Neil's workbench thread - wagon building

[NeilMac]

Thanks for the info on the ladders Brian, but I do have all the original fittings. These were either already separate in the box, or else they separated when I removed the body, so are available for refitting when the wagon is complete.

[NeilMac]

A little bit more progress on a few wagons.

Firstly I have added bolsters to the Red Arrows van. Did not take another photo, as it would not have been much different to the last one shown when the chassis was completed. This wagon is now almost ready to go, but must wait a delivery of bogies which I already have on order.

Two other wagons with progress



Firstly the Liliput van conversion. This now has the sides and floor attached. Also show are the ends which I have now cut down to the correct width. These are currently fractionally too wide as cut, which is good because I can sand them down to an exact fit.
The radius at the top of the ends still needs to be redone to match the curve of the narrower roof.



And this is the gunpowder van conversion, or should that be vans as this needed two bodies. Not a lot left of what I started with, and it took some time to get here because of the number of cuts needed, including removing the ends and the built in chassis.
Now I have it to this stage next will be to join the sides and assemble them with a floor. Hopefully from this stage that will not take too long.
Thinking ahead I am considering finishing this one in yellow with Blue Circle lettering, which will be well weathered.

[NeilMac]

Have been getting behind (again!) with photographing what is on my bench. Nearly caught up now, so here is some of the progress I have made



A little more on the steel van conversion. Here I have assembled the sides from the separate parts seen in a previous update. Fortunately these seem to have gone together OK, otherwise the whole project would have stalled here. Since taking the photo I have removed the narrow floor sections seen here, beacuse the were getting in the way, and added a 0.080" strip along the bottom ready for a floor. I have also started work on the ends.




Another wagon is the Chivers kit. From a previous post you may remember that I am using the Peco bogies for this rather than the Chivers ones. Here the bolsters are fitted. These are different to those I have built before. Prevoiusly I had used .060 x .250 strip. This was trick to use because .250 is the widest I could get, which makes it essential to get the 4mm hole dead cenral fore-aft otherwise it will be too close to edge for strength. Here I have just cut a wider strip from .060 sheet, which I have plenty of.




And finally, with the bogies fitted, a usable wagon. Now just needs weight, paint and vac. pipes to be fully complete.

[NeilMac]

To bring the second Hornby van conversion up to date



This was the last thing to do to get a running model, add my standard design of bolsters to the chassis. These bolsters were built whilst I still had stock of 0.250 strip, and it shows here how critical the drilling need to be to ensure the hole does not get too close to the side.




And here are the two Hornby conversions together. The Red Arrows van just needs a tidy up of the dark marks at the top of the sides. The Heinz one is due have the roof painted dark grey, or if not then some heavy weathering.

What I did discover putting these two on the track for their photo is how trick it is to rail them now I have take such pains to get the riding low to the track. Partly made worse by them being the widest wagon in my fleet.
Either way I need to ensure in future that my puterona is always to hand, and also any layout I build will need space to be able to use one - or even have one built in to the track plan.

I think this will be enough for conversions of this type of van. Even though they are really easy to do, and there are other liveries out there, I do not really want a complete roster of all the same kind of van.

[NeilMac]

Text redone in next post. I must have hit quote, not modify, when trying to tidy up my spellings..

[NeilMac]

Just a couple of quick updates




This is the LNER grain wagon conversion. As mentioned in an earlier post I had planned to reuse the roof on this model, due to all the hatch detail being already in place. I had been uncertain if this would work, not being sure if I could hold a ruler afainst the curved surface to get a clean straight cut. In the end it worked out easy, with roof upside down and the rule within the curve, and 3 cuts had the excess material removed from the edges.
One of the ends is also show just sat loosely in place. This still needs some trimming, and will get added T or L channel detail to match the rest of the wagon.




On the Lilliput van I have got the ends to the correct width. here they are just resting in place. Although there is still a clear need to radius the tops correctly for the cut down body this does show how the end will fit between the sides when it is assembled.

[Alan Feldon]

Neil have a look at the Hattons site . They do Dapol body spares ,and I have done conversions of the GWR fruit van that have come out well ,plenty of detail , might sought you .
Alan

[NeilMac]

Thanks Alan. I have actually already used several Dapol bodies, as they are such good value compare to buying r-t-r stock to cut up. On this thread I have conversions of the Dapol Grampus, 9 plank open and steel van. Separate to the stock in this thread I have also converted a fruit D which I left full length, although narrowed, to create an impressively large vehicle.

[NeilMac]

Just one update. Not the most exciting, but it is progress, and it will be the last I can make for a while. It is Christmas and my workroom - surely the correct term from the room where my workbench is located - has reverted to a double guest bedroom for the next two weeks.

I have got one or two things to look at over this time, and layout details to plan out, but with the shed not really feasible in this temperature there will be no messy construction taking place.



My solitary update is attaching the sides to the floor on the steel van.

[NeilMac]

After a long delay I finally got back to my workbench.

In the meantime, so as not to be completely unproductive, I had busied myself designing some models for 3D printing. Smaller than the wagons currently in this thread, these were HOn30 US wagons, but smaller than most US wagons. Think of something in the style of - for those that know them - Chivers On30 14' boxcars, but built in HO. All still on screen for now, so no photos to show. Still waiting a delivery of trucks so that I can measure the actual items to ensure that the chassis parts are sized correctly. However I do have ideas for numerous body styles, some being all 3D prints, others will be 3D printed chassis plus scratch built or kit/rtr conversion bodies.

