Mossys 3D Models

Another 3 hour session done, louvres easily sorted (thanks for the advice Rob) and the drovers door hinges done, these look a bit clunky so may well be redrawn. After a lot of thinking I have decided to use the K1 cattle doors locking mechanism for the K2, they are basically contemporaneous so likely to have similar mechanisms. As for running gear I am undecided Rob provided a drawing of the D189 special cattle of 1911, I could use that alternately I may use one of the under frames from Ian Sadlers brake van book which are much closer to the 1890 build date. I have realised I have missed off the drop light for the drovers door, but that's an easy fix. The last question on my current list is the two rectangular recesses at the drovers end. They look suspiciously like they should have passenger/npc vents like all the other NER stock, more thinking required.

Current state of play:

 

The K2 all looks a bit different now. Cattle door locking bars etc copied from the K1 cattle. outside frame strapping partially draw from the sketch the rest my assumptions. End detail assumed, everything else from here down will be intelligent guess work. I'm still not happy with the two recesses above the drovers cab and have standard vents drawn to drop into them if I decide to.

 

Chaldron Wagons

On a recent visit to Beamish I took a series of photos of the chaldron wagons in the pit yard and being a silly b^&*%£r thought I have never tried modelling a wagon from a photo, who needs parallax and all that good stuff, well me for one but I haven't got any so hit and hope here we go. I assume because they look like them 8 split spoke 3' 1" wheels and used that measure to scale everything, hmmm! Next time I try something like this I will be trying to get shots square on and definitely more measurements.

So I have got this far:



But I need 3 questions answering before I start on the more complex bits, a) Am I right assuming 3' 1" wheels cos if that wrong its a start again job, b) I couldn't see any form of springing so I assume the wheels simply sat in crude (wooden?) housings with some form of bearing to reduce friction and c) What height above the rail would the centre line of the dumb sit at, they must be lower than standard buffers because why else would the NER have hanging buffers to accommodate them?

Oh as well all this has also diverted me from finishing off the K2 Cattle wagon which I need to get back to.

 

Thanks Tom.

I have emailed you back.

Mossy

 

Tom Burnham has very kindly sent me an article on chaldron wagons, the one I was trying to draw from the Beamish photos is clearly a Londonderry chaldron, but there's quite a lot of info on the NER version along with a basic line diagram in the 1904 wagon register so I am suspending work on this version for now or as my ex American colleagues would say to any difficult question "put that in the parking lot" and am going to use all the new info to create the NER version which later was reclassified as a P1 coal hopper. With a bit of luck this may well lead on to P2 (a real hybrid 1/2 chaldron 1/2 wagon) and then the P3 coal hopper, (the first true coal hopper wagon) but they for much later.

What I also photoed at Beamish was a P7 Hopper (as in the Slater version) with end brakes, I will at some point draw up the brake gear and retro fit it to my built P7.

 

Jumping Ship for a change of course. I thought I would load up a couple of pictures of the Londonderry chaldron as it was before work suspended and a couple of pic's of the progress on the NER chaldron. Obviously neither is anywhere near finished so there may easily be bits that aren't quite right and the internal hoppers are totally made up.

Londonderry



NER Chaldron

 

Paul,

I wasn't there on an info gathering trip it was just a stop off on the way home from a short break in Northumberland with Wife Daughter and Grand-daughter. Our grand-daughter doesn't do well on long car trips, so a 2 hour max stay car break turned into 4 hours+ and the little one love the whole thing especially the trams and sweet shop! Also the chaldrons were in a "no touch part of the colliery yard", I had to ask on of the Beamish staff to measure the wheel for me, but yes a folding ruler would be a very sensible thing to stuff in the camera bag. As for a whole fleet of new wagons, life has moved on yet again, Tom Burham (an NERA member) has sent me 2 articles on chaldron wagons and NER coal wagons so I figure with a bit of artistic licence I can produce NER P1, P2, P3 and end braked P7 coal hoppers. P4 and P5 are available from pre grouping railways and side brake P7's from Slaters, though I have excellent drawing of all 3 should I decide to play. P6 - done and painted by Mr Pulham. Fancy having a genealogical tree of NER coal hoppers and the same of Ironstone hopper assuming I took on the S3 bogie version!

But all that can wait just looking and thinking without going near the back log of prints, I have currently in play S1 Ironstone hopper (just finished), S2 ironstone hopper (initial print done needs a bit of work and finishing off), S4 Iron Hopper (same state of play as S2), R3 Coke hopper (almost done), R5 Coke hopper (same state of play as S2), Snow Plough No7 ready to print (next on the list), and an NER Chaldron/P1 coal hopper (in Fusion). I have also just drawn two North Staff's milk vans for Andy Sollis but we are struggling to get a decent drawing of the axlebox. And all that is ignoring everything else drawn but not printed, frightening isn't it.

