Monthly Archives: January 2020

More of “Another Wagon”

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-This other wagon is a model of a Railway Clearing House (“RCH”) design from 1923, the model produced as I’ve previously said, by Mike Williams.

 

I have now put most of the underframe together, as this shows: the brake gear is on, and the springs, etc.

 

 

The details go together quite well, and although I have had a little more trouble than with more expensive kits, by the time this is done I think it will look fine, and it is only about 60% of the price!

For instance the brake gear,  instead of being made of individual components (as in more elaborate (and expensive) kits, is a single resin moulding.  The brakes on this moulding did not line up properly with the wheels so I had to saw the moulding in two, then fit it to the underframe.  It will look fine once painted, so this really isn’t a major problem.

 

I’ve now had a chance to put on the “primer”, and as this is black, it will do well as the final colour also, I’m hoping ….

This actually shows one of the ways in which this kit has been “a little more trouble”: given that there is no floor, there was nowhere to fix the brake safety straps to, so I had to add the strips of balsa wood which you can see.  Not a major problem either, of course.

Gauge 3 Woodbury wagon and another

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I’ve painted the wagon in undercoat and then a topcoat of what I thought would be a good representation of the Midland Wagon Grey, but it looks too light/pale to me.  The answer might be to put on the MR transfers (white) and then “weather” it to a darker colour.  I’m not sure.

Here it is, without the wheels or buffer heads.  The inside needs to be made a realistic wood finish also.

Meanwhile, I have started another wagon!  This time it is a Williams models “Flexi Kit”.  These are an “economical” type of model, which Mike Williams is a little hesitant to sell, actually – he thinks they are lacking the detail of other kits, and though less expensive are not (in his view) good value.  There is no internal detail, and no floor inside the wagon.  However for coal wagons (which this is a model of) filled with coal, these features would not be visible anyway.  So if I make a model load (with real coal incidentally), the lack of internal detail will become irrelevant!

The way it is constructed is very different, as you can see.  The first part is to put the “W-irons” (the bits holding the axleboxes) onto the underframe.

The underframe has NO detail, and this is added by glue-ing detail facings onto the frame – which you can see in the picture.  I think the resin mouldings of the facings must have shrunk when moulded – they are too short by a couple of millimetres.  Fortunately there are no details in the central portion, so I could simply put a cut into the facing and line up the detail (bolt-heads for the W-irons) and then fill in the central cut with Milliput filler, later.

The brake gear is much less complex to put together – it is a single resin moulding, seen here in the top of the picture.

Mike is correct in that it looks crude when first seen.  However with care I think the wagon can be made to look good.

 

It’s interesting to start the wagon from the bottom and work up, whilst my previous wagons I have built the bodywork first and added the W-irons, wheels and brake-gear later.  The details on the mouldings look OK, so with care I suspect a perfectly acceptable wagon will emerge.  

We will see.  Click on pics. to enlarge.