Castle

Hi Mikkel, It's a great use of the technology isn't it? I have used fully 3D printed kits as per the Pollen Es from Hazelwood Models and now a part printed conversion kit as per the N34. I have no problem using the WSF for wagons as they are usually pretty far down the pecking order when it comes to both cleaning and repainting so it works for that. It needs a lot more work to use the same stuff for locos and coaches I suspect. Not impossible by any stretch of the imagination, just more work. Alan and I have conspired to get him to 81E - there was apparently much scanning... He had better not try to scan the RMWEB tour - I don't think my look is in any way authentic for anything other than "bloke in hat attempting to fix Castle Class locomotive No. 4079, suitable for GWR / BR(W) museum settings from the year 2000 onwards". I'm guessing there is a limited market for that kind of thing! All the best, Castle

Hi All, Thanks No46! Like I said, it's quite a good effect that comes out but probably a little heavy handed for the age of the wagon as depicted. Still, not bad for £20+ and a few evenings work... Hi Stephen, Thanks for the compliments. I have used FUD before as part of the build for the POLLEN Es as produced by the marvellous Noel and it would have been a better starting point but not for £40 for just a wagon body! All a learning curve at this stage though... Hopefully we can see you at Didcot sometime soon! Thanks to everyone who keeps pushing the like and other buttons and indeed for following my random jottings in this thread! All the best, Castle

