Ratio Pre-Printed Vans.

I have a liking for Ratio's pre-printed vans, especially those in fictional liveries. These are at least 20 years old, but unbuilt examples can sometimes be found on Ebay. They did a range based on their 12T vans, three of which I've built and are shown below.

The first is a Harvey's Bristol Cream van, based on Ratio's LMS ventilated van;

Harvey's Bristol Cream van

The next two are based on a GWR van, the first being in Huntsman's Ales livery;

Huntsman's Ales van

And the one that started me collecting these, a Badger Beer van;

Badger Beer van

Badger make some fine beers, Fursty Ferret being a favourite of mine, which is the reason that I wanted to build the Badger van. After building it I thought that it would be nice to track down the Huntsman's Ales van, and when I found one of those the Harvey's van came along. All were bought unbuilt. There is one more pre-decorated Ratio 12T van to be built, which again is in a fictional livery, this time BOCM. Ratio also did a range of printed iron minks, this time in prototypical (I think) liveries, GN, Ferrocrete and GWR improvised gunpowder van. There may be others as well.

I like building these, they really are a joy to put together and its nice to build something without worrying about prototypical accuracy. They are built purely for my diplay cabinet, however I have fitted Gibson EM wheelsets, Smiths couplings and MJT buffers so they could see layout use if I really wanted to irk the purists.

Paul.

A couple of Hudson books.

Yesterday I visited Chapel en le Frith exhibition, where the Moseley Railway Trust always have a stand selling, amongst other goodies, some very interesting books, albeit on quite obscure subjects. I like obscure so naturally I took a good look and made a couple of purchases.

The first was a 34 page book about Robert Hudson Ltd, the famous light railway supplier;

 It covers the history of Hudsons as well as giving an overview of their vast range of railway, and non-railway, products. Hudsons really deserves a bigger, more in depth, book but this brief look at the company is a nonetheless worthwhile addition to my library.

The second book is purely about Hudsons famous 'Rugga' V skip wagons;

It only covers the narrow gauge wagons, a shame as I have a couple of standard gauge Hudson tippers on the workbench at the moment. However, it covers all of the variations of these skips, from those intended purely for hand tramming to beefier wagons for heavy locomotive haulage, and plenty of illustrations show how and where they were used. There are notes on filling the wagons as well, for example mechanical loaders should have a bucket capacity of 1/3 of the wagon capacity otherwise a loading hopper should be used, usefull information for modellers. Scale drawings are included, as well as some quite complicated calculations for working out train length. Further volumes are in preparation on mine cars, trackwork and Granby cars (automatic unloading mining wagons).

Each book cost £7.50, which will either be a fair price for a limited production publication appealing to a small audience, or vastly overpriced, depending on your point of view. Proceeds from the 'Rugga' book will go towards restoring Moseley's Hudswell Clarke.

Robert Hudson Ltd, Alan J. Haigh, no ISBN number.
The Standard "Rugga"  Tipping Wagon from Robert Hudson Ltd, Phil Robinson, ISBN 0-9540878-8-7

Moseley Railway Trust

Paul.

RT Models Hudson Tipper - part 4.

The chassis' now have bufferbeams, solebars and axleboxes. The bufferbeams are built up from 3 main parts, as well as seperate drawplates and coupling hooks.

The first job was to bend up the main part of the 'beam, after punching out no less than 22 rivets;

Note that there are two sets of locating slots, to suit either the OO or EM/P4 frames. At this stage I fitted the drawplates and coupling hooks whilst I could still access the inside of the 'beam for soldering the coupling hooks from the inside.

The next step is to solder on the bottom plate, which has slots etched into it to allow the 'beams to be filled with liquid lead;

 

Note the half etched channel to help to locate the part centrally.

The top plate needs bending as this is also the plate that the tipper body rests on. Then it can be soldered in place, again there's a half etched locating channel;

 

I found it best to fold the smaller upper bend of the channel first.

Solebars next, and more rivets to punch out before bending it into a channel section, here shown soldered in place;

Onto the axleboxes. The instructions show the bearings being fitted though the axlebox etch from the outside and locating into the frames, however I found the bearings to be a little short so I soldered them into the frames from the inside, then fitted the axlebox etches in place over the protruding bearing;

 

The axleboxes themselves have to be folded flat with the fold line on the outside before they're ready for fitting.

Again all soldering done with a 25W Antex and 188 degree solder.

So far so good, but there's still lots more to add!

Paul.

RT Models Hudson Tipper - part 3.

Onto the chassis. Since starting this kit I've bought a second one, picked up from Robert (RT Models) himself at the recent Stafford exhibition. Having a second kit proved to be very usefull, as we shall see. The kit comes with two chassis, one spaced for OO and the other for EM/P4. The instructions suggest practising on the unwanted chassis, in my case the OO one as I model in EM, very good advice as some of the folds can be a little tricky.

