D&S Models NER Diagram 67 Horsebox

Way back in summer 2010 I attended my first Gauge O Guild Show at Halifax. While there I picked up a couple of kits. One of them was a D&S North Eastern Railway Diagram 67 Horsebox. Now I confess that I have always had the thing about horseboxes so I was pleased to pick the kit up.

Although I bought it from a trader and the pack was still heat sealed, I discovered later that it must have been both an early kit and possibly packed on a Friday afternoon.

Fast forward 12 months to 2011 and I started to build it.

This was at the point where I discovered that there were no instructions in the packet. - remember my Friday afternoon comment.








I did have Volume 3 of Historic Carriage Drawings by Peter Tatlow which although it didn't have a photo of the diagram 67 Horsebox it did have a drawing which showed that the kit was missing castings or etches for the distinctive door dampers.

Mentioning the lack of instructions over on Western Thunder kindly brought me a pdf copy a snip of them is included below to show the door dampers that I referred to.



The instructions made it clear that they were castings rather than etches. I also noted and this is why I believe it was an earlier kit in the D&S range that although there were brakes in terms of shoes and hangers there were no representations for the yokes. I also have a D&S GNR horsebox kit and that does have yokes so perhaps Danny realised what was missing in later designs.

 

By the time that it was popped aside due to the missing parts I had got it to this stage.
















I also had a go at making up a door damper from scratch but I only ever made the one.

 

Thanks mate, that's appreciated.

In the intervening years I did manage to get them. Dan Pinnock kindly let me have the damper castings when I explained that they were missing while placing an order for the GNR horsebox and I bought set of cast brake yokes from Laurie Griffin but they were added to the box of bits and the horsebox sat there looking at me waiting patiently for it's day

 

It post date it slightly but finishing this was an easy win so it will be another shelf queen which is no longer staring at me.

Just Westinghouse and vac through pipes to add now before paint.

 

I am much the opposite, more comfortable with soldering metal than I am gluing things. Today's session have seen me make westinghouse and vac pipes and I have fitted some of my home made lamp irons to each end. It just needs a clean and the axlebox sticking on (I put of the gluing until the very end...)

 

Oh yes, it's one of the things that I love about railway modelling. There is something for a wide variety of skills and interests within one hobby from those who wish to open boxes and watch things whizz around to those who like building trackwork, signalling, rolling stock locos etc. by whatever medium they prefer. The most important thing is that none of it is wrong, it's a hobby after all.

I had a look through the instructions for the later NER Diag 196 horsebox earlier to check whether that had brake yokes. The etch doesn't but the instructions do... Further investigation revealed that Danny does (did?) a separate etch for the brake yokes. I wonder how many more of his kits it was designed to fit. - I have D&S kits for a CLC brake van and a GER special cattle box. The brake van definitely has no yokes. I haven't had a look at the cattle box yet.

The other question is whether Dan did the etch for the 7mm kits or just the 4mm ones. All the instructions are clearly from the 4mm kits with small footnotes for 7mm

 

Back in 2011 when I put the body together despite having scratch built a groom's seat I soldered the roof on. A couple of years ago I realised that I would never be able to properly paint the groom's compartment so I removed it again.

As can be seen from my earlier photos it was built before I started using lens tissue to represent canvas on roofs. I wanted to add it and the simplest way to do it was to remove all the roof vents, stick on the tissue and then re-add the vents. I left the two grab handles in place ad worked around them.





I am not sure whether it was because I had removed the roof after originally soldering it on but it no longer fitted as well as it did. In order to improve the fit I soldered a strip of quite thick nickel to the top of each end which filled up the slight gap that was there.



I then started thinking of how to refit the roof after painting. Initially I added a framework using my small vertical belt sander to quickly create the curves to match the roof profile with some angles to brace them apart at the correct distance. On one end I added a fold to hook under the strip on the top with the other end slipping inside the inner wall of the groom's compartment. It worked but it was not as tight a fit as I would have liked.


While conversing with another modeller who is also building a horsebox from a Gladiator kit I had an idea. It's not the clearest in the photo below but I soldered a curved length of 1.6mm rod to the underside of the roof tight enough so that it would snapp over the end strip and hold in position below it - think of a reversed percent sign %





That works a treat and is something I plan to develop for fixing other van roofs on going forwards.

 

Unlike most of the castings in the kit which are really good the Westinghouse and vacuum through pipes were not so good so having checked my stock and finding that I didn't have any cast ones to hand, I decided to make some. Once fitted and painted they should look the part.



They are made from 1.6mm brass rod, brass beading wire, some 2.2mm nickel rod drilled out to create the collars at each end of the wire bound section and some 10thou nickel sheet riveted and cut into strips with my guillotine.

The door dampers also need some way to retain them once the body is fitted to the chassis so again 10 thou nickel sheet riveted and cut into strips.


It needed a bit of experimentation with the rivet spacing because I needed the hollows at the back of the rivets to fit over half etched rivets already in place on the body side.

 

It's now ready for paint (actually I primed it last night and added the top coat this morning.

Buffers and couplings are just pushed into place for the photos and the axle boxes still need to be stuck on.

 

Not exactly but they do imitate the real thing which has seams and wrinkles...

 

Here we are with a coat of paint. I still need to paint the solebars and buffer beams brown but it's coming along.

 

I forgot to add a photo of the groom's seat... an attempt to replicate buttoned leather

 

Thanks Ian.