A Pair of NER Birdcage Brake Vans - Connoisseur Models Kits.

A couple of my shelf queens are a pair of Connoisseur NER Birdcage Brake vans which only need buffers and a few minor details to finish so I thought posting a thread on progress to date might kick me up the backside enough to get them completed.

One is to be pretty much a standard build, while the other has been modified to one of the versions that had side cotes (duckets) fitted.

These are the sides as assembled



The two ends with the steps fitted.









The last two are of the basic body of the standard build.

More to follow.

 

Hi Toto,
The holes are for the whitemetal end posts.

 

No, the doors are in the sides on these as Paul suggests, the ends just have windows.

 

This is the other one:





Can you spot the not so deliberate mistake on the photo above?





Starting to add the many handrails...

 

Thanks Chris, I think it was probably because everything including labour was so cheap back then that they didn't need to cut many corners. I think that why many of the pre grouping locos had 60 plus years of working lives some making it.

Nobody seems to have spotted the not so deliberate mistake - when I fitted the side cotes (kindly supplied by Jim McGeown from a scrap etch) the inner sides blotted out quite a bit of the rear windows that I had so patiently cut out. I had quite a bit of fun cutting them out and ended up taking the end back off end then re-fitting it to look like this.



A few more photos bring you up to date with progress so far.





I made a hasp and staple from scrap etch. - x 4 of course...





There are a few differences in how Jim suggests fitting the handrails and the prototype photos that I have in Ian Sadler's NER Brake van book. I followed the photos even though it was more difficult to drill through the cast end posts.

 

Another two even longer term inhabitants of the work bench from four years ago are two Connoisseur V1/3 Birdcage Brake vans. on a bit of a roll with the V4 I looked at the other two and found that the only things missing from them was buffers.

The reason that I hadn't finished them initially was because I had read On the late Raymond Walley's blog that he had replaced the solid buffers supplied with some sprung ones from NMRS. I subsequently bought some from the late Graham Jones at a show.

Fortunately despite not touching them or the V4 van since 2017 I knew exactly where the replacement buffers were so dug them out and soldered on the buffer shanks and then when I went to fit the heads/springs etc. I found that there wasn't any room for them or indeed access to get the nuts on and tightened.

It is possible to fit sprung buffers, but you need to plan for it and fit them much earlier in the build. In order for them to fit and be able to spring them you need to remove some of the base of the W Iron/spring casting prior to fitting it and adding the wheels brakes etc..

In the end I spent another half an hour removing them and fitting the solid buffers.

Here they are scrubbed up and awaiting paint.









Not wishing to waste a good scrubbing, we had a warm dry day here in North Yorkshire today so I popped out and squirted them and the V4 with etch primer.

 

Hi Brian,
This type of end post features on a few types of North Eastern railway rolling stock, the 20 ton wooden hopper wagons being another such example. I have in mind it was something to do with how they shunted them but I might have that wrong without looking it up.

 

Edited due to posting in the wrong topic DOH!

 

The paint shop has been busy and the brake vans are nearing completion at long last.










The roof is still unpainted canvas at this point