The first actual workbench activity I did was to fit and attach the ends to the grain wagon conversion. Did not photograph this for now, because it look little different to how it did 4 posts up, where the ends were just loosely set in place

The next wagon I picked up to work on was not part of the stock for the shunting layout, as all the others so far in this thread have been, being too long to fit the standards for those.



This is a Dapol fruit D which is full length as bought, but narrowed. The other end of this wagon had already been completed, but that was done by trimming down the centre section I cut out to fill the gap. This was not easy due to the thickness of the plastic used. Here I decided to fill the gap with 1mm planked sheet, later backed with .030" plain sheet. Much easier to cut, and once painted there should be no clue that it was not part of the original body.
Tasks still to do here include sorting out the radius on the ends, and then adding a roof.


Something else that I dug out of storage, this is a Minitrix wagon that I had previously started converting to HOn30.



In US guise I had added a roofwalk and side ladders, but not done much more that seen here. The only task I have done so far is to remove all these.
In OO I will have the same task as I was expecting in HO, and that is coming up with a livery suggesting a load that is very dense, or else expenive enough to only ship small amounts, so as to justify the low height.

[NeilMac]

Picking this thread up after being quiet for some time. This covers the stock I am building for a shunting layout (which has got out of hand in that the layout needs 8 wagons to operate, but I have just started work on the 30th!), and also HOn30 rolling stock for another layout which will be seen in later updates.

The first wagon I have continued work on is a Chivers RC815.



All that remained to do to complete the body was to attach the second side and end. Whilst this went easily with the Chivers wooded open and wooden van kits this one fought back in that the floor was too wide to allow the side to fit. On closer inspection I think this was down to a groove in the side for the floor to fit it that was too narrow to allow this. A combination of both narrowing and thining the floor did in the end get it all to fit.




This show an experiment I have tried on this kit. On posts higher up this thread you can see several photos of the bolsters I make using 0.060" and 0.040" strip drilled 4mm, but here I have tried 3d prining the bolsters
NB: I previously explained why I was not using the Chivers bogies which would then not have needed these bolsters - this was not a criticism of these, but just a desire to keep the trucks and couplers in use consistent across all my wagons.

[NeilMac]

I was going to show the wagon above mounted on its bogies and able to run on the layout, although not fininshed, but I realised I had not got round to photographing it!

So for now I will show one of the wagons - or should that be cars - from the other series I am building.
These are HOn30 and, in readiness again for a shunting layout, will all be built to a length of 16'
Proportion wise this will put them similar to the Chivers On30 short cars, although they are actually 14' so slightly shorter.

These wagons will be partly scratch built or conversions of standard gauge rolling stock. However, in a new direction for me, some will have fully 3d printed bodies.

The first car I am showing is actually a combination of a conversion and 3d printing. This is being built in a similar style to a car that I built several years ago using an Atlas N gauge body, but in this case I am using an old Iberten body.

The first image is the N gauge wagon I started with.


Here is the body removed from the chassis and with all surplus parts removed. This included the side discharge shutes because I am planning the car to be centre discharge


Finally on its 3d printed chassis.
This probably does not show up too well, being as it is printed in black resin, although this will have no negative effect once the model is painted.
A bit more tidy up on the body is still needed, including either adding hand wheels to the side or else further trimming of the bosses around the holes where the removed detail parts were clipped in.

[NeilMac]

Picking this up again after a long quiet time. I am starting with the wagon bodies and kit parts that I bought from Narrow Gauge North this year.

I have started with a HOe wagon body bought as a body only. I am not sure who the manafacturer was, but I think it is a fairly common wagon.


The first problem for me was the door being open. That would be great to show a partial load inside, but for my needs I really wanted the doors closed.
Fortunately the one open door was not solidly attached, so was quite easy to pop it off and glue it back in closed position.


The next problem was that the model was designed for bogies that I do not have, as seen here


As I am planning to use my standard Peco bogies I cut out all traces of the original bolster to allow a wider version of my standard bolster to be fitted.


From here it should be simple to get the bolsters fitted and the bogies attached, leaving only a repaint, lettering and weathering to complete.

[JulienW]

I have started with a HOe wagon body bought as a body only. I am not sure who the manafacturer was, but I think it is a fairly common wagon.

I can't be certain but it looks to me like one of the Maquette / Meridian Pershing 'box cars' kits or prototypes that were supplied to the US army for use on the western front during WW1.

If it is then I'm fairly sure they were done to 4 mm scale (rather than 3.5 mm for H0e) - the French tend to use 009 for their modelling of WW1 narrow gauge as it's closer to the 'correct' gauge of 600mm whereas H0e scale up to 760mm or thereabouts (it's actually 783)...

[NeilMac]

I can't be certain but it looks to me like one of the Maquette / Meridian Pershing 'box cars' kits or prototypes that were supplied to the US army for use on the western front during WW1.

Thanks for that Julien.

The actual scale does not bother me as I was just selecting by size, although in truth it is still smaller than many of the vans I already have, but it is good to know the source of what I am starting with.