A Scratch built Brake Van (part 2)

Construction of the brake van holds no secrets. It's just a plasticard box placed on a Busch chassis. There are two types of chassis available to choose from, and I chose the longer one. Even so it's still too short to attempt an accurate scratch build without chopping the chassis up. I decided that just yet, I'm not up to that. Maybe when I get more experience working on other projects, perhaps I'll feel more confident. A cut up chassis would have to be perfectly square.

It did take a couple of false starts working on the mounting of the body to the chassis before I got the chassis width right and a system of tabs to hold the body in the right location.

Tabs on the underside of the body will locate the body in the
correct location on the chassis.

Once that was sorted the construction was simplicity itself. The size is nice. Being minimum gauge  the item is small, but being 4mm scale the detail is manageable. 

The model sits comfortably in the palm of my hand

Compared with the Gn15 version, proportions differ slightly

As construction progresses I find myself referring to the Gn15 model quite often, as well as the drawings in the Stand Hutton Light Railway book. The Gn15 version is tall and thin compared to the 00 6.5 version, that is because I didn't alter the width of the original Sidelines van kit. However, when I started the scratch build I stuck to the generous SHLR loading gauge of approximately three times the track gauge.

Small items of rolling stock can be trained to perch on your finger.

So far, so good then. Details to add to the model yet include some hand rails and a brake wheel. It's also very light so a little weight would be nice. but it does go through the one point on the layout without any problems. I really should have left the roof off to put some weight inside, but how much?  Would a neodymium magnet stuck to the underside of the van acting on the steel strip in the track serve the same purpose?
Keep an eye out for part three of the project.

A Scratch built Brake Van (part 1)

Over the past week or two, it seems like Busch HOn2 things have been on sale at US online retailers. Places like Walthers and Trainz.com for example. Some things as much as half price. So I had to take advantage didn't I?
One item I bought was the "Fahrwerke" or chassis as we English would call them. Two sets of underframes and wheels. I fancy having a go scratch building some items of rolling stock and this would be a perfect start point.

Some on sale goodies

I really want to build a Sand Hutton Light Railway Brake Van, as built by Robert Hudson Ltd. It's a great vehicle full of character. However a quick measure of the chassis proved that this wouldn't be possible without chopping up the chassis. I'm not ready to do that yet so that was a snag.
But not for long.
I remembered back to my Gn15 days when Sidelines bought out a box van. I snapped up a couple of them and converted one to be a brake van, inspired by the Sand Hutton vehicle.

Gn15 Brake Van.

I remember building this quite clearly. The whole process was a new thing to me. Cutting up parts, adding new bits. Everything worked together well and I came up with quite an interesting vehicle.
If I could do that in Gn15, then I'm sure I can do it in 00 6.5. Just take some measurements off the original model and scale them down. It's really only a box.
It can't be that difficult can it.

The shape of the land.

Quickly moving along, I've spent the week working on the landscape of this 20" square slice of England.  The layout is heavily inspired by images of the Sand Hutton Light Railway in Yorkshire. Though the line itself traverses gradients as much as 1 in 80, photographs of the line make it feel like the area is billiard table flat. I feel a small flat baseboard would look silly. As silly as a train would look traversing a mountain landscape baseboard of the same size. Delicate changes in the lie of the land are called for.
This was achieved by cutting and shaping some pieces of some pieces of expanded polystyrene foam. The roads were also added using a layer of cork.

Expanded polystyrene changes in elevation

 Next comes one of my favourite stages. The Snowscape stage. I cover pretty much the whole baseboard with lightweight spackle. It is, as the name suggests, light in weight. It doesn't shrink or crack and takes colour well. My Purespring Watercress layout lasted 13 years with the material as the base. So it's long lasting too.

It's been snowing!

As much as I love the snowscape stage, it never lasts long. For as soon as the spackle is dry it gets painted with Woodland Scenics Earth undercoat. Once that is down I feel like the layout is starting to take shape.

We have earth.

What next? Probably some ground cover. For in the natural scheme of things, the ground comes first then the roads and railways are placed into the scenery. So it should be in the model.

Perhaps, I might get distracted by some model buildings. The white rectangle in the corner. That's the floor of the tin tabernacle should I decide to put a fully detailed interior in there.

Who knows?

A quick update

As you know, this project has to sit on the back burner whilst I prepare Purespring Watercress for the National Narrow Gauge Railway convention here in Minnesota in September. That's not to say that things are idle on this project.

Far from it. I received some track recently and felt like messing around with it this morning to get some ideas for the models development. What follows are a few thoughts on what might well happen.

A late Birthday present

It was my birthday a couple of weeks ago, and much to my surprise, a late present just turned up from my wife. This book. The third edition of Ken Hartley and Paul Ingham's book on the Sand Hutton Light Railway.

Happy Birthday to me.

The first edition of the Ken Hartley book, published in 1962 by the NGRS still resides in my collection, a small thin paperback.
I also had a copy of the 2nd edition from 1982. A somewhat bigger book than the first. It got lost when I emigrated to the USA some 20 years ago. Both books are a far cry from this magnificent tome. Hard backed, and in full colour with superbly reproduced photographs, drawings, and maps. A treat to look at.
Though I call myself a fan of the work of Sir Arthur Heywood. It's very probably more the work of Sir Robert Walker and the Sand Hutton that has inspired my layouts.
There was one particular image in previous editions of the book of the freight terminus at Claxton that had a huge influence on a previous Gn15 layout of mine. I built a model of the goods shed based on the end view in this picture. The barn I used for my working crane feature appears in the background of this image.
Finally, the caption of the photograph says it all. "Claxton terminus, abutting on Whinny Lane". Just seeing that name in print makes me nostalgic for that old layout of mine. Much of that model was inspired by just that one picture.

That image is in this book, and reprinted with such clarity I feel like I'm looking at it for the first time. There are many inspirational images in this book. Pictures that are familiar to me from the first books and others that I have never seen before. There's one of a short train leaving the yard at Warthill station and crossing a road that just screams out. "Model me!"
It's going to be very difficult to resist some of these cries from the pictures, I can tell you.