I managed to drill the brass lamps for a fixing pin yesterday and got them fitted, so I can declare this one completely finished.
A few more gratuitous shots because I am really pleased with how this has turned out. I really do need to get the OCT’s finished now.
Following on from my making of the replacement carriage lamps for the Brumm Carriage acouple of posts or so ago, I decided that I really couldn’t live with that bright yellow livery.
So, in between other jobs, I carefully took it to bits and resprayed all the bits to take off the ‘plasticy’/toy like look. This journey was helped by my sorting out the issues with two of my airbrushes and completely killing the third when the spray nozzle broke off as I was reassembling it after a thorough clean. I have kept the remaining parts as I am pretty sure that the needle and other bits will fit one of the others.
I originally wanted to finish it in a crimson lake colour but I didn’t have any paint to hand so I enlisted Chris’s assistance to mix some. Part way through that process she arrived at a lovely plum colour which I rather liked so we stuck with that.
I do still need to fit those replacement carriage lamps though…
Since dabbling with horse drawn vehicles I have been able to scratch an itch that I have had for a while. It started several years ago when I was talking to a gent while demoing at a show and he mentioned that he had some 1:43 scale horse drawn carriages. I was most surprised when at the next show I was demoing at he brought one along and offered it to me. Funds changed hands and I happily brought home this.
my intentions have always been to use it as a load for one of the open Carriage trucks that I have part built. What I didn’t notice until some time after bringing it home was that one of the carriage lamps was missing. I am not complaining because to be honest the lamps are a bit cheesy and do let down what is other wise not a bad model.
A discussion with a friend brought this to mind and I decided to have a go at doing something about it. I made a prototype to prove the concept but it was a bit on the big side so I made a couple more which are pretty much dead on for the size of the one that remains.
Not the best photo in the world but these things are pretty small.
After my recent adventures with horse drawn vehicles, I thought that I would have a go at drawing up a spoked wheel. The lack of availability of suitable wheels has been what has held me back in the past from doing more with horse drawn vehicles, which were so much a part of the railway scene in my chosen modelling era. Indeed my paternal grandfather was still delivering milk from his farm via horse and cart in the late 1950’s
The basic wheel and spokes took only a short time to draw up but it then took around an hour and a half to work out how to get the camber on the spokes. I deleted the ring of spokes multiple times before I got there.
I finally got it painted and ready for glazing. The roof was ‘canvassed’ using my old favourite, used lens cleaning tissue.
I plan to do the glazing with Glue n Glaze from Deluxe materials assuming it hasn’t gone off since I used it last.
Finally got it up on its wheels still a bit more in the way of details but it’s getting there.
Next I made up the underframe and shafts from Plastruct. The shafts I put in a collet in the lathe and then used a file to taper the end. Then once I had them both tapered the same I held them together and kept holding them in boiling water while applying pressure to get them to curve at the ends. Once happy I stuck them into holes in the ends of the under frame.
What will become housings for the harness rings were made by wrapping a 5mm wide strip of 10 thou around an off cut of the same plastruct rod that I made the shafts from and gluing the ends together leaving the piece removable. I held it in a small hand vice until dry. Once dry it was removed from the rod, trimmed to size and tested out on the shafts. At this point it still need to be drilled.
Then I moved back to the body and added beading from 0.8mm half round Plastruct strip following the photo rather than the drawing fr the placement of the strips.
Last but not least the seat, the wheels and the springs were the items that I mentioned that were salvaged from the Brumm model.
I have always fancied building a horse drawn vehicle or two mainly as wagon loads for several Open Carriage trucks that I have on the go. I was put onto the idea by a gent I spoe to at a show a few years ago who subsequently brought me a horse drawn carriage from a company named Brumm. Some of the Brumm carriages fetch crazy amounts of money but I found one that was being sold as scrap for not much more than postage and bought it to salvage the wheels from.
Although my photo is of a Great Northern Railway parcels van, the only drawing I have is for an LNWR example but they are broadly similar. I scaled the drawing on the basis of the wheel size that I planned to use (the Brumm Wheels are slightly bigger diameter than the LNWR drawing).
I drew out the body pieces in Inkscape and cut them out with the silhouette and got this basic body.
Please excuse the colouring of the photos as I had to adjust them to show the white against the white background…
