New livestock train on the L&TR

[Tigger]

Thought folks might be interested in the latest from the L&TR workshops.  As some of you know, the CME has been working on some Ninelines sheep wagons and cattle vans.  This shows their first trial run with Russell in charge.  All are mounted on Peco N Gauge underframes with Peco couplings for compatibility with the existing goods vehicles which are now nearly 30 years old.  The sheep wagons have 3/32" solid brass solebars for a bit of extra weight (they roll very nicely!) and the cattle vans will follow suit.  The vans were too narrow and too tall to look 'right' with the other L&TR vans, therefore I bought six so I could cut and splice the ends to widen them.  I made up a jig to the width of the existing stock and used that to size and splice the cattle van ends; mounting the vans on the Peco underframes neatly took care of the height discrepancy.  Their roofs are only temporary because obviously I now need to produce some wider ones!  I now have load of spare cattle van sides!!!

[rhobat bryn]

This is looking very nice, Tigger.  It's nice to see sheep wagons of the correct depth as well.  If you'll forgive my ignorance, what does L & T stand for and what is the brake van a model of?

[tedp]

Nice-looking train - good proportions compared to the rest of the stock as well. Now for a bit of weathering?

[Tigger]

Thanks both for your kind comments.  Now to reply in order:  L&TR is the Llanmynach & Tawel-Llety Railway.  Its website (kindly built from my raw materials by Andrew Hall) is at http://www.buccabury.co.uk/ltr/index.html and please take a glance if you've not seen it before.
The brakevan is freelance, dates from 1976 and was probably my first scratchbuilt piece of rolling stock.  It was based on something I'd seen on the Leighton Buzzard Railway and constructed from the same card that I was using for my buildings.  The roof is a laminate of eight sheets of paper.
Yes, Ted, once they've been painted they'll be lightly weathered to match the existing stock.  The sheep wagons will be Humbrol M27 dark grey to match the other open wagons and the cattle vans will be Humbrol HR142 brown to match the vans with M64 light grey roofs.  Weathering will be done by dry-brushing track colour and representing lime streaks from cleaning on the vans.  (As per this pair I built for Buccabury.)
Thanks for your comment about the proportions of the stock.  They might have been Welshpool vehicles when they were delivered but now they're most certainly L&TR vehicles!

[MickT]

I like the railcar on the overgrown branch line in the background........ ;D

Mick

[tedp]

Nice photo, very atmospheric. Railcar? Wot railcar? It's got rubber tyres! You see railcars everywhere, Mick!  ::)

[Tigger]

Thanks both!  I note the camera managed to focus nicely on the bus - the only bit in the whole photo I DIDN'T build!!!

[Tigger]

By way of illustration, here's what I did to the cattle van ends.  I first built a crude but effective jig from a piece of board and some Costa Coffee wooden stirrers, sized to match my existing goods vans.  Then I took the cattle van end mouldings, marked them using 2" engineer's square and cut them (the cut line was just inside the angle strut).  Each matched pair was then placed in the jig and the two components carefully filed in turn until they were a snug fit and the joint line was central.  Then without removing from the jig each pair was cemented with solvent and left to dry overnight.  This made a very solid final piece and the top was then filed to produce a smooth arc for the roof, which is only slightly shallower than my goods vans.  As it happens, the sheep wagons were the matching width to start with and I was delighted when I realised that all the bodies were a perfect fit on the Peco underframes.

[rhobat bryn]

L&TR is the Llanmynach & Tawel-Llety Railway.  Its website (kindly built from my raw materials by Andrew Hall) is at http://www.buccabury.co.uk/ltr/index.html and please take a glance if you've not seen it before.

Yes I have seen your website before and remember being impressed by the scale of the landscape you have achieved, in particular Cefn Glas; it looks very Welsh narrow gauge and captures the atmosphere superbly.

As a Welsh speaker, I'm intrigued by the name of the railway.  Llanmynach I understand though the 'm' would usually mutate to an 'f' after Llan.  You've probably seen a lot of Llanfairs around Wales in your travels.  Fair is a mutation of Mair meaning Mary.  However I haven't been able to work out the meaning of Tawel-Llety. Literally it means quiet accommodation but would usually be written Llety Tawel.  Is this the meaning you had in mind?

[invercloy]

Very timely as I've just bought two brake van kits to do exactly the same with that! The idea is to make it into an approximation of a van running on the North Borneo Railway which had a cleminson chassis and looked, to all intents and purposes, like the W&L one, but with balconies at both ends.

I will watch this with interest.

[JulienW]

<snipped>  I now have load of spare cattle van sides!!!

How dificult would it be to knock up some new ends from microstrip?  The Evergreen range from the US is very good material available in a range of sizes (including 40 thou square and 2 mm wide 'planks) if you wanted to go for the open style of the original W&L with the extra width (or a slight re-design rather than a direct copy - like a different angle to the uprights).  Some sort of jig may be useful - my suggestion would be to use a soft board (cork or sundela off cut), lay one of the 'finished' ends on it (dificult as I suspect they are all in wagons by now!) and push dressmaking pins in to make the jig for the styrene strip to go into.

Another alternative one could go with a 'solid' end, working on the principle that the L&TR converted a number of ordinary vans for cattle use by building slatted sides but left the ends (which would be easier to make from sheet styrene) or decided to reduce the drafts that the cattle were getting on the move on a later batch.

To cut down on the number of 'ends' needed you could combine 2 of the W&L sides to make a longer vehicle, possibly running on bogies rather than a 4 wheeler - though perhaps that my 'large colonial' side coming through as the result may look more like a US 3' gauge 'Stock Car' rather than something from a Welsh NG line (unless Calthrop had engineered the W&L!).

[tedp]

I think the solid end option would be my choice. Use some Evergreen planked sheet and micro strip, and add the bolt heads using blobs of white PVA glue.

[JulienW]

I've had another thought on this - use the left over bits of end.  If they were cut along the line of the upright (I know it is not vertical but...) and put into the balsawood 'jig' used to make the new ends shown in the photograph one could use microstrip (or even cut to size bits of styrene sheet) to 'fill the gap' with spaced planks.  This could work, but would probably need some rot of reinforcing peice behind each plank - an overlapping 10 thou strip the same width as the plank on the inside face perhaps?

[Graeme Dunbar]

I'll refrain from saying you could make some extra narrow wagons from the bits left over  ;D

If matching the planks with narrow strip is not possible, then it might be possible to add a solid strip and then fill in the gaps between the planks with some filler to make solid ends. This would retain the moulded iron strap and rivet detail. A bit of scribing to represent solid planks might disguise the filler and the solid strip.

[Tigger]

Cor!  Turn your back for 24 hours and there's loads of comments!!  Thanks all, I'm really pleased to see my efforts have generated so much traffic!

Firstly - those names!  When I was working out the place names way back in 1974 when I was 15 (ok STOP doing the math...) I had a very rudimentary idea of their meaning but I certainly had no knowledge of the correct Welsh syntax or grammar so the early names are all a bit suspect!  Barry-John Williams pointed that out years ago!  I've thought about changing or re-structuring the names but it's all so much a part of the character and history of the railway that I don't really want to.  I've also been in correspondence with another Welsh speaker who's given me a few excuses as to how I can retain what I've done!  So Llanmynach remains the 'monk's church' and Tawell-Llety stays as 'quiet lodging'.  Some of the later names are correct.

Secondly, Ted / Julien / Graeme, yes all those solutions are easily possible for new van ends  Perhaps I should have thought of that before I bought six!  When I've finished the present new build of four-wheeled stock I might build a bogie livestock van similar to the ones on Gairloch.