"Voiding the Warranty" - Mol's experiments in 21mm gauge

[Horsetan]

2 hours ago, Mol_PMB said:

.... I wish IRM/AS would use finer scale wheel profiles ....

I think they have to cater for the surprising number of people who still use Code 100 track.

[Mol_PMB]

Well this weekend's progress on the H vans has been less than expected, partly owing to a day spent working in the garden and some time with friends.

But also a significant realisation that once I reassembled the first wagon, the wheelsets would be trapped, and therefore I needed to finally make a decision about wheel profiles and back-to-backs. That also required some tooling to be made. So I've done all those other activities and haven't yet made any progress on the H van itself.

I have decided to use 21mm gauge, 19.2mm (-0 +0.1) back-to-back, and mostly Alan Gibson EM gauge profile wheels which have a rim width of 2.3mm. This compares with the 2.8mm rim width of the IRM wheels. I had previously found that the IRM wheels in the Bulleid wagons could not be set to even 19.0mm back-to-back without the front faces rubbing on the back of the W-irons. With the thinner EM profile wheels, there's adequate space for a 19.2mm b-t-b and still good clearance to the W irons.

So, for the IRM wagons the process is to take the wheels off the axles, and replace them with EM wheels set to 19.2mm b-t-b. This has required me to make a little press tool adaptor so that I can push the axle quite firmly without pressing on the pinpoint. Also I have made a 19.2mm b-t-b gauge.

The stock of Markits(?) wheelsets I got from John with 28mm axles have an intermediate wheel rim width of about 2.6mm, and they fit OK in John's models with a 19.2mm b-t-b. The flanges are a little thicker than the EM gauge wheels so I'll have to check they're OK once I get some pointwork.

For other wagons such as Parkside kits, I have used the Alan Gibson axles as well as their wheels, and extended the axles by 2mm by cutting in the middle and sleeving with a 2mm ID brass tube.

Gibson wheels on IRM axles in IRM H van chassis:

 

The next step is to do a batch of these and secure them to the correct b-t-b with a dab of superglue, and then paint/weather them as a batch.

 

Whoever said that getting started in 21mm took a lot of extra effort was right! But I like a challenge.

 

[Mol_PMB]

I'm back from holiday and have decided to build a couple of wooden-bodied open wagons to provide variety in my rake of my Bullied corrugated opens. Many of the photos of trains at Fenit in the mid-1960s show a mixture of wooden and corrugated opens, like these images from Ernie and John Powell:

The starting point was a pair of the Pre-Grouping Railways kits representing the GNR 6-plank open, a 3D printed kit with etched detail parts and available here:

https://pregroupingrailways.com/product-category/irish-railways/

This was pretty much an Irish standard wagon design used by many of the Irish railways. However, there are various detail differences. 

• The kit represents the type with a wooden underframe, but some railways preferred a steel underframe, and this also had implications on the style of body strapping. I decided to build mine as wooden underframe variants.
• The kit provides 3D printed ribbed buffers but none of the prototype photos I found had them. However, there were several different buffer styles used by various railways.
• The kit also has grease-lubricated axleboxes but most wagons in service in the CIE era had oil axleboxes which are a different shape
• The arrangement of planks was very variable, within a consistent overall height. Some wagons had fewer, wider planks, and later repairs led to wagons with different numbers of planks on various parts of their body!

I decided to build one wagon as a former GSR (possibly GSWR) type with self-contained buffers, and the other as a former MGWR type with spindle buffers.

Here's the current progress on the pair, MGWR on the left and GSR on the right:

The kit comprises 3 main parts - body and two rocking axleguard assemblies (suitable for 28mm axles and 21mm gauge). On each wagon I fixed one axleguard assembly and used a wire pivot for the other to rock giving some compensation.

The appropriate type of buffers were fitted. Lanarkshire B011 castings for the GSR type, and Gibson 4967 turnings for the MGWR type. Etched coupling hooks were also fitted.

I filed the axleboxes to a rectangular shape to represent the oil-lubricated type, and added the cover plate fixing bolts with wire (only done on the GSR wagon so far). A bit of fine work with the Dremel and a scalpel has hollowed out one of the boxes to represent a missing cover (quite common in reality!)

I bent up some 1mm x 0.25mm nickel silver strip to represent the door bangers (only done on the GSR wagon so far).

The next step is to get the MGWR wagon up to the same stage as the GSR one, and then to add the brake gear to both. I also need to add mounts for Kadee couplings, and other minor details such as worksplates, label clips and perhaps a representations of the chains for the door securing pins.

 

Some photos of prototype examples, first the MGWR ones, known numbers are 694M and 850M, both of which survived until at least 1970 with 694M receiving a repaint and CIE roundel at its 1967 overhaul:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/53511304021

https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/53511736610

I plan to model 850M.

 

Now the GSR examples, known numbers are 11162, 11476, 11562, 11595, 11644, 11743, 11786, 11802.

Photos around 1960 show them with flying snails. 11162 and 11802 had been repainted in grey roundel livery in the late 1960s, while 11644 received a repaint in red-brown with roundel in 1970.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/53498764321

https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishswissernie/49428783072

https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/53508785409

https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/53511647714

https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishswissernie/49529164797

https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishswissernie/52392496910

https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/53570648608

Ernie's photo of 11562 is particularly nice and I plan to model this wagon:

 

I'm enjoying building these, and I may well buy another to build as an ex-GNR wagon in tatty GNR livery with CIE stencil.

Some of the GNR 6-plank wagons survived long enough to get repainted in CIE roundel livery such as 3541N seen here in 1970:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/53511304876

I might also buy one of the GNR 4-plank versions (available as a kit from the same manufacturer), which were also to be found at Fenit in the 1960s:

 

[David Holman]

Fine work and also like all the research. Anyone modelling wagons from this side of the water usually has a wealth of photos and other material to work with - even whole books on the subject. My experience has mostly been peering at the background of photos to try and identify details, so Ernie's archives are really important and the one of 11562 a real gem.

 Hadn't noticed the missing axle box cover before, but learned fairly early on not to get too precious about certain details and things like different buffers on opposite ends and different wheels on the same wagon seemed quite common!