Mossy

 

Shouldn't they be Bill and Ben, Barney was part of the Flintstones wasn't he? If you learn any new tricks drawing the tender don't forget to pass them on.

I have just printed what I hope to be the final S2 hopper in a hideous blue colour (glad it was a freebie - buts another story) and have the R5 printing now. I may well set the S4 printing on the other printer. As for the chaldron, the piccie in #707 above is no more for a whole variety of reasons and a new one is growing like a phoenix from the ashes just not quite ready to be seen in public.

 

Well life moves on at a pace, when I reviewed where the chaldron was up to I realised there is only the brake gear to do so it's first unveiling. The internal hopper walls are made up, it was the only to avoid hitting the axles and bulky solebars.

 

Brake Gear done with a couple of queries. I feel the brake lever is a bit heavy and needs slimming down. The brake ratchet, hmmmm, looking at the drawing and photo in the article it's been drawn as and modelled as a piece of wire which doesn't make much sense, how do you lock down the brake? Also in the same article the Londonderry chaldron is drawn as and modelled as a conventional brake ratchet, so wire or nick the Londonderry ratchet - I'm as yet undecided. So it looks like this and is sat in the parking lot!



I fancy the P3 hopper next.

 

New Project more fiddling about.

While printing all sorts of bits to finish off the R3 Coke wagon, and S2 iron hopper I needed a new project so I decided to also print off a fresh set of components for the S4 hopper (figure that logic out). Anyway after a minor diversion I decided a P3 coal hooper would be next, all pretty straight forward and nothing I haven't done before, so what could I fiddle with. Tucked away on one of the page of an article Tom sent me is a working diagram of how the monkey tail mechanism works, hmm, yes it wouldn't seen seen but as Mr Pulham would say "I know it's there". Since the quarter body of the P3 is almost done let fiddling about commence. The small diagram doesn't have dimension, those are made up. The glaringly obvious thing is the hopper doors don't sit within the hopper but below it and that made the first bit easy.

The basic hopper structure with new hinges:



Add a hopper door with hinges, of note brass wire to link the 2 together and also the the hopper door extended outwards to meet the monkey tail. Door in blue.



Monkey Tail Latch:

The L shaped structure is the actual latch, the rectangular structure is its mounting block (again in blue). Upper most hole is the hinge between the two, the one lower down to its right is for a locking pin. The monkey tail seen on all the photos hangs down from the L piece. To empty the hopper the pin is removed and the monkey tail is either mechanically or manually pushed or pulled sideway and the door falls open. I though it might be difficult but after one false start it proved logical and simple. There's no reason why it cant be built with the door and the monkey latch open. Anyone one for a proper diorama with open doors when it's done? And before a gent from Dundee pipes up no I am not retro applying this to all the other hoppers have drawn!

 

Hi Tom

Thanks for the two photos they clear up a number of things nicely. The reason I drew it with the mounting inside and a longer latch was I interpreted the latch acting directly on the wooden floor and thought it needed a great contact are. Your second photo clearly shows it acting on a metal reinforcement i.e. needing a smaller contact area. As for the tail and latch being integral with each other, that was always the case, there's a hole running up the inside of the latch to take a metal tail. All up though I will redraw it in line with the two photos. Once again thanks for the help.

 

Latch and lock rebuilt in line with Tom's photos:

Latch moved inside mounting; metal strapping added to the underside of the hopper door; hole in the latch to take the monkey tail:

 

Andy

I try to save models a little and often, and because Fusion is so flaky when under load I also export at the same time, St Mossy - nope I lost all the changes from posting 717 because I left a sketch in edit mode which stops a recovery file being created and Windows did an automatic restart. More crucially I hadn't saved the model after developing the first version of the lock so lost quite a bit of work, luckily it was a very east recovery once you know what your doing. This little wagon is sat at V10 V7 with really just the brake gear to do. Happy days.

 

Having spent time playing with the hopper door mechanism, I have finished off the body and chassis:



The more you look at it it's just baby P4 hopper, or perhaps the P4 is a P3 on steroids. Dimensional correct, detail mainly taken from a drawing of a P4 along with some artistic license. Axlebox assemblies will be standard NER with type 1 axle boxes (should probably be even older) and standard 9ft brake gear.