Another one of the weathering bench – the NBR Avery Tool van from Dragon Models.

A session yesterday morning saw the last of the transfers on the Avery Tool van and some glazing installed – I used microscope slides for this – one slide cut in half did one side.

Lastly a not very successful attempt to show the glazing in place.

In between work on the fish truck the Avery tool van has been progressing through the paint shop.

The CCT has also had some paint too, but it isn’t quite as advanced due to one of the pipes dropping off and needing to be resoldered……..

I was away on holiday for most of October so the bench has been a bit quiet. It was my birthday while I was away and Chris bought me some wagon kits. This meant (and I am sure it wont come as any surprise to some) that when I got back instead of finishing the CCT I started one of the birthday wagons – This is another from Dragon models Celtic connection range (former Majestic models). in the form of an Avery Tool Van

I haven’t taken any photos until now as the construction was similar to the CCT. The one change that I have made is that I tried to make the roof removable using the same method as the CCT but I couldn’t get it to sit down properly and after trying re-rolling it a couple of times I gave up and soldered it on.

This is the state of play and I hope to have it on it’s wheels and pretty much finished with a fair wind tonight.

I had a small break from the CCT yesterday/this morning and did a bit more weathering on the Timber and Ore wagons. I then assembled them and took a few photos.

Still catching up on the week’s progress on various things another thing that I managed on Thursday evening before going out to start on the building was putting the transfers on the Gas Tank Wagon.

That’s another one ready for weathering – indeed it’s now weathered (last night’s endeavours!) but I need to have a look at it in daylight to see if am happy with it and to take some photos.

Stepping back to the Timber and Ore Wagons, I managed to get the transfers on them a bit at a time this week.

Next stop some weathering.

The thunder storms haven’t deterred me from getting the tank wagon primed, painted and varnished ready for it’s transfers. Thank heavens for an indoor vented spray booth.

I apologise for the quality of the photo, I carried it to my office in a cloth and it seems to have left some specks of lint on the tank sides that have caught the light in the photos but are not in visible to the naked eye in reality.

In hindsight perhaps I should have taken the photos while it had a flat matt finish……but you get the idea.

Yesterday saw the build of the gas tank wagon complete.

My clumsiness when fitting the finely cast horse hooks saw one of them break in half in my hand so I fabricated some more from scrap etch they don’t look as good as the cast ones but once under the paint and grime they will be almost unnoticeable.

I also made up some more vacuum pipes from 1mm brass rod bound with 28 gauge brass beading wire and some rings of scrap etch. this gives the advantage of being able to secure them firmly to the bottom of the wagon floor as well as making them a bit more robust when being handled.

The following are both sides and ends as they stand.

A complete lack of any energy this week (as opposed to lack of mojo) has meant that I didn’t do anything further on the tank wagon until last night. This is where I had to do the first major deviation from the instructions. In the photo below the slots that you see in the bottom of the solebars hold the W Irons. The problem being that the flanges at the top of them are not deep enough to touch the underside of the floor and as they are, they don’t sit flush with the back of the sole bars either. This means that if you were to solder them to the underside of the solebars then the thin strip on the inside would make them very prone to being bent out of position with very little to anchor them to.

How I got around this was to solder four strips of scrap etch to the back of the sole bar and then solder the W Iron flange to that giving a nice solid fixing. I also found that I needed to file to points of the axle ends in order to make the W Irons sit upright without bowing outwards. Once I had this sorted getting the other wheels on was straightforward. Lastly I added the brakes. Which unless I have missed something, just leaves the brake levers/guards, the ends of the cradles and the vacuum pipes before a good clean up.

The last couple of evenings have seen a bit more progress on the gas tank wagon (so has this afternoon but I haven’t taken pictures yet).

A busy week hasn’t allowed much time to progress this but I managed a little last night.

The solebar overlays went on like a dream.

The challenge came when I got to soldering the solebars to the underframe. The underframe has a broken half etched line to show where it’s located but getting it to solder in an upright position tested my ingenuity. In the end a piece of rectangular tube backed up with a strip of scrap etch under the lip brought it vertical so I placed it under one end while I tacked in and then repeated at the other end before completing the seam.

A quiet day at home resulted in my getting the timber wagons into primer – two colours no less. I have read a few posts about people using black primer for underframes so I gave it a go along with grey for the bodywork.

Then I made a start on the next one which is another Dragon kit. This one is the NBR/LNER ‘twin’ tank travelling gas wagon. I emphasise the twin because I have asked Chris Basten if he can supply another kit with an extra tank so that I can do a triple tanked version too.

This is another one that originated in the Majestic models stable and so far the tanks have made up very nicely. The only adjustment that I needed to make was on the outer tank wrapper which has two half etched edges to make a smooth seam. When I tried them the left too much of a gap between the wrapper and the cylinder so I cut of one of the half etches plus an extra 0.5mm this allowed for a much better fit and the slight overlap from the remaining half etched section is hidden under the tank.

What has come as a bit of a surprise based on the other former Majestic kits that I have built is that the bulk of it is etched (I had in my mind that the chassis was cast much like the 4mm SE Finecast versions that I built previously – perhaps that’s where the false idea came from….).

All the rivet strips are separate items giving a nicely reinforced appearance.