Hornby AA15 Toad Brake Van

[coachmann]

I agree, it is a lot of work just to put in a guard sitting on a Toads stool...

[gwrrob]

Talking of guards and Martin Hill of Masterpiece does two painted ones FFP38 suitable for this model.

[The Johnster]

Solid. See pic in post:

http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/117254-Hornby-aa15-toad-brake-van/page-9&do=findComment&comment=2787497

 

Nowt stopping you cutting out the cabin floor and making up an interior on a false floor. Disadvantage to cutting out the cabin floor is you will loose two of the four body to floor locating tabs.

Even with the interior walls and roof painted white and in very bright light it's still very dingy inside and hard to make anything out.

 

Yeah, probably not worth the effort.  I was going to try to open the door or rear hatch for the tail lamp to give a view in there, but it's just not worth the effort or the chance of damaging the model.  Thanks for the info, though, Porcy.

[Adrock]

What is the colour of the BR grey version like in the flesh? It looks a bit too light on the pictures, but hard to tell as a true guide. Would be interested to know how they compare to Bachmann BR grey wagons.

 

Thanks.

[tomparryharry]

In my experience, grey seems to be the 'overall' colour. Weathering takes on several forms, and changes depending on what is the parent base. Wood, therefore, does lighten, but I'd suggest at a slower rate. Steel does 'fade out' to a lighter shade, but, as most know, picks up rust, and the evidence of rust. Some of the modellers on here do some fantastic examples of both wood or steel wagons, so a good look on here will give you what you feel is best. Remember that most carriage & wagon workshops use the same grade of grey paint, as it was delivered in 40 gallon drums, so the shade was fairly uniform. It's only years of service (and where it worked) that had an impact on how you see it. 

 

Remember, it could be sunny in Chester, but hacking it down in Barmouth!

 

 

Ian

[The Johnster]

I have both a Bachmann (recent) unfitted grey and the Hornby, and the grey of the Hornby is a lighter shade with, to my mind, a slightly blueish hue.  But the difference in not a big one, and after a light weathering of the Hornby to tone it down is smaller; I have since re-established it somewhat by more heavily weathering the Baccy van.  A lot of one's impressions of the old livery are based on subjective memory, and both versions look 'right' to me; in practice, different ways of fading and weathering and different lighting conditions could make vans originally painted the same colour look radically different in service, and the colour probably varied a little from batch to batch, but we are degenerating into an area where few confirmed objectively correct assertions can be made, and can easily become bogged down in a mire of uncertain subjectivity.  

 

My technique, if you can call it that, for weathering is to brush on a wash of fairly dilute acrylic paint of a suitable colour, a mess of various browns, greys, blacks, and muckiness, working it in to gaps and corners, and then wipe it off with a tissue; simple but effective enough for me.  It can be modulated easily to show heavy weathering or a lighter approach to tone down the 'new' of an rtr vehicle straight out of the box by the extent of the dilution and the diligence with which you wipe it off.  My weathering muck tends to have more matt black in it than many peoples', as I model the South Wales coal mining valleys and my coal trains, especially, need to look a bit darker than the usual brake block/ballast dust colour.  Coal was a dusty and messy thing, and even fresh out of the washery when it was less dusty got everywhere in the form of wet slurry, and a darker and less brown grey overall weathering is, IMHO, more suitable for wagons, locos, and brake vans involved in such traffic.

 

It is my view that a layout like mine based generally in the 1950s should show a fair proportion, about half I reckon, of wagons in fairly fresh livery; the 50s was when the program of wagon upgrading was in full swing and the new standard wagons were starting to have an impact.  So most of my freight stock in BR livery is not very heavily weathered, though I've gone to town on one or two, and anything in pre-nationalisation is as mucky as I can make it.  The same policy extends to locos and passenger stock with the proviso that passenger stock gets a wash of the body sides now and then.  Where I have gone to town in a major way, for fun, is on a Baccy Southern PMV, which makes the point by having the area around the number wiped a little cleaner and having clean patches in the windows where somebody's wiped them to see what's inside.  Only two freight vehicles are in 'fresh out of shops' condition, a conflat and a shock open, and these have white painted brake lever handles, so are not quite 'out of box' state!  Everything else is at least toned down.  

 

And I paint my tension lock couplings in a dark matt grey, as I reckon it camouflages them a bit.

Edited August 24, 2017 by The Johnster

[Miss Prism]

There are some colour pics of Toads in BR days in BR livery, and there is no doubt in my mind the grey used in BR days was considerably lighter than that used by the GWR.

[tomparryharry]

When Cathays C&W shops closed in the 1990's, a lot of paint got disposed by way of tender. We acquired a great deal of paint, which was described as 'pearl grey', and 'mid(medium) grey'. I have 2 gallons or so still in stock. As Ms Prism says, GWR grey is somewhat darker than BR freight grey. However, it has faded out over the 20-odd years since application.

 

Ian.

[coachmann]

There are some colour pics of Toads in BR days in BR livery, and there is no doubt in my mind the grey used in BR days was considerably lighter than that used by the GWR.

There was a considerable difference.  BR grey was at the white end of the spectrum while GWR grey was a the black end.  Preservation I know, but these two pictures give an idea of the difference....

 

Edited August 24, 2017 by coachmann

[hmrspaul]

I have both a Bachmann (recent) unfitted grey and the Hornby, and the grey of the Hornby is a lighter shade with, to my mind, a slightly blueish hue. 

BR early grey is very elusive (And the use of Battleship grey didn't help). But you are correct it should be a light colour with a blueish hue, there was blue in the mix required.

 

Paul

Edited August 24, 2017 by hmrspaul

[Quarryscapes]

The model grey is near as damn it identical to the grey of the plastic Cambrian kits are made from, if that helps. 