Going Loco (Coal) Hi All, While it is great fun to build loco kits, it can get a bit overwhelming. I have quite a bit done and then decided to write a list of what was left to do on little No. 7202 and then wished I hadn't. It was quite long... So, what to do? Now wagon kits - they are like eating Pringles in two different ways. Once you start, you can't stop and they are small and snack size. A quick refreshing pause from the engine. But which one of the kit mountain to tackle? I wanted to do one that was unusual and whilst thumbing through my list, my eye rested on the N34 coal wagon. Now, I had no kit for this and I didn't think one existed so I went to GWR.co.uk and it's authoritative lists and this was confirmed. Feeling lucky though I went on the Internet and typed in GWR N34 loco coal wagon and a new option since my last search presented itself. A shop on Shapeways by the name of Stafford Road Model Works now offers body kits of several types of GWR wagons including the N28, N30 and - wait for it - N34 (Woo Hoo!) that is designed to clip to the Dapol 21t hopper wagon chassis. So, bypassing the existing kit mountain and working on the principle of buy it while you can see it as it might not be there in the future, my PayPal account received a work out. Actually, it's not too bad. The body was about £20 all in and Hattons provided an unpainted Dapol wagon was mine for £6 plus P&P. So, without paint and transfers (I already had those) it was about £28 for a custom wagon kit of a prototype unavailable elsewhere. Not bad at all... No. 63066 is the prototype for the model. It was built at Swindon to diagram N34 as part of lot No. 1480 in 1946. The steel bodied wagon for the conveyance of locomotive coal was a fairly common type on the GWR and when you think that large sheds such as Old Oak Common were consuming deliveries of around 3,000 tons of South Wales' finest a week at their peak, you can see why... At the turn of the century, the GWR management became concerned with the inefficiencies represented by the standard small private owner coal wagons and was keen to encourage the use of larger vehicles where possible. The figures make this clear. If a train was to carry 600 tons of coal, if we use wagons of 10 tons capacity, the train is made up of 60 wagons, is 1080' long and has a tare weight of 369 tons. If we load the same amount of coal into 20 ton capacity wagons, the train length is reduced to 30 wagons that are 735' long and have a tare weight of just 288 tons! This is a massive saving in all areas and make it easier to move, lower maintenance costs and take up less siding space. Funnily enough, the maths don't keep scaling up using GWR era technology. They did build some 40 ton bogie coal wagons under diagrams N1/11/14/15/17 between 1904 and 1910. The same 600 ton train only has 15 vehicles but is 690' long and weighs 280 tons tare. Not a huge saving on the previous effort and forty tons is a LOT of coal where as 20 tons is a more useful amount in some ways and allows a greater range of delivery sizes to be undertaken. In an effort to practice what it preached (to the largely deaf ears of the majority of private owner vehicles as it turned out!) the 20 ton loco coal wagon became a common sight on the GWR. There were several versions that had a number of arrangements of doors (end and side), body design and brakes. The N34 has two doors per side, no end doors, square corners to the body and Morton brakes. It has a 4 wheel under frame that has a 12' wheel base. Twenty tons was chosen as it was a reasonable and yet quite large capacity to expect a 4 wheel chassis to cope with. No. 63066 is (I think - please correct me if I'm wrong!) the sole surviving member of the N34 wagons. There is a similarly rare example of the earlier (1931) Dia. N27 version No. 83831 at the Severn Valley as part of the 813 Fund collection. Jim Champ's excellent introductory article on GWR Iron and Steel Bodied Loco Coal Wagons on Miss Prism's site is available for perusal here: http://www.gwr.org.uk/nondiags.html And to the model... The main constituent parts are laid out below. The chassis is still firmly attached to its hopper body, the new 3D printed body is ready for work and a transfer sheet has been liberated from the archives. The unpainted chassis is quite nice - there are a few small differences between this and the one for the N34 but once weathered... Lots of different ways of writing LOCO and COAL here! There is a bit of a discussion as to the correct colour for GWR loco coal wagons. Some say black, some say grey, some say wibble but that may be because they are mad (2pencils up your nose and underpants on your head). I saw a picture in the GWR wagon bible of a 1948 built N34 in BR black with BR(W) lettering so, despite it being unlikely that a 1946 built wagon would have been repainted into a 1948 livery, I went for that. It's a BR livery I wouldn't have otherwise... The 3D printed body had apparently been polished (!) and has a subtle texture on it. I figured that there were two options open to me here. 1 - spend hours and hours sanding it so it is absolutely smooth or 2 - accept it and incorporate it into my weathering. Because I am a lazy type we are going to have a go at option 2. I will let you fine people judge how good it looks. I was looking at getting the body done in the FUD material which would have been smoother but at £40 for a wagon body I figured that was a bit much! The only issue I can see with the body is that the door bang springs are in the wrong place. On the prototype, the hinge pins are in line with the straps and the door springs are in between them. The springs are perhaps the least successful part of the print bit are well done within the limitations of the technique. I shall be fiddling about with a bit of scrap brass etch here to make new ones. On to the conversion! Wheels out! Couplings off! Fake load thingy out and body off! The wagon weight is fixed in by the melting plastic until it can't fall out method. I don't know what you would do if you wanted to display the wagon empty? A little light destruction resulted in it coming away. First trial for is quite good. A little trim of the two plastic clips is needed to make it all go together seamlessly. Before I push it home, I decided to have a look at the prospects for fitting weight to it. Hmmmmmm - quite a large gap between the bottom of the body and the top of the chassis. I wonder... ...yes! The weight was designed to fit in here and without the hopper sections of its previous incarnations in the way, a great fit! Time to start hacking away at plastic now. The far more to scale instanter is fitted as shown above. The previous mount of the tension lock coupling is mostly cut away using the frames as a guide. I'm not happy with those buffers though. These ones from Lanarkshire Model Supplies are much better even if it's not 100% correct. There is less and less of the original wagon left at this rate! Click! And it fits! The coal load looks nothing like actual coal but it is a start. A couple of chunks of styrene down two of the sides makes it fit better. A little more weight helps the use of scale type couplings as it is less likely to roll away on you as you couple up so liquid Gravity was stuffed in where possible. A little work with some scrap etch and we have eight new door bang springs! Two coupling springs and two split pins to add after paint and we are good to go! Primer shows off that texture - could be good, could be bad... A spot of Rolling Stones lyrics and it was painted black! A dose of transfers, weathering and real coal sees it looking like this. The surface looks like pitted and rusty metal. Whether such a 'young' wagon as depicted would be this pitted is another matter but this is the nature of the material as it comes without fettling. It could be that if the wagon was being depicted much later in its life that this would be wholly appropriate. Still, it looks like a convincing effect to my eye at least and if I find I really can't live with it later on, it's a plain black livery and I have plenty of transfers left over! What do you think? As a small plug for a small manufacturer (usual disclaimer - just a satisfied customer and all), you can access their Shapeways shop on the link below for all manner of GWR and other goodies! https://www.shapeways.com/shops/stafford_road_model_works All in all, it's been a nice break from the much more demanding 72XX build and I have No. 6866 Morfa Grange to weather for a friend and No. 3822 to weather for me. I must get back to the kit, detailing and weathering mountain. It isn't going to sort itself out... All the best, Castle

Hi All, Chris beat me to it with the Dart Castlings kit suggestion! I will second that though, I have 3 of them, one used on a Comet Hawksworth kit, one use in its natural environment on an old Airfix version and another to be used on my etched version of No. 92! Usual disclaimer recommendation from me. Nice Modelling by the way! All the best, Castle

Hi John, That is a fantastic job - well done! The follow button has been pushed. I don't know how I haven't seen this up until tonight but it has been a very enjoyable read through none the less. All the best, Castle

Hi Steve, Just enjoyed catching up with this and realised I hadn't pushed that follow button. This has now been rectified! Fantastic work this - top job. It really looks like the pictures I had in my head of what it must have been like to experience this area in real life. All the best, Castle

Isn't it amazing that you concentrate so hard on what you are doing that you don't notice the obvious like that? We have all done it - I am world class at doing stuff like this... It takes the truly observant to realise too! I've just realised however that it stands for George Rex so there's the excuse... All the best, Castle

D'oh!

