The longest inhabitant of my UFO box was inspired by an article published in the Railway Modeller 10 years ago this month - I only realised it was 10 years when I went looking for the article to show Amity from whence the inspiration came.
In the January 2001 RM, there was an article titled "Traffic for Tickling" by Mike Smith in which he outlined some ideas he had for a milk train for his freelance Light Railway. Mike was planning on using the L&Y inside framed van and Cambrian Railways milk and poultry van as his inspiration and, I assume, did the violence to the Peco 15' van which he proposed in the article to achieve same. I wasn't going to go that far, but the idea that I could do something to enable a train of Farish 4 wheelers to use the Peco Elsie system without having to do drastic things to the Farish chassis appealed and so an Idea was born.
My idea involved using bits and pieces from the left overs from kits and mounting the resulting body on a Peco brake van chassis - which gave me the running boards. In my case, I used the 10' version and a left over bit of roof from some Southern kit (Chivers I think - long since faded from memory what was used but the profile matches the Chivers CCT/PMV roof) and the filed down ends from the NGS Kit 18 D1646 van. The top of the ends was filed to match the roof profile. This was mounted on a spare floor, again from an NGS kit and the whole fitted to the proposed chassis. Then nothing happened. The plan was to use strip styrene to build up the slatted sides, load in some milk churns, fit the uncoupling arm and paint. However...
Scroll forward 10 years and my visit to Brisbane last week and finally the strip was purchased. I used the Evergreen range and for the 6 strips per side the 0.010" x 0.040" (code 102) was used. The doors were from the V-Groove range from the same supplier (code 2050) which was purchased to make open planked wagon bodies (more of which anon). The framing was done with the 0.010" x 0.030" (code 101). To show the locking bar some monofiliment from a Ratio signal kit was used.
The pictures below distort it a bit - still working out the new camera! I suspect this van (and the train which I have planned but have not started as such) will wind up behind something from the IoSR - like Thomas or Toby. The livery is Humbrol 64 for the roof, 71 for the cream and 127 for the blue. The paint is only a first coat so will be tidied up. I suspect I will use some yellow transfers for lettering and numbering - MMT575 seems like a good choice.
That's a strange coincidence. I finished making a copy of a milk van from that very same article just last month, but I went along with hacking up the peco van. I feel I could have done a better job of it, but most of the work was done back in 2001 before I'd had much practice and I don't really do much modelling as it is. Mine is here; http://acsstuff.webs.com/rollstock/milkvan.htm
ReplyDeleteI must say that your 10' version is very impressive. I'm going to have to have a go at making a similar one when I next get round to making something railway related again.
Keep up the good work.