Gallery of 'Pretty Things' - Wagons that I have built in the past.

Hi Jim,

Yes they were like horseboxes and special cattle boxes classed as Non Passenger Coaching stock (NPCS) and liveried accordingly. I have a four wheeled version built from a Connoisseur kit that I will be sharing at some point.

 

Thanks Paul,

I confess that I have a soft spot for milk vans, despite being a dyed in the wool LNER man I think that the Midland/LMS had the best NPCS livery of any of the railway companies. LNER coaching stock brown was quite drab in comparison.

 

Hi Gary,

Although some LMS cattle wagons were used from new as beer vans post WWII, the LNWR examples were as far as I know, built specifically as Beer Vans. I also have an LMS Beer van which will appear at some point as I work my way through them.

The lining on the milk van was done with a lining pen, the bow type (although I do have one of the tube type as well).

 

Today's is another of my early plastic kit builds. This one from Slaters their Midland 10 ton Covered Fruit Van. I have built a number of the Slater Midland vehicles and I have enjoyed them all.

 

Today we have more wagons built from Slaters kits these are Midland Railway Cattle wagons. I built three of them at the same time so I will post photos of them all in the same post to save duplication.

Again I made use of shredded sisal string to represent straw bedding. I not from the photos that all the buffer heads seem to have gone rusty I may have to revisit the bluing on them.

 

Sticking with the Slaters Midland theme, this is one of their 8 Ton vans. I have built a couple of these and looking in Bob Essery's Midland Wagons book I noted that a number of them had different roof hatches which I have replicated

 

This is the second of three 8 ton Midland vans that I built at the same time. The third one was a Fruit van which I sold some time ago.





Finally a shot of both of them together.



I also took another couple of photos of the first van which shows the open door latch that I modelled but wasn't very visible on the first pair of photos





Unlike the second van above which had plastic fittings this one had brass castings for the door locking mechanism so it was much easier to alter.

 

Hi Jim,

Although it doesn't look it the one with the sliding roof door does go back to expose a gap half of the roof width. I believe it was to allow the use of a crane to lift heavier items directly into the vans.

Pre the 1923 grouping, a lot of the railway companies covered vans had roof 'hatches'. I put hatches in inverted commas because although I have examples of Midland and London North Western Railway vehicles, with sliding roof hatches. I also have Lancashire and Yorkshire and North Eastern examples, where the roof hatch covers were made of canvas supported by slats stitched into the material.

I will confess that the one with the roof door on top is very much speculation based on a very poor photo in the Essery Midland wagons book. I just thought it would make my model a bit more unique than everyone else's that will have built the same kit.

 

I couldn't agree more, and if it's unusual or a one off for a specific purpose all the better. One of the reasons that I like modelling the LNER is that they built locos and rolling stock for specific purposes rather than pushing for 'standardisation' like the other companies.

For us as modellers, how well particular items of stock performed or were liked by railwaymen is irrelevant, I just love the options for variety that the LNER represents.

 

These photos are not recent as I no long possess the wagon but Jim's discussion of unusual items of rolling stock prompted me to dig out the photos that I have. This is another that I built from a photo and a description in Tatlows LNER Wagons volume 3

It's a Great North of Scotland Railway vacuum cleaner wagon used for vacuuming carriages. The photo showed it still in LNER Livery well into the 1950's What made me take notice is what looked like a liveried garden shed on the back of a wagon.

The wagon is scratchbuilt, using spare etches from other kits and coffee stirrers. The 'shed' is done using my Silhouette Cutter and the vacuum pipe and brooms are also scratch built the other tools are castings