7/ I am building the Gloucester wagon kit around its brass floor panel. I placed the wheels and their fourth bearing loosely into position and then tacked the second solebar into place underneath the floor. With this solebar truly opposite the first one, a tiny bit of endplay on the fixed axle, and the long side nicely perpendicular to the floor, I soldered the side solid onto the top of the floor.
I play things a bit fast and loose with this sort of soldering, i.e. run the iron a bit hotter than it probably should be. This gets lots of heat into the brass and the casting, the solder flows well, and the casting has enough mass to take the excess heat away without starting to melt. I am steadying the model with my fingers, so when the casting gets too hot to hold I stop for a while. The solder melts at 100 degrees C, and the bit is hot enough to melt 145 easily but probably not 188. This way I find there is hardly any cleaning up to do afterwards.
8/ This is my method of persuading the wagon to sit flat on track. The fourth bearing (front left) is pressed home with a cocktail stick to set the end float and then set in epoxy glue dropped in from the front of the axle box. The model stays on its side for ten minutes so the glue sets enough to stay put and is then hung upside down from its axles on a flat bit of metal. For me this is my try square resting on a suitably ramshackle support. After the glue has set enough to be "movable with difficulty", I use internal calipers to make sure the second axle is parallel to the first in the horizontal plane.
This is where I relax; the threshold where the build changes from the essentials to make a working model to casually adding the details. This model actually runs extremely well, probably because it is twice the weight of my brass and plastic ones.
9/ The ends have to drop into place from above and so the large flange (intended to sit below the floor) gets in the way. I cut a broad groove (12 inch hacksaw) to make sure the ends don’t foul the ends of the floor, and then cut off the flange.
10/ The ends fit well and the mitred corners fit perfectly on the inside, but there are joints to fill on the outside.
11/ I used 70 degree solder for the outside corners, mainly because I want to use it up and keep the 100 degree solder for other tasks. The kit instructions are particularly good at explaining how to do this.
12/ I struggled with one corner and after messing it up twice I tried to make the angle iron look like it has been hit by a crane. Quite whether this looks like "realism" or "shoddy modelling" will show up better after painting.
13/ The kit includes a brass etch for two coupling hooks. The hooks are only a single thickness, I doubled them up to make a better-looking hook for one end. The hook for the other end can follow later. The horse hooks (one each side) are from the brass wire supplied in the kit.
This completes the build using parts in the kit except for the brake gear and the coupling links, which I want to add later.
Everything here is from the kit, except for the wheels (Slater’s 7120) and their bearings. To give a short mid-build conclusion, the provision of a brass floor makes construction as straightforward as humanly possible. I have encountered (but not built) white metal wagon kits supplied with a styrene sheet floor, and if I ever wanted to build one of these I would begin by buying some brass sheet and cutting out a new floor.
I think the wagon is going to look at home with my other kit built models, including older kits like the Three Aitch van and more modern ones like the Slater's open. I want to add some details of my own, but I need to have a think about what these will be.
