The Restoration Chronicles - Squaring up

Time to illustrate the progress so far. The picture below shows the transverse spacer .bar that I've put in to hold apart the two sides, and one of the slivers of plastic strip that I've inserted between the lead flashing and the wagon side. There is one on the nearer side as well - it is obvious that the Daywat used for sticking the chairs to this lead also dragged in the body planks as well.


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In the background is an axle spacing jig from Bill Bedford. An excellent piece of kit, but not suitable for helping solve for problem that I found underneath this wagon. More later on that, and adjustments to both my thinking on this wagon, and rocking W-irons in general in my next post.

The Restoration Chronicles - Brute force and ignorance

Well, it's been a while... The combination of stupidly long hours at work and a couple of scheduled holidays mean that it's been far too long since I did any modelling. After a couple of days riding motorbikes around Cadwell Park in Lincolnshire, I now ache too much to do anything more than a bit of gentle modelling.

The brute force is the way that I finally decided to restore the wagon sides to near-straightness. I have decided that if I try and use heat or more solvents, then I just risk making things worse. So I have slid a knife blade down to separate the sides from the lead flashing that is inside the wagin and provides some weight. After this, I've gently eased the sides out with my fingers, and it seems to have worked. What I will do is put a couple of slivers of plastic card down into the newly created gaps to pack them out, and add a plastic cross-brace across the middle as well. Hopefully this will be sufficient to maintain things in a linear fashion.

And the ignorance? Well, I'm still ignorant about exactly what diagram of LNWR wagon this represents. More fundamentally, when on earth was a Permanent Way Department wagon doing on a Great Eastern branchline in the Herts/Essex borders?

So with that as a thought, and in order to avoid the side-warping effects of Daywat Poly on normal plastic mouldings, I've decided that I'm not going to try and replace the C&L chairs that were previously the load. There are a couple still firmly glued to the floor, but the rest have been levered off the lead flashing and thrown away.

There will be a couple of LNWR wagon sheets used to cover the weights, and the reason why it is traversing Essex? Well, it had a hot box and had to be diverted to the nearest repair shop, which happened to be on the GER. Simple!

The Restoration Chronicles - A pause for thought

Hmmm... Life is never easy, is it?

In my last post, I was thinking that the greatest hurdle to overcome in restoring the LNWR two plank wagon would be to restore the warped dropsides to some form of straightness. Wrong! I've actually made pretty good progress on that particular task, and they only need a final bit of tweaking (I can't decide whether by the use of solvent, or a carefully waved soldering iron) to get there.

The biggest problem has been to find out what the wagon actually is...

I know that it comes from the Ratio set of four permanent way wagons - I even have an unmade set of the same at home, sitting here next to me. The problem comes that the kit instructions are brief to the extent of not even including any prototype details. They give an LMS painting scheme from 1923 to 1947, and that's it!

I emailed Peco today, as they now seem to be the manufacturers of the Ratio range, and had the helpful response: "Thank you for your Email. Unfortunately we do not have any extra information other than the details supplied with these kits."

So a blank there. I have a copy of the excellent "LNWR Wagons Volume 1" but this only covers the main commercial types of wagon. I assume that the departmental and more esoteric stock was intended to be left for Volume 2. Nevertheless, Appendix 2 of Volume 1 gives me some clues.

There is a ballast wagon listed with a 16ft body (which the kit scales out at) under Diagram 62. However even the very useful LNWR website doesn't list this diagram.

So does anyone else know what the correct prototype for the Ratio kit actually is???

The Restoration Chronicles - LNWR 2-plank wagon

First on the workbench, and number 1 in my fleet of somewhat eclectically recorded list of vehicles is an LNWR two-plank permanent way wagon.

This was built from the Ratio four-pack of wagons which I believe is still available.

To fit in with the permanent way purpose of the wagon, it is part-loaded with some C&L chairs, doing the job of covering up the lead sheet with which it is weighted.

So, what needs restoring? Initially, the diagnosis is quite promising:

- all of the buffers have survived, and are still freely sprung. No work needed there.

- The single sided brake gear is intact. Looking at it end-on, the lever guard is angled in slightly at the bottom, and could do with correction. I suspect that is a construction error that I made when I originally built this. Something to correct though, if possible.

- The wagon is fitted with compensated w-irons – de rigueur at the time that it was built. However the rocking one could do with a little bit of tightening up to stop it being quite so floppy. I think that I can get away with better trackbuilding, and less suspension movement in future. I suspect that my earlier attempts were overly influenced by the words of Iain Rice and his preference for light railway quality permanent way.

- even the bump stops that exist to protect the brake gear from the weight of the wagon side as it swings down are intact. On both sides. Which raises an interesting question.

Even if the long-lost kit instructions explained it, would bump stops (and the corresponding bash-plates be found on the wagon side that doesn’t have brake gear that needs protecting? My guess would be that yes, it does, as the stops would also stop damage to the axleboxes by the side swinging into them.

I’ll have to look for a prototype photograph to make sure…

Things that definitely do need work include replacing a number of the chairs where they have fallen off over the years.

Also, and this is the biggest problem of all, an aerial view shows that where I have piled the chairs against the side of the wagon, and glued them in place, the solvent has made the wagon side bow in. This really does need straightening out to be convincing.

The issue of coupling standards also needs to be addressed. More on the coupling dilemma at a future date, but even though the Sprat & Winkles on this have survived, I need to consider if they are of the right dimension for the future.

Enough typing for now. Time to pick up a knife and start work…