Isle of Man G series Van

It's a lovely day outside and I'm sure you'd rather be out there than reading this stuff, so just a quick post.

The Isle of Man G Van had been sprayed with Humbrol 64 (Pale Grey) paint. A couple of coats of white on the roof by hand doesn't give a perfect finish but I think this model is going to get some weathering in the future anyway when there is a railway layout to run it on. I've always wondered why railway companies went for white, surely it's the one colour that isn't going to survive unscathed when living with steam trains for very long ?

Finally the strapping was picked out in black. This is the reason I used No.64 rather than just primer. You can keep the paint you don't use for touching up dodgy detail painting later and be confident it will match exactly.

Actually, this wasn't the last job. I had to paint the number on the side. Manx van numbering style varied a heck of a lot and while I could use transfers, it doesn't seem to be worth the effort. I'm quite pleased with the results too. While I wouldn't hand number a loco (not enough skill, by a long way) I don't mind wagons. It seems a bit more natural to do it. That and a coat of dirt hides a multitude of sins.

A decision still to be made is the type of coupling I should use. If anyone wants to make any suggestions in light of their own experience with 4mm scale narrow gauge model railways, please comment away.

G van chassis

If I have to chose between rolling stock that looks good or works properly, I go for the later every time. Visitors to exhibitions will hardly notice minor foibles such as wobbly handrails or other errors that exercise those on model railway forums, in the context of a completed layout. What they do spot is the things falling off the track all the time.

I can't say for certain that the Manx G Van would have had running problems, I just felt that the way things were going there was a pretty good chance. So I broke the whitmetal bits away from each other and looked for a plan B.

In this case a separate chassis seemed in order. This isn't sophisticated, just a rectangle of plasticard with the axlebox casting stuck to it. With the wheels in and rotating freely and solebar was made from very thin plastic. A little thinning of the body casting allowed this lot to drop into place. The floor makes the model ride about 1mm too high but I can live with that. In fact it's less of a problem than you'd think as with all the bits fixed and dried, I thinned this down by rubbing it on a sanding block.

The brake gear is straight out of the kit. The lever needed to be shortened a bit but a quick snip with the wire cutters sorted this.

Anyway, all the wheels touch the ground and it runs along the modelling board nicely. If I find a bit of 12mm gauge track I'll give it a proper test.

Manx G Van

Opening the box on the Branchlines kit for the Isle of Man railways G Van everything looks very promising.

The main component is a very nicely moulded resin body. It's a cracker with lovely modeling and not a hint of distortion. Since the kit has been "maturing" for at least 3 years this is really good news as it shows the material to be very stable. Some of my own efforts in this direction have become static models after a similar length of time !

According to the instructions, the builder just sticks the solebars to the body and then adds the axle boxes. Well, I stared at the instructions for ages. Then I tried a dry-run and it sort of located against the thin lip of resin showing behind the whitemetal solebar.

Nothing ventured, I opened up the superglue and got stuck in. The results were underwhelming. Keeping the solebar straight was tricky and I'm not sure I managed it to a high enough level of precision, not helped by the moulded bolt heads conflicting with some of the bodyside bits that extend below the floor. The location of the axlebox wasn't marvelous either and it definitely didn't feel secure no matter how much glue was involved. The presence of feet that should sit on a floor, but no sign of a floor or anywhere to fit it didn't inspire confidence either.

Finally, some rough tests seemed to show that if I put an axlebox on the other side of the van, the gap left between the bearing cups would be less than that required to fit the axle. I needed another plan.