Sunday, November 01, 2009

Guards van time again.

We don't seem to have had a guards van post for a while. It must be time for one again.
Today's job was to do the end railings. I used the jig I had cut out for the 47" van railings, as these were about the same size. The railings basically fell together. however by the 3rd one the MDF had got a bit wet with the soldering flux and had started to expand. The railings tend to look a bit like this when they come out of the jig, but after a bit of a filing cleanup, they are fine.

This also tests how good the soldering joints are, and any poor ones should be fixed at this point.
So, apart from the couplers (I'm waiting on some new castings with the headstock and coupler all as one piece) and some painting they are just waiting bogies.


With these ones basically finished I'll have to look round for some other vans to make. I intend to buy the 30' steel and 56' vans from Trackgang (supporting local industry and all that). I could consider making a 44' van (or possibly a 37' van , though they were a wee bit too modern), but after that I would have to start building 4 wheel vans. If anyone can show that the 4 wheeled vans survived into the 60's in the lower north island, I'll build one. I suppose the only other ones left would be the Fell vans.
(as an aside, if anyone has some 5mm OD brass tube could they send me a short bit so I can make some ploughs for the plough van. About 60mm should be OK)

2 comments:

sxytrain said...

How about a car/van?

Motorised Dandruff said...

Not at the moment because building the 'car' part of it is in the way too hard box.