Zzzzzzz

This series is starting to become like Peter Ross' Wf articles in the journal a few years back. I feel like I might wake up one morning, put on a cardigan and a pair of thick rimmed glasses and start to make every guards van type ever made...

I mentioned in the last post in this series that I had filed down one of the sideframe tabs so that the wheels were parallel. Here's a picture of the bogie together. I probably filed about 1mm off the tab, so its not a lot of work.

The next step in our sorry saga is to make the bogies look correct again. The later bogie type for the 47' van I'm building is subtly different from the earlier type on the 1889 van. This type still has the strip across the top, but does not have the strip running right round the bottom. The outside lower braces just run from the top bar to the bottom corner of the axle guide.


I cut the top pieces to size and glued then on with 5 minute Araldite. I then cut the lower braces to size. I cut 8 plus 2 spares as my manual dexterity skills lead to long sessions searching for errant pieces on the floor and cutting extras saves a stack of time. For the first bogie I tined the brass microstrip and carefully/quickly soldered the lower braces into place(with the aid of some tweezers). Glue was then applied to the point where the brace touched the axle guide. This was a bit of a challenge to my skills and so I changed the method for the second bogie. The lower braces were glued in place to the axle guides and then soldered to the upper brace.

So, which method was best? Neither to be quite honest. The best method would be to do this before the bogies are actually assembled. A curse on my impetuosity. Maybe I'll learn for the next guards van. Where did I put that Cardy