The Humble Van

One O9 wagon that has ducked the limelight is my very simple 4w van, built back in 2012 and never really used that much. At the time it was built I described it as a "quickie build using a spare Black Dog Mining under frame and some Parkside Dundas 4mm scale van doors. The pointed roof is just to be different!". The Black Dog chassis was swapped out for a Peco chassis and Black Dog chassis adaptor not long after being built, which actually had the effect of lowering the whole wagon down, as I omitted to leave the Peco weight above the chassis. As the N gauge axleboxes were largely hidden I did nothing about hiding them. 

Whilst creating the wagon fleet for the project I wanted to include the van but also wanted to add a little more height - it is to large 15" gauge dimensions so not as big as commercially available O9 vans. By popping out the Peco chassis I was able to reinstate the weight, and add a little extra above the chassis as well. Overall I have only added 1mm to the height but it does make a visual difference, of course the knock-on effect of this was to require a change to the coupler position. With the axle boxes now exposed I have repurposed what was left of some RCL Hudson boxes used on a previous Peco conversion.

Paintwork has been matched with the original and the whole van given a fresh coat of matt varnish - apart from the roof where I had created a pleasing worn metal finish in places that I wanted to preserve the gleam of! 

In other news the more recent of the 5ft wagons was running awfully on test and after investigation has had its fake Black Dog style axleboxes removed and replaced by Wizzard/51L HRC001 Highland Railway grease axlebox castings - I had made the previous joint between axlebox and chassis frame too solid to get the wheels in freely, the new ones are only fixed to chassis so can move to allow the wheels in/out. The new fittings were painted and weathered to match the existing paintwork.

The Chivers R&ER Theakston wagon has now received MicroTrains 1023 couplers which look a lot better balanced than the 1015s fitted originally. I opted to retain the 7mm Bemo wheelsets rather than replace with smaller Peco examples.

Colin