Roxey Mouldings ICI hopper part 1 - intro and references.

I'm about to start work on a couple of Roxey Moulding etched brass 'John Summers' bogie hopper wagons.

The kit comprises of two sheets of .012" etched brass, suitable wheels and, cast bogie sides, vacuum cylinders and buffers. Instructions run to 8 sides of A4, three of which are exploded diagrams and one side is used as a parts list. Here's the etches;

 

And the castings;

I'm building one wagon to EM, for myself, and the other to OO for Jon, who I've built one of these for before. This is not an easy kit, there are quite a few parts that need modifying, mainly because the hopper floor is too wide. This means that the hopper, which should just fold up as is, needs to be cut into 4 sections, the floor narrowed, and then the 4 sides carefully lined up and soldered together. To be fair to Roxey, the instructions cover the modifications needed. The etches are a reduction of a Warren Shephard 7mm scale kit.

These are sold as John Summers iron ore hoppers. However, I believe that the kit is for the similar but larger ICI wagons which worked out of Tunstead carrying limestone. The main difference is the size of the hopper body, but I'll explain my reasoning as the build progresses. A number of Summers hoppers were actually sold to ICI to replace withdrawn wagons, where they were fitted with vacuum brakes from those they replaced. These two will both be built as ICI wagons.

Charles Roberts built 152 of these wagons for ICI between 1936 and 1953. The first batch of 84 were fitted with diamond frame bogies, later wagons had plate frame bogies as per this kit. The diamond frame bogies were eventually replaced in the early 1980s with plate bogies from the then redundant John Summers wagons. The ICI wagons were vacuum braked from new.
Between 1952 and 1958 123 wagons very similar wagons were built by Chas. Roberts for John Summers for carrying iron ore between Bidston Dock and Shotton. These has a slightly smaller hopper body and were unfitted. After that traffic flow ceased in 1980 ICI aquired 13 Summers wagons to replace ICI wagons lost to accident damage, these were refubished and fitted with vacuum brakes. ICI also purchased an additional 90 wagons for spares, mainly for the bogies which were used to replace diamond framed bogies fitted to the first 84 ICI wagons.
The ICI wagons were withdrawn from traffic at the end of 1997.

I'll be covering the build, which won't be quick!, in my usual level of detail here.

References;

'An Illustrated History of the ICI Hopper Wagon' by Paul Harrison & Peter Midwinter, ISBN 1-900298-18-X. The last word on these wagons!
Paul also has a wagon website, with a page devoted to the ICI wagons.
'Private-Owner Wagons in Colour' by David Ratcliffe, ISBN 978-0-7110-3365-8.
Some good photos of Summers wagons on Paul Bartlett's site.

Paul.