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Manufactured by WEP Models 23 Wellington Court, Best Street, Cradley Heath, WARLEY B64 5PB. Tel: 01384 566059 (After 7pm). |
| Built by Raymond Walley © Raymond Walley - All rights reserved |
Contact me here.
THREE DOWN, 57 TO GO! My putative railway, which cannot be started until the alterations and improvements to the house we moved to in January are completed, will be based in about 1900 as a freight yard serving factories in Birmingham. This means I need lots and lots, of wagons and a very few vans.
Bill Parker, after much persuasion over several years, finally agreed to produce kits for these vehicles when I ordered 20 of each. Over a year later, my sixty kits arrived in August 2008. I shall build one of each before starting a batch building programme for, what will be, the remaining 57 wagons to add to the 20 four plank and 1 five plank already completed.
The kits are usually supplied in WEP's normal flat pack together with the invariably comprehensive instructions and background information plus buffers, grease axle boxes, couplings and wire. I elected for mine to be delivered sans buffers and flat packing so a package of 60 etches, and enough axle boxes arrived in a heavy package (that may have taxed our local postman) and I will collect the coupling links at Telford.
The etches are crisply done and the methodology follows closely that for the four and five plank wagons. They are not a difficult build at all but as usual, it is important to read through the instructions first, if only to plan where one is going to depart from the recommended way. These are pictures of the 1 and 3 plank etch sheets.
As
always, I bent up the all the relevant parts after pushing out the bolt heads
before starting construction. A good set of bending bars is essential since
some of the bends are only a millimetre or so wide. The job is made easier by
using a “scrawker” inside bend lines until a witness mark appears on the other
side. However, the etching process can create problems. The narrow fold over
for the tops of the sides on the 1 plank presented no problem but those for the
2 and 3 plank did, I think, because the etch line was perhaps too narrow. I was
reduced to completing the bend, bit by bit, using flat-nosed pliers. The
resulting line of little bumps however, once painted, will simply look like the
steel strip that was fitted to the tops of the sides has been battered about
somewhat. I now need to find a way to make the etched line wider, rather than
deeper.
The fold up bars on the axle guards for the 1 plank proved
awkward and, after the first one failed to bend up correctly, I decided to break
off each piece on its bend line and then
solder it on place. The ends need some
careful attention since they are a complex series of bends. I use a “Hold &
Fold” for all my bending, which makes the job easy. The shaped, wooden supports
on the ends are a fold-up too and can easily be fixed by bending the tabs from
behind, then filing them down to make sure they clear the end of the body when
fitted.
Next, I tackled the suspension units. Bill has dispensed
with bearings for plain holes in the unit and provides some spacing washers to
prevent side play. I personally do not like
edge
bearings and so opened out the holes and fitted standard brass bearings instead,
when the washers became superfluous. Here are all the major components for the
1 plank ready to be assembled.
The coupling hooks are designed to be sprung, a practice I
find totally bizarre. The sight of trains of wagons bouncing back and forth on
their couplings springs is risible when all that is required is robust
construction in the first place. Mine are always soldered in solid and I have
been experimenting with ways to do it.
One way is to leave the tails of the laminates for the hook
unsoldered. Once the head has been filed to shape, it is inserted in the slot,
legs bent out, and soldered to the inside of the end as in this picture.
Another way has been to solder some stiff wire through the tail and on to the back of the end, as in the next picture.
The
axle guard springs are laminated, neat, strong and accurate. Since I have, 240
spring
assemblies
to construct it made sense to make a jig, which was done by the simple expedient
of drilling two holes at appropriate centres in
the steel plate I use for the negative terminal of the RSU. (One 0.7mm and the other 0.5mm,
why so? The first hole was drilled 0.7mm because I was unsure about
drilling through steel plate with a fine drill bit; it went though like a hot
knife through butter so the other was drilled 0.5mm with similar ease. The
differences in size now give a little leeway when placing the parts.) Wire
(0.5mm) is inserted in
the holes and the laminates fed onto them, face down, with tiny blobs of solder
cream between them, prior to soldering up.
Aluminium hair clips came in useful for holding the sides
and ends in place for soldering. It is important that these parts be lined up
accurately. I soldered the centre spacer and then checked for square before
completing. The instructions suggest tinning the top
edges
and soldering the fold over on the sides. I have never found this necessary so
far. For the 2 & 3 plank, the door furniture should be added before fitting the
sides to the body. Offer up the sides and ensure the fold over covers the
inside face of the wall, if not, a large flat file over the spacers will sort
the problem. The 1 plank of course has no doors but the 2 & 3 planks do. The
top edges of the door panels are etched in on the 3, 4 & 5 plank wagons but have
been missed on the 2 plank so I used a sharp triangular file to file them in
after the sides were fixed.
Once
the two sides are fixed, the end can be lined up and fixed too. The buffer beam
for the 1 & 2 plank fits into recesses in the floor and these may need a stroke
with a file to remove the cusp and ensure a good fit.
The corner plates were fitted with body upside down pressed on the RSU base plate and held in place against a magnet and the tip of the probe. This ensures it is square with the tops of the sides and ends. Ensure that the plates are the right way up, there is "T" etched on the inside of each to indicate which way up it should be mounted.
The under frame is a simple fold-up and the grease axle boxes were soldered on using 179-degree solder cream on the cleaned brass and some flux on the cleaned-up back of the box. The grease box is held in place while the RSU probe was applied to the back of the axle guard. Provided a thin line of the cream is visible at the side of the box, one can watch for it to flash silver and cut the power instantly while blowing on the work. I find my fingers are excellent tools to gauge how hot the white metal is getting!!
Here is the almost complete model awaiting the correct buffers. Then it will be a trip to Ian Hopkin’s paint shop, but that will not happen until the other 57 are built. They will be painted in varying shades of red in exact pairs so that one can be loaded and the other empty.
A pleasant build, both the 1 & 2 planks each took me a couple of afternoons at most and I do not expect the 3 plank to exceed that (It did not). I now know how to organise the batch build later.
The 3 plank differs a little from the 1 and 2 plank. Its construction is far more akin to the 4 and 5 plank wagons. Whereas the 1 and 2 plank wagon bodies can be simply clipped to the chassis, the 3 plank needs be soldered. It differs also in that the sole bars are an edge solder, most unusual for a WEP kit. Beware, the instructions suggest that there are two folds in the solebars but there is only one. the whole thing is then soldered to the floor between the buffer beams. It is a tight fit and it is necessary to file the cusps off so as to get a truly straight line.
The door furniture fitted. The holes in some parts did line up well but it made difference to fitting some 5mm wire as door lock posts anyway.
To be continued.
Comment from Bill Parker at WEP on the draft for this article.
“Hi Raymond, Have read your build up and viewed your pictures, as usual a good job. I think that your comments are fair. Keep building and see you at Telford
Regards Bill”