Ratio Pre-Printed Vans.

I have a liking for Ratio's pre-printed vans, especially those in fictional liveries. These are at least 20 years old, but unbuilt examples can sometimes be found on Ebay. They did a range based on their 12T vans, three of which I've built and are shown below.

The first is a Harvey's Bristol Cream van, based on Ratio's LMS ventilated van;

Harvey's Bristol Cream van

The next two are based on a GWR van, the first being in Huntsman's Ales livery;

Huntsman's Ales van

And the one that started me collecting these, a Badger Beer van;

Badger Beer van

Badger make some fine beers, Fursty Ferret being a favourite of mine, which is the reason that I wanted to build the Badger van. After building it I thought that it would be nice to track down the Huntsman's Ales van, and when I found one of those the Harvey's van came along. All were bought unbuilt. There is one more pre-decorated Ratio 12T van to be built, which again is in a fictional livery, this time BOCM. Ratio also did a range of printed iron minks, this time in prototypical (I think) liveries, GN, Ferrocrete and GWR improvised gunpowder van. There may be others as well.

I like building these, they really are a joy to put together and its nice to build something without worrying about prototypical accuracy. They are built purely for my diplay cabinet, however I have fitted Gibson EM wheelsets, Smiths couplings and MJT buffers so they could see layout use if I really wanted to irk the purists.

Paul.

A couple of Hudson books.

Yesterday I visited Chapel en le Frith exhibition, where the Moseley Railway Trust always have a stand selling, amongst other goodies, some very interesting books, albeit on quite obscure subjects. I like obscure so naturally I took a good look and made a couple of purchases.

The first was a 34 page book about Robert Hudson Ltd, the famous light railway supplier;

 It covers the history of Hudsons as well as giving an overview of their vast range of railway, and non-railway, products. Hudsons really deserves a bigger, more in depth, book but this brief look at the company is a nonetheless worthwhile addition to my library.

The second book is purely about Hudsons famous 'Rugga' V skip wagons;

It only covers the narrow gauge wagons, a shame as I have a couple of standard gauge Hudson tippers on the workbench at the moment. However, it covers all of the variations of these skips, from those intended purely for hand tramming to beefier wagons for heavy locomotive haulage, and plenty of illustrations show how and where they were used. There are notes on filling the wagons as well, for example mechanical loaders should have a bucket capacity of 1/3 of the wagon capacity otherwise a loading hopper should be used, usefull information for modellers. Scale drawings are included, as well as some quite complicated calculations for working out train length. Further volumes are in preparation on mine cars, trackwork and Granby cars (automatic unloading mining wagons).

Each book cost £7.50, which will either be a fair price for a limited production publication appealing to a small audience, or vastly overpriced, depending on your point of view. Proceeds from the 'Rugga' book will go towards restoring Moseley's Hudswell Clarke.

Robert Hudson Ltd, Alan J. Haigh, no ISBN number.
The Standard "Rugga"  Tipping Wagon from Robert Hudson Ltd, Phil Robinson, ISBN 0-9540878-8-7

Moseley Railway Trust

Paul.

RT Models Hudson Tipper - part 4.

The chassis' now have bufferbeams, solebars and axleboxes. The bufferbeams are built up from 3 main parts, as well as seperate drawplates and coupling hooks.

The first job was to bend up the main part of the 'beam, after punching out no less than 22 rivets;

Note that there are two sets of locating slots, to suit either the OO or EM/P4 frames. At this stage I fitted the drawplates and coupling hooks whilst I could still access the inside of the 'beam for soldering the coupling hooks from the inside.

The next step is to solder on the bottom plate, which has slots etched into it to allow the 'beams to be filled with liquid lead;

 

Note the half etched channel to help to locate the part centrally.

The top plate needs bending as this is also the plate that the tipper body rests on. Then it can be soldered in place, again there's a half etched locating channel;

 

I found it best to fold the smaller upper bend of the channel first.

Solebars next, and more rivets to punch out before bending it into a channel section, here shown soldered in place;

Onto the axleboxes. The instructions show the bearings being fitted though the axlebox etch from the outside and locating into the frames, however I found the bearings to be a little short so I soldered them into the frames from the inside, then fitted the axlebox etches in place over the protruding bearing;

 

The axleboxes themselves have to be folded flat with the fold line on the outside before they're ready for fitting.

Again all soldering done with a 25W Antex and 188 degree solder.

So far so good, but there's still lots more to add!

Paul.