Dulcote.

The transfers I have used are from my stock- not going to buy more yet! The lining and lettering are both from the HMRS Pressfix range, I really wish the Woodhead range was still available!

Once the varnish had dried it was glazing time.The packaging for many household accumulations are packed in clear polystyrene so why buy sheets as this is free- my favourite price- forget Poundland.

The glazing is attached with Glue and Glaze and clamped in place till cured- Next the interior and passengers. And then the roof. By the way, the blemishes are on the camera lens.

 

Rectifying a wrongly numbered loco! 00 gauge 57XX Pannier Tank.

The 57XX Pannier has had to be renumbered!

I had wrongly fitted it with a number which was part of the 8750 series.

So off with the fitted plates and paint the buffer beams whilst waiting for a replacement set of  'plates  from 247 Developments- Thanks ,Brian, for sending so quickly as usual.

https://www.247developments.co.uk/

A quick application of the correct buffer beam numbers and the plates fitted to the cab side- all done.

 

Upgrading an original 00 Gauge Hornby Terrier .

After the arrival of the 6 wheel coaches from Colletts Models- https://www.collettsmodelshop.co.uk/

it was now the job of finding something to pull them. I have had one of the original Hornby examples for many years bought for me by one of my daughters so I am reluctant to alter it. 

Luckily a friend had a Southern Olive Green one spare so this is the one that was updated.

Firstly the original numbers were removed with a fibreglass pencil and

 the resultant blemishes touched in with olive paint.The same was carried out to the buffer beam numbers byrepainting a smi gloss red. Replacement numbers, from Pressfix transfers were applied to the tanksides and buffer beams.

Holes were drilled behind the buffers to accomodate lamp irons- in this case fashioned from industrial staples. A route disc-https://www.247developments.co.uk/loco_detailing.html 

being attached to the R/H iron. Lastly two crew members were located into the cab- not my favourite job- too fiddly. The opportunity to paint the whistle brass was also taken. After all was dry a waft of Testors Dulcote was applied to seal the transfers- it also hides slight variations in colour.

 

 

Pictures show the original and detailed one- a couple of hours work and well worth it- saved a lot not having to find a latest Hornby or Rails example.

Hornby 00 gauge 'H' class 0-4-4.

 I hate receiving e-mails advertising model railway sales! So it happened that such an e-mail arrived from Model Railways Direct .

The only thing that caught my eye was this Wainwright H class 0-4-4T. Excellent price- so hit the buy button. 

Why did I need an SECR loco? One never knows! 

BUT- the loco is a superb model and ran perfectly out of the box and so was run in on the rolling road for 30 minutes in each direction and then lightly lubricated .

The gimmick is the opening cab roof vent which is a couple of pieces of black plastic attached at one end which then slides across the aperature and enables the vent to be posed- how do I know this? My inquisitive nature, and fumbling hands, meant this piece fell out and had to be slid in again!

Moral? Stop mucking about with things!

Crew has been fitted and route disc, from 247 Developments attached.

GEM 009 whitemetal coaches.

Looking through the bits box the other day and came across some whitemetal castings for a couple of coaches.

After some searching I found the original GEM instructions for Festiniog coach number 11. There was enough castings to solder up two bodies which differ slightly. One has an observation end and the other a plain end. 

Photos suggest the two coaches ran together- the plain ended one as a refreshment car. A coat of rattle can grey primer and then Vauxhall Carmine as a top coat.

 A plasticard bulkhead was shaped for each coach- this will provide extra support for the roof when fitted.

Bogies are N gauge plastic mouldings , one fits on the original bogie mount, the other on spacing washers as I haven't any other original bogie mounts. Greenwich couplings have been affixed to each bogie and ride well with each other- thing is, do I posess a suitable Festiniog loco to pull them or do I have other coaches/ stock to accompany them?

Hornby 00 Scale 4 and 6 wheel coaches.

The Hornby 4 and 6 wheeled coaches have arrived. A quick order to Colletts Models and three made their way to my awaiting sticky hands!

I must say that the wait was worth it but their arrival was virtually unannounced and appeared to sell extremely quickly.

The body's are very easy to separate from the chassis making the addition of passengers a pleasure rather than worrying that your new posession could be destroyed due to excessive force needed to separate the two parts- Hornby even enclose an instruction sheet.

 

 A suitable loco must now be found to pull them- both of my Southern Terriers are for Isle of Wight use and, because they have sentimental value, I can't bring myself to alter them.

All in all a very satisfying trio of coaches for a micro layout wayside station- I have a 5ft long x 1ft wide board which cry's out for such a use- we shall see.

009 mass wagon building- so many kits, so little time!

 At last continuing on with stock for the GVT, there has been mass production (well Five) of suitable wagons.

All have been suitably branded and will have crushed granite loads.

I have tried to keep the weights roughly equal to ensure reliable running. Other than the two end wagons each will have an uncoupling loop on one end only. 

Moving in rakes with reliable attachment to each other removes the possibility of runaways!

 

 

Removable loads have been created with plastic card on square risers which are covered in crushed granite- this from Attwood Agregates who do a selection of grades for different scales.

The completed rake- I may relent and number them all in the style of existing wagons.