No worries! I wouldn't have liked to thought of you weathering it and THEN finding out! All the best, Castle

How very dare you! Just kidding. Mr Adder, A quick reminder. The other thing you have to do to get No. 6000 is to move the double red route code discs to below the number plate and add the B&O medallion replicas above it in their place. Sorry if this is teaching granny to suck eggs as it were! All the best, Castle

Hi Clearwarter, It sounds like it should be doesn't it? The list I have suggests that the 12 possibilities put forward by Collett himself (all ex broad gauge freight engines) for the 47XXs were Behemoth, Bellerophon, Champion, Dreadnought, Gladiator, Hercules, Mammoth, Plutarch, Romulus, Tantalus, Thunderer and Trafalgar All the best, Castle

Hi RJS1977, The only issue with doing that is that the motion actually comes up and over the frames and through the running plate just in front of the tanks on the GWR inside Stephenson valve gear. I guess you could add on a square bit at the top of the tank but how much more would that gain you? This is especially important when you thing about the sheer size of that boiler and the rate at which it would need to produce steam over the time period required to make those journeys through the Welsh valleys. They weren't going fast over fairly tortuous terrain. I think however that the 2-10-2 could very well have been the GWR's answer to the MR 0-10-0 Lickey Banker, a.k.a. Big Bertha. It would have done a sterling job doing that sort of work and from a purely geeky point of view, it would have been cool to see! The limits on water and coal capacity become null and void given this as a duty. Imagine a big electric headlight mounted on the front of that smokebox on Corbs' picture there. Then imagine being a guard on a big frieght train at night, minding your own business on the veranda of your TOAD and then that monster looms out of the darkness with that headlight blazing! Perhaps we can imagine a re-use of an old broad gauge name for the beast too? How about Cyclops?! That's enough imagineering from me for now. All the best, Castle

Don't worry Corbs - all GWR chat is welcome here! Interesting stuff this... All the best, Castle

Well, there you go - you learn something new every day (although I will bet that Mr K14 knew this already which is why I always ask him my livery questions...)! Cheers Mike! Smacks of VIP transportation of varying types doesn't it? All the best, Castle

Hi OTBL, You could try just shaping the square front edge round into the radiused edge of the earlier No. 5013 onwards version? A file would soon take care of that... As long as it doesn't have a mechanical lubricator on the running plate, the curved round the window cab handrail and / or a double chimney, you should be ok. Number it 5018 and you are good to go! All the best, Castle

Hi All, The Kings as far as anyone can tell were all unlined green in WWII but Ian Sixsmith's Book of the Castles says that both No. 5001 and No. 5018 went black. I've not seen that modelled and it's authentic! This is however a 'what if' type model and it will be interesting to see what it looks like... I suppose a WWII stretching into 1946 scenario could have resulted in this. Perhaps the final defeat of Nazi Germany is taking longer than expected due to the production of combat ready jet fighter aircraft like the ME 262 and Arado Blitz beginning earlier in the war and the bomber offensive and invasion of Europe after D-Day being much more difficult as a result? Enough alternative history! All the best, Castle

Hi All, The kits are made of plaster, not resin foolish Castle - double D'oh! Shows what I know about it... Oh well! All the best, Castle

Hi Horsetan, I see what you mean - it would fit. Whether it could go round the corners of its native Welsh habitats, without a flangless centre axle like the 9Fs or similar is questionable using standard GWR practice and components... The 72XXs and related GWR 8 coupled machines had thick flanges on the first two driving wheel sets and thin ones on the trailing pair. They also had a sort of spherical type rod bearings on the last rod joints and plenty of side to side clearance on the 72XXs trailing axle. The great thing about the way the GWR did it I suppose is that it was a fairly low cost but high return idea. It would have cost them a lot less than adding more driving wheels, rods and bearings, etc. but still gave the extended range. All the best, Castle

Hi All, That's the beastie Corbs! According to the diagram of the 2-10-2 design at the back of the GW 8 Coupled Heavy Freight Locomotives book it was projected to have the standard 7 boiler pressed to 250psi, 19" diameter Pistons with a 30" stroke and 4ft 7 1/2" driving wheels all which gives it a tractive effort of 41,465lbs! Quite an impressive design... All the best, Castle