The first job with the chassis is to form the angled tiebars that join the axleboxes. The first tiebar is easily formed using a Hold & Fold, firstly by forming a right angle, then by bending the angled part back on itself 180 degrees with the fold line on the outside;

However, forming the second tiebar on the opposite side proved rather more difficult, the chassis etching being narrower than my 5.5" Hold & Fold, preventing me from holding the chassis in the tool without crushing the finished tiebar;

After a bit of experimenting on the spare chassis I cut a 31mm wide strip of .060" plasticard to sit underneath the top plate of the Hold & Fold, protecting the already formed tiebar whilst I bent up the second (top plate left off for clarity);

By the time I came up with this idea I'd made a mess of one spare chassis, luckily I still had the other left to prove my idea on. I'm really glad that I bought a second kit! All of the photos show the EM chassis.

Once the tie bars are formed (I strengthened them with solder as I went along) the sides can be folded and the 'U' shaped centre spacer (two are provided, on for OO and the other for EM/P4) can be formed and soldered in place;

Note that the 'L' sectioned end braces have been left flat until now, the next job was to form the 'L' by holding the etch carefully in a pair of pliers, then bending the brace across the chassis and soldering it solid;

Obviously a lot of care is needed to prevent damaging the end brace, but then you do have a spare chassis to practice on!

All soldering done with my 25W Antex and 188 degree solder.

Paul.

RT Models Hudson Tipper - part 2.

The tipper body is now complete and ready for a coat of primer. To get it this far I've punched out 244 rivets and soldered no less than 24 seperate etched detail parts onto the body. All this results in a highly detailed body, the bar has been set high for any future RT Models etched wagon kits!

Here's a few images of the build;

In the pic. above you can see that the lower bodyside 'u' channel has been folded and soldered in place, followed by the base of the 'T' channel above it, the end strengthening strip (angled at the ends) and the base for pivot.

In the pic. below the end stops are being folded and soldered in place, note the half etched recess for positioning;

The pivot strip itself, getting the shape right was a bit of a pain, with a strengthening strip above;

Back to the side of the body, the middle strip of the 'T' section is now in place, and I'm soldering the narrow half-etched upper rivet strip in place, the ends will be bent around then soldered in place once I'm happy with the bodyside positioning. This strip is hardly noticable to be honest, but I'm glad that its there;

And a final view of the end,  note the 'T' section in the middle of the pivot;

All of the soldering done with my Antex XS25, Eileen's 188 degree solder and Eileen's Strong Flux. Everything fitted as it should into half-etched rebates with the minimum of fettling. And it wasn't as fiddly or as tricky as it looks!

The chassis next.

Paul.

Airfix Model World 'Scale Modelling Step By Step' Bookazine

I came across this in smiffs a couple of weeks ago, and I've been dipping into it ever since;

It's really aimed at the novice/returnee to plastic kit building but there's plenty in there to interest the more experienced, and anyway going back to basics once in a while can only be a good thing. I haven't built a tank or 'plane kit for at least twenty years, probably longer, but reading through this might just inspire me to have a go at armour modelling again. The chapters cover the basics from cutting parts of off the sprues, sorry 'runners', to painting and weathering. The later chapters on weathering are particulary interesting, us railway modellers could learn a lot from the military modelling crowd, adding realistic paint chips using an offcut of sponge for example. The use of various washes is covered, as is the use of hairspray for creating rust finishes! At the end we see some particulary fine examples of the kit builders art, perhaps too fine in a 'I could never build something as good as that way'.

A couple of odd facts taken from it - film director Peter Jackson has his own company Wingnut Wings specialising in WW1 aircraft, and during the Cold War the Czeck Republic viewed model making as a wholesome pursuit.

Paul.

RT Models Hudson Tipper - part 1.

This is an RT Models etched kit for a Hudson side tipping wagon, of a type used extensively in the mining and quarrying industries for conveying spoil. The kit is etched nickel silver and comes with whitemetal buffers and turned brass bearings, wheels can be supplied at extra cost. Instructions cover 6 sides of A4.

I'm going to go into my usual level of detail about this build, unless anyone seriously objects! I enjoy writing up my builds, and often refer back to entries when building similar kits.

References:
Industrial Wagons An Introduction, David Monk Steel, IRS.
Robert Hudson Ltd., Alan J. Haigh, Moseley Railway Trust.
Modelling Further Aspects of the Coal Industry, Rob Johnson, Book Law Publications. Excellent photo on page 50.
Industrial Steam In Action, Roger Siviter, Great Bear Publishing. Colour photos on pages 31 and 46.
Industrial Steam, Ian Allan (publisher). Good colour photo on page 55 of a Hudson wagon fitted with handwheel operated brakes.
RailModel Digest 6 - Tim Shackleton on building the long-unavailable Chilton Ironworks kit.

To start with here's a photo of the etch, note that it includes coupling hooks and draw plates, something which I feel that every kit should include;

Note that there's two chassis frames, one for OO and the other for EM and 18.83.

The first job was to punch out the rivets on the body, I did this whilst it was still attached to the etch, using a gravity tool (note to self - 18mm drop). It would help if kit designers would include some half-etched dimples on a spare section of etch for setting up the tool. High Level already do this.

Here's the body, one edge has been folded already;

And folded up and soldered together (188 degree solder);

 There's really nothing to say about folding the body up, apart from to say that the fit is excellent!

That's as far as I've got so far.

Paul.