[The Johnster]

There seem to have been 2 versions of GWR freight grey, a darker one broadly used with the pre-WW2 large G W initials on vehicles, and a lighter one, which for all I know may have been the original colour diluted as an economy measure, used during and post WW2.  Some wagons built or repainted during/post WW 2 may have been turned out in the earlier darker grey.  BR unfitted wagon grey livery was much lighter again, and while BR workshops may have been supplied with the same colour in big drums, some steel mineral wagons were built by outside contractors and they may have used even lighter shades of grey. 

 

Coachmann's photos show the basic difference, and the GW toad is in the WW2 and post small initials livery, so the shade shown here may not be the darker pre-war one, although to my view it is.  Preservation liveries are not always the guide to accuracy they should perhaps be, as even if care has been taken by their owners to get them right, they are modified by modern (and better performing) primers and wood treatments.   All three shade of grey sort of overlapped as examples faded in service or were weathered to quite different colours.  But there were certainly 2 and possibly 3 different basic shades of grey applied to GWR wagons and vans, including toads, over a period between 1939 and following 1948 in the case of unfitted BR vehicles.

 

I have a Bachmann GWR 'Parto' vanfit in the small intitals wartime/post wartime livery, which I have weathered fairly heavily as the model is set in the 1950s and it is some time since it saw the inside of a paint shop, and it merges fairly closely with some of my more lightly weathered BR unfitted vans, enough to look a bit odd, (but quite correct as it is fitted and XP rated) when I marshall it in a parcels set.

 

There are probably not 50 Shades Of Grey; that is another subject entirely, and I wouldn't know anything about that sort of thing...

[The Johnster]

BR early grey is very elusive (And the use of Battleship grey didn't help. But you are correct it should be a light colour with a blueish hue, there was blue in the mix required.

 

Paul

I remember steel 16ton minerals in what I thought at the time were a dark battleship grey, similar to the one I was painting my Airfix battleships in at the time, and which I believe was the wartime RN colour for North Atlantic camouflage; modern naval vessels (by which I mean those of the 50s and 60s) seemed to be a much lighter shade!

 

As I say, there are several different shades and hues on my BR unfitted stock, and they all 'look right' to me!

Edited August 24, 2017 by The Johnster

[Siberian Snooper]

Battleship grey varies according to the deployment, lighter for the med and darker for the arctic. Sometimes the med shade had a touch of blue in it. The colour would change if it was painted by ships staff whilst away, depending on what was in the paint locker.

[Porcy Mane]

Grey gate again!

 

Does it really matter????

 

https://flic.kr/p/Wtk1DD

 

P

[hmrspaul]

Battleship grey varies according to the deployment, lighter for the med and darker for the arctic. Sometimes the med shade had a touch of blue in it. The colour would change if it was painted by ships staff whilst away, depending on what was in the paint locker.

Theres no proof that BR purchased naval grey paint, but it does seem likely as there was a very dark colour used early on - but not by manufacturers such as Chas Roberts - their production is very light. Porcy Mane is right, there is no right. I have published in the HMRS Journal a pair of photos at Lancing of steel double door minerals, both clearly ex shops and the grey couldn't be much more different - unfortunately a b/w photo and I don't have copyright. I don't think BR would have been too concerned which theatre the battleship grey came from.

 

Paul

Edited August 24, 2017 by hmrspaul

[Porcy Mane]

And as we're talking brake vans.

 

https://flic.kr/p/fyyCns

 

P

[Liam]

I can't see a Toad!

[Porcy Mane]

There's a "Toad E" right behind the pannier.  

[cctransuk]

Theres no proof that BR purchased naval grey paint, but it does seem likely as there was a very dark colour used early on - but not by manufacturers such as Chas Roberts - their production is very light. Porcy Mane is right, there is no right. I have published in the HMRS Journal a pair of photos at Lancing of steel double door minerals, both clearly ex shops and the grey couldn't be much more different - unfortunately a b/w photo and I don't have copyright. I don't think BR would have been too concerned which theatre the battleship grey came from.

 

Paul

 

.... and not just very dark grey.

 

A sightseeing boat trip in Plymouth Sound in the early 1960s was notable because I was struck, even at that tender age, by the fact that the warships anchored there were, to my youthful eye, painted exactly the same shade as Hornby Dublo non-fitted wagons; (and for that matter), BR non-fitted wagons; ie. a distinctly blueish / greenish sea grey.

 

That proves nothing - but then Phoenix early non-fitted BR wagon grey closely resembles - to my now-aged eyes - those same warships / Hornby Dublo wagons / BR wagons.

 

Regards,

John Isherwood.

[tomparryharry]

The next time I'm at the railway, I'll faithfully to make up a paint swatch from the authentic, BR stuff.

 

Ian

[David Bigcheeseplant]

I brought a Hornby toad not thinking they got to Aylesbury in the 1950/60 but then found the attached from  clip from a DVD showing one behind a J37.

 

It has the diaginal bracing to the sides so I am not sure if this is feasibe. Also I cant figure out the number but it is branded RU what ever that is.

[hmrspaul]

I brought a Hornby toad not thinking they got to Aylesbury in the 1950/60 but then found the attached from  clip from a DVD showing one behind a J37.

 

It has the diaginal bracing to the sides so I am not sure if this is feasibe. Also I cant figure out the number but it is branded RU what ever that is.

Restricted Use NOT IN COMMON USE

 

Paul

[Siberian Snooper]

Restricted Use, was because BR didn't like single ended brake vans.

[Porcy Mane]

I brought a Hornby toad not thinking they got to Aylesbury in the 1950/60 but then found the attached from  clip from a DVD showing one behind a J37.

 

 

Nice lamposts!