LMS 40t Brake Van

[Bigmet]

...I'm trying to get, just as something to play at, a loose shunted wagon to come to a stop nicely. Most of my wagons will roll off on their own accord on any sort of slope, but they come to a halt quite suddenly when stopping, whereas a loose shunted wagon takes quite some time to come to a stop (so to speak)...

Sadly kinetic energy doesn't scale linearly! I too would like an extended dead slow roll to a halt as on the prototype, but short of actually powering the wagon with a high grade drive...

[Richard08]

...I'm trying to get, just as something to play at, a loose shunted wagon to come to a stop nicely. Most of my wagons will roll off on their own accord on any sort of slope, but they come to a halt quite suddenly when stopping, whereas a loose shunted wagon takes quite some time to come to a stop (so to speak)...

Sadly kinetic energy doesn't scale linearly! I too would like an extended dead slow roll to a halt as on the prototype, but short of actually powering the wagon with a high grade drive...

There's quite a lot of kinetic energy in an O gauge brass/metal wagon! The idea works ok, but is it worth the effort is the question. Probably not from the loose shunting angle, but as I noted earlier, if I were wanting (more able really) to run full length trains it would be very much worth it, maybe even essential. I'll have to wait until I win the lottery to find out...

[Richard08]

So the ride height has been set and the roof populated, though not fixed for decoration and glazing purposes. I think I'll make some clips so the roof remains removable - not least as there is precious little to solder/glue to. The handrails I'm going to leave as they are simply because they would look wrong as per the photos, a spot of artistic licence. I'm wondering if there were loading gauge issues with the prototype that caused the handrails to be so tight to the body, the duckets are so small as to be useless (in fact in the diesel picture they are bricked up). The body is very wide (as in passenger vehicle wide). The under body steps should line up with the bogie steps so either the bogies need to go up (by attacking carriers) which would upset the ride height, or dropping the body step down which would require making longer legs. Some staring required here.

Timping aside, it's joining the queue for painting and decorating - the livery could not be simpler. An enjoyable kit, but not completely straightforward; the body side steps are probably going to need modding to match the bogey ones. The buffers required drilling out, depth and width, to within an inch of their lives to get the shanks in and then the springs cut in half so that the 'at rest' position was right. This left only a small amount of compression, but they are still sprung ok. The instructions suggest fixing the verandah floors to the tops of the tags that locate the sole bars, but this would make the floors way to low and the inner partition, by virtue of locating slots to the floor, would also be wrong. A couple of years ago I'd probably have struggled with it, but a bit of practice makes all the difference. So now it's TEA time...

[Richard08]

Finally the LMS van gets primed - it's taken a while to get the buffer height correct (well, that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it). All the recent batch of kits are now built and have decoration. Out of kits now (bar the emergency back-up one), waiting for the next kit to come back into stock at the end of the month.

'Ghost Riders In The Night' is stuck in my head... I've touched up the bit I missed.

[Phred]

Richard08 wrote:
'Ghost Riders In The Night' is stuck in my head...

Oh Gawd! Now it's stuck in my head. Thanks!

[Richard08]

Fibreglass pens are great - except I swear the dammed stuff breeds even after bath time... Out with the glass paper I guess, dammit.

[Richard08]

It turns out the peeling paint idea works well, but the thing ended looking like a cross between a chicken shed and a wagon that's been long abandoned at the local heritage railway. Useful ideas for future projects, but not really for a wagon still in revenue service. Taking advantage of the situation I messed about with other weathering ideas, mostly to see what happened. When I got bored it was time to blank the canvas - i.e a Nitromors bath. I always had in the back of my mind that any decorating disasters could be removed as being a big plus for brass/white metal construction, and so it turned out. Now I'm more prepared to try new things knowing I can correct them. Lots of fibreglass pen cleaning up though to get the awkward bits out, like between the 'planks'.

Nearly ready for bath time.

[Richard08]

Annnnnnnnnnd finally - right back to square one! Not yet dried enough to give it a mauling, but it's looking like the fibreglass has been expunged at last. Still, never mind, lessons learned and all that. I expect.

[Richard08]

Getting there. Still a couple of bits fibreglass got through...... sigh. Weathering camouflage commences. Some black, aforementioned weathering and decorate then fix the roof. Preferably after doing the glazing for the latter. When it was brass it positively loomed over the QM van, but now it's painted it's the QM doing the looming.

[Richard08]

And there she blows (except the glazing/fix roof). Livery is something of a dilemma. It seems the last of these (all three of them!) was scrapped in 1966, so I'm assuming early freight grey. The black/grey interface I've had to extrapolate from other LMS vans in BR days, but since there seems to be quite a variation it is perhaps speculative. Transfers would be easy, running number and '40 Tons' on black backgrounds, except for the possible "Copely Hill & Armley Branch Only" instruction which was almost completely obliterated on that last van (Source : the instructions), but didn't appear on the one and only BR era photo I could find (which has since been removed, dammit!). I think I'll go for an appropriate blank black background as leave it up to whoever (hopefully) buys it. I can't see this benefitting from weathering, so it's staying ex-works.

Ah, forgot about the verandah floors. Up till now I've painted such things dark earth (or something thereabouts), and then worked in some grey later to age it. For this I'm going to try Phoenix 'weathered wood' which I stumbled upon by accident and fancy trying to see what it looks like.

[Dad-1]

Hi Richard08,

Not certain I could bring myself to part with a model like that.
O.K I suppose I'm a hoarder and I can understand your space problem.

Geoff T.

[Richard08]

Hi Richard08,

Not certain I could bring myself to part with a model like that.
O.K I suppose I'm a hoarder and I can understand your space problem.

Geoff T.

Let's just say I wouldn't be heartbroken if it didn't sell