Jon Nazareth
Western Thunderer
Mike
That looks a familiar brake van to the right in that picture.
Jon
That looks a familiar brake van to the right in that picture.
Jon
Some of my Gauge 3 rolling stock
- Thread starter Mike W
- Start date
Mike W
Western Thunderer
This kit is different from my usual. Tony Riley used to make kits of parts in wood for wagons in Gauge 1. I heard that many years previously he did a batch of Gauge 3 SECR open wagons, so I asked if he would consider doing another batch. He agreed, but not the SECR wagon, so his first set of parts for me were for an LSWR wagon which I might talk about later, and this was his second, an NBR D77. His wooden parts are not laser cut, but made from hardwood using slitting saws on the lathe, so tapers are relatively easy to do. His detail parts are mainly moulded plastic - a la Colin Binnie, for those old enough to remember him being the star turn at Central Hall, Westminster and stinking out the whole place! Compared to a one piece resin body it takes an age to assemble but comes out rather nicely. Again it has my usual mechanical parts and Liz Marsden applied my own transfers, which are varnish fix.
Jon Nazareth
Western Thunderer
Mike,
It’s a good kit and I enjoyed building mine.
Jon
It’s a good kit and I enjoyed building mine.
Jon
Dangerous Davies
Western Thunderer
Mike
The NB wagon looks excellent. Pardon my ignorance, what is the significance of the crescent marking above the tare weight?
Dave
The NB wagon looks excellent. Pardon my ignorance, what is the significance of the crescent marking above the tare weight?
Dave
Mike W
Western Thunderer
The crescent symbol includes the paint date, but why it was that shape I'm not sure.
Apologies - in trying to be brief my description of the transfers was misleading. They were originally made for Chris Barron (Locomotive Design Co.) and I bought his whole stock many years ago, so they were not made by me at home, but they are now mine. I like varnish fix because there is no carrier film at all and in the large scales with a lot of texture to the planking hiding the watersilde film completely is not easy, for me at least. But they are a bit worrying to apply with the clock slowly ticking away as the varnish dries! Liz Marsden applied these but I have done them myself.
Mike
Apologies - in trying to be brief my description of the transfers was misleading. They were originally made for Chris Barron (Locomotive Design Co.) and I bought his whole stock many years ago, so they were not made by me at home, but they are now mine. I like varnish fix because there is no carrier film at all and in the large scales with a lot of texture to the planking hiding the watersilde film completely is not easy, for me at least. But they are a bit worrying to apply with the clock slowly ticking away as the varnish dries! Liz Marsden applied these but I have done them myself.
Mike
Mike W
Western Thunderer
When fellow Gauge 3 modeller and WT contributor Geoff Nicholls offered to make the patterns for a wagon body I really couldn't refuse. The lovely body sections are laser cut in wood, with the detail added by hand in the usual way. A Gauge 3 friend from East Anglia questioned why I wanted to offer a kit of such a specialist wagon which would surely never have been seen in the south and nobody would buy it. So I took great pride in finding a picture of one taken about ten miles from where he lives, plus others on the south coast, west Wales and other far flung corners of this lisland. These wagons really did get around! Anyway, it has my usual mechanical parts. This same design was common for traders in Scotland (not strictly private owners, but "thirled"), so I couldn't resist making a second example, which was hand lettered for me by Liz Marsden. I never normally paint the tyres white, but that too does make a change on just one wagon.
The end door opens by the way, and works very well.
Mike
The end door opens by the way, and works very well.
Mike
AndyB
Western Thunderer
Overseer
Western Thunderer
The NBR shunting hooks in the photo are similar to the Highland Railway ones, using the plate to replace the axle guard washer plate, although Jones added a vertical leg to pick up the top hole. The mounting holes therefore align with the narrow axleguard mounting holes. I don't have detail drawing of either the NBR or HR version but do have several Victorian Railways detail drawings for shunting hooks, extracted from drawing sheets showing all the forgings needed for certain classes of wagon. The attached drawing will give an idea of the sizes of the parts, the NBR one will be wider to suit the axleguard, instead of bolted to the solebar closer to the centre line of the wagon as the VR mounted them.
Mike W
Western Thunderer
Trust the NBR to be different. The detail pictures nicely shows the brake block. RCH blocks, as with most other railways, had double push rods and double hangers, so each needed a single lug on the block. GER and some GWR had double pushrods and a single hanger (i.e. a lug either side of the hanger), but the NBR chose the opposite - single pushrods and double hanger, needing a special pattern and casting just for that wagon.
Mike
Mike
Overseer
Western Thunderer
The single shoe brake on the NB wagon looks identical to Peter Drummond's single shoe brake on Highland Railway wagons (his predecessor David Jones used a different arrangement). I haven't checked yet but Dugald Drummond probably used the same arrangement on the Caledonian. Could almost be described as a Scottish standard design at the time. Even if it was only used on NB mineral wagons they had tens of thousands of wagons with the same brake operating in a relatively small area so no problem with supply of spare parts, and reducing the number of parts on each wagon would have saved money.
Mike W
Western Thunderer
Yet another private owner, this time a 1907 non-end door coal wagon, popular with local coal merchants. In the 1950s my father was researching Aylesbury LNWR and became good friends with Reg Devereux, a retired coal merchant. Reg was the son of H.Devereux & Son, and provided pictures of all his wagons, plus a great deal about the station. THis model has a one piece resin body and my usual fittings. The Gauge 3 community really are a kind and generous bunch: Don Crouch offered to make the body pattern from hand cut wooden sections, Richard Jones sponsored the cost of the professional mould and also gave me a set of transfers he had made for his own model. My father's original model of Devereux No.1 was given to the Princes Risborough MRC along with the model of Aylesbury, so for that reason this is one of my favourite models. I hope Dad would have liked it as much as I do. Will be nicer once it has weathered a bit.
Mike W
Western Thunderer
As an aside, I guess Devereux's wagons may be typical of other small coal merchants, so perhaps of interest. He started with two secondhand wagons from another local merchant who was retiring, and he numbered them 1 and 2, both having originally been built by Hunters of Rugby. When another local firm closed he bought a wagon from them too, which was another 7-plank but this time with an end door. The previous owner of that is believed to have been a timber merchant who had numbered it 11, so Devereux kept that number for convenience. FInally, with some sort of Government subsidy after WW2 he purchased a brand new 8-plank without an end door from Gloucesters, which he numbered 3.
So what seems at a glance to be a random selection of wagons numbering at least 11 vehicles, turns out to be actually very simple and there were only ever 4. I guess something similar must have happened with local merchants all over the country.
Mike
So what seems at a glance to be a random selection of wagons numbering at least 11 vehicles, turns out to be actually very simple and there were only ever 4. I guess something similar must have happened with local merchants all over the country.
Mike