7mm NER B1 open - the next project

Yeah, originally I thought there were only 2 pin racks per etch, which kind of restricted experimentation etc, but there were actually 4.
Drilling holes just wasn't accurate enough, so I switch over to grafting doner parts and it worked a treat.

The brake guard legs when folded up actually sit lower that the wheels, figure that one out! They will need cutting down then I can set up with the undercarriage - the last leg really!

 

Sows Ear - Silk Purse - Almost

Well the basic wagon is complete. Lots of cleaning up to do before it joins the paint shop queue.
Buffers and Coupling Hooks to be attached after painting because black buffers etc are easier painted before adding to a grey drag beam.
Quite a few lessons/techniques learned which will be applied to wagon no 2.

It does prove that with a bit of care an NER Days kit can be put together into a reasonable state. Rob's comments #21 above I completely agree with, this kit is 95% good with just a few simple omissions/mistakes. The 2 untouched etches I am going to put into the sales thread for a couple of weeks then onto EBay if there are no takers here.



I'm not sure what's next, but I am serious thinking of going back to the NER Days G1 loco disaster that's tucked away somewhere. It still annoys me that I cant get it fixed and sorted even with all its faults.

 

There is one final curiosity I forgot to mention. Steve Hoyle in the very brief notes discusses all the brake lever variations of this wagon and suggest using photos to accuracy for any given wagon. All good sense if your constructing a specific wagon, but if you look at the attached scan of the two sides, there is a soldering land just right of the half moon on the solebars, these are etched for a 2 righthand brake lever wagon and given that even at grouping over 90% of the NER wagon fleet didn't comply with RCH guidance of 2 righthand Morton cam brakes they limit the build options. I didn't think of the consequences when build this Morton duplex braked version until too late to remove one of them. Just another example of the muddled thinking when designing this wagon. One will be removed while the sides are "in the flat" for my next single righthand braked version.

 

Cleaning Annealed Nickel Silver

Has anyone got a neat solution for turning the lefthand into the righthand, other than scratch brushes and elbow grease?

Mossy