Ready for the paintshop

Work on this slowed down as I went away for a couple of days at the New Year. A visit to the NRM at Shildon allowed me to see work on the A4 Dominion of Canada which is being cosmetically restored there to garter blue including both side skirts and the bell.

Since returning I have cracked on and finished the milk van ready for painting.

As I got to the final details I was looking at the cast whitemetal vacuum pipes and thinking that they would be quite vulnerable so I got some 1.5mm brass rod a few bits of scrap etch and some 24 gauge brass wire and made up these as replacements

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In terms of time spent I could probably have bought some cast lost wax ones cheaper but I did enjoy fiddling about with them and I am pleased with the result.

These are a few shots of the van with the remaining details added. As I did with the brake van I beefed up the brakes with scrap etch to make them a bit stronger.

 

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Midland Milk Van

Since finishing the Floor Cloth Wagon and still being on holiday I haven’t rested on my laurells. Next up on the workbench is another of last year’s Christmas gifts, a Connoisseur Diagram 416 Midland Milk Van.

For once Jim seems to have provided more in the way of details than is necessary for this diagram of van.

He provides torpedo vents for the roof and their positions but referring to Midlad Carriages an illustrated review by Jenkinson ad Essery reveals: “However, in 1904, the MR decided to fit many of its fruit and milk vans with torpedo ventilators to improve matters. We have no evidence that any of D416 were so treated”

The accompanying photo is the same photo that is included in Jim’s instructions along with the drawing. Jim also provides a more detailed approx 7mm scale drawing. Both of these drawings show long handles for one of each pair of doors and there are etched T handles provided for the left hand doors.

The photo however only shows ring type handles on the left hand doors and by good fortune I had some nice Griffin castings in stock for these.

I am not sure whether the safety chains would have been removed by LMS days but I like them so I have added them. I opened out the holes in some short handrail knobs and soldered the chain into them before adding the hooks and soldering them to the ends.

Jim’s Midland buffer castings are very nice but I don’t particularly like the way that he offers to spring them so I raided the spares box and came up with some turned heads and modified them into “normal” sprung buffers.

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This is where I got to just as the New Year chimed last night.





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