Hi All, Terrifying I would have thought! It would be able to undertake any heavy freight duties up to and including shifting the moon a little closer to the Earth... It's the first generation of GWS members that thought to and then fought to preserve so much that have to be thanked there - I just get to play with and model them. I shouldn't worry about the Mob - they are basically a peaceful bunch unless you attempt to apply large wheels or too much shiny brass and copper to their engines. This is regarded as a little superfluous or showy to the heavy freight mentality. The story goes that many years ago, the heavy freight team had spent ages helping get a loco and the vintage train ready for a rail tour. On the day, there was an on train bar available. Relieved of their success and released of both their labours and responsibilities, a few beverages were consumed. Then, a lady who was apparently quite high born, got on the train and turned her nose up at the slightly tipsy brethren within and exclaimed to the society member who was accompanying her "Why on earth do you let a mob like that on this beautiful train?" Thankfully, the quick thinking guide retorted as politely as possible; "Without that 'mob' madam, this train wouldn't be here!". Thus a legend was born and the 'Mob' was henceforth christened for all time. I hope this raises a smile! All the best, Castle

Hi Bryan, Thanks for the kind words! No. 7202 is currently sat next to No. 4079 and it is longer than the Castle without her tender... All the best, Castle

Thanks Deano, There is something about a monster tank loco isn't there?! The 72XXs are the biggest in preservation in the UK so you can't physically see anything bigger of British extraction in the UK these days! All the best, Castle

Hi All, My Mighty Mikado Monster - Part 2 Having mocked up the pony truck and the rear truck arrangement using the white metal parts I figured it was a good idea to get the basic body done so I could start to look at clearances. The first bit here then was the running plate and the hanging bar. This is the type that has the handy assembly jig attached to it for keeping it all square and this made for really easy assembly. I then did a dry run on the tank sides and cab etchings. I had made the bends carefully after wrapping the ends round various appropriately sized round things and the had a go at putting it all together. It really did just 'click' into place and, apart from the bunker back, all held together very well. I then took a look at the cab floor and trimmed out a bit so that the motor and firebox LED would fit. I tinned the whole top surface as I knew I would be doing a cab interior so I figured that this would help later on and would be so easy if it was fixed in place. I then set upon the backhead casting and drilled the slot into it to let the light of the firebox out. I also thinned it slightly at the rear to allow for any clearance at a later date. For convenience, I tacked it to the floor for fitting and fettling purposes. This will remain as a removable section until the last possible moment as it means I can see through to the frames and see what is going on down there. Curiously, the real No. 7202 is also currently bereft of floor in the cab! So I now went to it with the soldering iron and started constructing all the big bits of brass for the top! I also attached the nuts that hold the body on while I could still get to them! I kept trying the cab floor to make sure it was still square and correct. A few delicate bends resulted in the bunker back looking ok too! Getting there! As they say on the news, and finally(!) the smokebox saddle and front driving wheel splashers were added. Fun fact for those that don't know: GWR locomotive boilers are only fixed to the frames at the smokebox end. The firebox end sits on slides which move along the top of the frames. It is prevented from moving off the frames at this end by the appropriately named holding down brackets (no, really!) which are bolted to the sides of the frames. This arrangement is needed of course because when a boiler gets hot, it expands. If it was fixed at both ends it would cause flexing which will cause stresses and subsequent leaks in the boiler. Despite being lubricated periodically, they can get stuck and sometimes the release suddenly with a loud bang which WILL make you jump, even though you know what it is. So now you know! Well, there you have it - after a bit of cleaning up (especially that nasty blob of solder on the splasher there!) we shall take a look at the basic boiler next and faced with rolling it, I feel a bit of cheating coming on... All the best, Castle

Hi Neil, Do you have a picture of the above model or a link to it please? EDIT: Just seen the link up the page there - d'oh! It looks very much like Didcot that does! It just begs the question as to whether you are happy with a resin model or you want to go further with plastic and so on? It shouldn't be difficult to extend the model as the whole building in reality is quite modular in nature. The only massive difference to 81E is the fact that Didcot got an extension to the offices at the front in the 1950s. I hope this helps! All the best, Castle

Hi Neil, Mark is indeed correct in that Didcot is a 4 road loans act shed, built in 1932. You are of course most welcome to join us on the RMWEB tour on 30th July if you want a look round all the parts not normally accessed. Sign up here if you can make it: http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/118580-the-2017-rmweb-members-didcot-tour/ You are also lucky in that drawings for this shed and all the ancillary buildings (including the now demolished ash shelter) in the book "An Historical Survey of Great Western Engine Sheds 1947" by E. T. Lyons published by OPC with the cooperation of the Great Western Society. It was published in 1972 and its SBN number is 902888 16 1. It's long out of print but not rare so not hard to get hold of. I hope this helps! All the best, Castle