Slaters 20 ton Brake Van to Diagram 61

It must be what they call vapourware in IT circles...

 

Another day spent mostly drawing up the internals. I have now finished them apart from drawing up a stove and oven - more on that later.

I have moved all the drawings from their original files/layers to fit on to two drawings each with a single layer for cutting. The first will be cut from 10 thou styrene and the second 20 thou.





The plan was to cut them this morning but that's gone by the wayside after discovering that the pack of styrene sheet that I have with me only contains the stuff that is too thick to go through the cutter... I have lots of it in storage so I am not going to buy any more, I will just crack on with other things until I can go out again.

I did get the veranda end fitted last night though so the next job is to add the canvas to the roof.









You may be getting overloaded with photos showing minute levels of progress. This is because I am also taking the opportunity to play about with my new camera and it's ability to be remote controlled via wifi.

Finally for this post, a return the stove and oven discussion.

Slaters do a really nice cast pot bellied type stove which I have used in a few of my builds but it's to an LMS design (I think). The LNER stoves are completely different being flat planes - see the snip below.



While having an online discussion with a friend he mentioned that he had GA's for the LNER stove and oven should I have a desire to make one. He duly sent them over and now has come the time to at least draw one up. I will probably do it in Inkscape but it might even be the push needed to get me to learn to draw in 3D so that I could print a master for subsequent casting.

 

I will try to answer your questions in order.
The Handrails are part of a sprue of castings from Slaters. I am sure that they would sell them but you would have to buy the entire sprue. The other items on that particular sprue are footboard brackets. You would also need to buy four sprues per van because there is only one hand rail casting per sprue.

No problem about going off subject, I find it's always best to ask when it's in your mind or you forget.

The holes are, as you surmise for the foot board brackets. You can buy proper miniature rivets with heads of varying sizes from people like Scale Hardware or as you suggest put in stubs of brass rod. Another option that I use is brass dress makers pins. If you pop them in the mini drill you can quickly reduce the size of the heads to suit you application - particularly useful if you only have a few to replace.

 

Although progress is steady because I keep getting distracted with photography the BV is moving forward.

The roof now has canvas and the etched end plates have the rivets pressed out and ready to fit as is the other veranda but that won't be done until I make the door.





I did wonder if I would need to remove the rainstrips in order to get the canvas to sit down bt a bit of patient smoothing with a bit of spare plastic sprue saw it cover very nicely indeed.

 

Although I have made similar (not quite as nice, it has to be said in the past) these came with the kit. Slaters kit's do come with a nice level of detail these days. I have built quite a few 'old' kits from the Slaters range and then subsequently built the same kit from more recent times. Although I think that the plastic mouldings are crisper and have less flash because the moulds were not as worn when they were produced. A lot of the parts that were fiddly and very brittle on the older kits have been updated with either etched or cast brass parts.

It probably worth knowing too that Slaters will do brass castings from your own patterns.

You may recall my mentioning that I have etches for a NER W Class/LNER A6 Tank engine? They were produced by Nick Dunhill as a spin off from one of his commision builds and while he could source most of the required castings from Laurie Griffin et al. There were a few that he couldn't and he made patterns to have them cast. He enquired of both LG and Slaters and although LG was cheaper per sprue Slaters would cast more items per sprue than LG could so they worked out better value in the end. I got a set of these from Nick and very nice they are too.

 

While waiting for the glue to dry on the first pair of W Irons I was studying the GA's and noted that in the cain fastened to the roof is what is described as a "Running Rail with Hooks" So I thought what better to get me back into making the little details than this. I also noted that there are a couple of coat hooks too.





And finally one with the obligatory coin to give an idea of scale.

 

Thanks Mark, I am enjoying it too.

 

By good fortune the same box that yielded the LSWR brake van kits also had a set of Sans Pareil screw couplings which I will use on this build. Slaters like Parkside supply only 3 link couplings with the kits to keep the price down but they were fitted with screw couplings.

 

The temporary workbench has been dismantled again but before it went I did manage to get the brake van up on it's wheels and sitting nice nicely on a sheet of glass.



Since this photo was taken I have added the brake gear and some screw couplings.

 

Firstly my appologies for the crap photos's I haven't anywhere set up to take them at the minute so I had to do with poor lighting and try to make up for it with software but it isn't up to much.

I managed to get my hands on some styrene so the last couple of days while it has been raining I cleared a space and set up the cutter. First I cut the parts for the new door and the internal lockers/benches etc.

Sadly it didn't go without incident and on the very last cut it moved out of registration and scrapped them all. Undeterred I cut them again and they came out okay.

I glued the layers for the door together and laid them between two sheets of glass to dry and it was only when I was rubbing the edges down to remove the layering that I realised that I had a few layers too many - the completed door was a scale 4" thick. I must have been thinking I was building a bullion van or something...

So third time lucky as the saying goes we have the new door sorted. And after all that I forgot to take any photos of it.

While the door was drying I made up the lockers and from the drawing added hinges, and hasp and staple to each locker area. The drawing also says that the guard was to be issued one padlock, so only one of them has a padlock.

Scratch built interior fittings for Slaters LNER Brake Van by Rob Pulham, on Flickr

Having added the lining detail to the interior I set about making the Guard's vacuum gauge and the automatic van valve etc.



All made from styrene rod and tube of various sizes. I have just realised that I have missed of the guard's handle I will add that before final fitting.

Here are a few shots of things just resting in place.







Just ready for the stove when I finish drawing and cutting it...

 

Although I have been busy in the workshop all day I have been distracted by fitting buffers to a good number of part finished models. I did manage to get the door on the brake van hung though and it does open and close.









Finally a better shot of the internals than I managed last night.