Heywood Brake Van - The Roof

The roof of the Heywood brake van has been perhaps the most involved part of the project. The kit parts included only the main frame, I've no idea what was supplied with the kit originally for the main piece. The scrapbox revealed some 20 thou black styrene that I had already curved over a drinks can some time ago, and there was sufficient material to do the job twice, which turned out to be useful...

I had decided that the roof should be removable during the painting stages and as the frame piece really just balanced on the four pillars, I wanted some way of locating it at the final assembly stage. I opted to use some 3 x 1mm lengths of nickel silver etch fret attached to the inside of the pillars to achieve this, attached in place with superglue, 2mm on the pillar and 1mm above for the frame to locate to.

Corresponding strips of styrene on the inside edge of the roof locate it correctly fore and aft. The roof is the aforementioned styrene, which was glued to the frame with epoxy adhesive and clamped together until dry, helping to bring the material to the correct shape as it was a slightly tighter radius. When set it was trimmed to shape but the first attempt looked awful so it all came off for a fresh try with the remainder of the material. This was the result, and compared to the drawing that had kindly been provided by David John of 'Rhyd' fame, it looked wrong...

The drawing, and re-inspection of photos, revealed  that the roof frame should be wider than the sides of the vehicle, so I set about widening the roof. Had I not used the rest of the black styrene I might have started over again, but I set out to recover what was there. 40 x 60 thou styrene strips were added either side of the frame and once the glue was set they were sanded to be vertical with the vehicle sides. This reduction in width was sufficient to allow 15 x 30 thou strips to be added as extensions of the roof giving a neat overhang. The ends were treated to 15 x 20 thou strips to create a more consistent overhang once sanded gently back once the glue was dry. Milliput was used to fill all gaps and once sanded smooth the new roofline is shown below.

As an extra stage the roof has subsequently been sprayed with filler primer and smoothed out again to ensure there are no tell-tale marks for the joins. 

A good clean-up and the paintshop beckons!

Colin

Heywood Brake Van

I recently acquired a collection of Owen Ryder O9 whitemetal castings via the 7mm Narrow Gauge Association which included an almost complete set of parts for the Heywood Eaton Hall 4w brake van. The missing parts included the etched underframe and axlebox parts, the seat back and whatever was used to form the roof. 

The castings required a little fettling here and there but otherwise were not bad for something marked "1994". With the seat back made up from styrene, end rails formed from 0.7mm brass wire and holes drilled in the floor piece to accept them, the main parts are seen here ready to assemble.

But what of the running gear? I could have borrowed the etch from an un-opened Heywood wagon kit I have but that would just move the problem on. A bit of careful measurement found that an N gauge Peco 10ft wheelbase chassis would fit with a fair bit of of er, persuasion... It would need some suitable axleboxes and luckily I found some 3D prints a friend had kindly made me a few years ago for another project. They were modified to suit the Peco chassis and fixed in place with epoxy. There began a common thread in this build as I did the job twice as my original location of the parts was not quite straight. I then fixed the chassis into the cast floor and again, did this twice as things did not sit right first time. Once happy that the top of the floor was level I used Milliput to create supports for Greenwich couplers, filed flat once set. Drilling the holes turned out to be another do-it-twice job due to a useless drill bit...

As the alignment of the main body parts was not a perfect science, I decided that I would assemble the seat and both sides in one session, using slow-cure epoxy. Determined not to have to do this stage twice, I carefully checked alignment and conducted a dry run of the intended clamping operation. I really should have photographed this, it involved a set square, another square steel block and two large clamps, plus two spring clamps! The slow drying time of the adhesive allowed for minor adjustment and alignment checks and the outcome was a success.

There was a little excess adhesive but this was soon cleaned up ready for the next stages, which include the roof and deliberations on whether it should be fixed in place prior to painting. 

More soon... 

Colin

Remembering the Black Cat

It is one year since I wrote A Black Cat Crossed my Path, so on the anniversary of Mr Sooty's passing it seems appropriate to reveal something dedicated to his memory...

The nameplate is from Narrow Planet/Light Railway Stores and has been mounted in the fashion of 'Gwril' at Fairbourne, the spare plate is safely stored away.

Colin