Hattons Andrew Barclay 0-4-0st

Happily I have my two (for now) Hattons Andrew Barclay 0-4-0st models.

They’re pivotal to Dudley’s Coal. The Earl of Dudley’s railway from the 1920’s onwards became solely run by Barclay 0-4-0 and 0-6-0 saddle tanks. With only the odd Peckett and an Avonside tank trialled during the 1910’s, being withdrawn in the late 20’s.

While the railway did use both the 14″ and 16″ cylinder locos, the 14″ locos were prevalent. Being early locomotives from Andrew Barclay, they were all of the open cab style. Hence the reason for purchasing the Caledonian model from Hattons. Strange that they didn’t decide to model an Earl of Dudley prototype really. 😁

While a lovely looking model with a well applied livery, it will be stripped very soon as the Earl’s locos were green. They were also lined when new.

The major changes from the Hattons locos are the buffers, with a large rectangular buffer head. As seen below. Non of the Hattons models have this style of buffers as it must have been either a special request or they were replaced at the Wallows, the Earl’s engine works, who were famous modifying locomotives.

Lady Honor at The Wallows

There were a few other modifications made to the locos by the works, with alterations to the handrails, as seen in the Lady Honor link above.

The big change for the model will be a conversion to P4 using a set of Barclay wheels from Alan Gibson. There seems to be enough space behind the cylinders without needing to move them out. There is a spacer between the rods connecting on the driving wheel, which will be removed. A write up of this will be done when I have all the parts.

Powsides Private owner wagon kit

A quick late evening project. A Powsides PO kit, actually the kit is the exSlaters 1907 7 plank 15′ wagon kit, but with Powsides branding. These are used in their wagon decals packs but they do sell them as undecorated kits, at normal kit prices unlike the inflated eBay prices. No mention of Coopercraft at all.

Although I prefer the Cambrian kits as they have less flash and go together well, this kit is finely detailed, the buffers are a nice turned metal, whereas the Cambrian buffers are a bit of a let down. The brakes however are only ok if your modelling a wagon with the brakes ON!

Coupling hook is my now standard Lanarkshire models whitemetal hook, drilled to take 3 links. Brakes will be replaced by an etched set. Either Masokits or Bill Bedfords as I was kindly sent a few examples to try.

All in all a pleasant hour spent building a nice kit, 4 wagon kits down another dozen or so to go.

Quick and Simple Trees pt1

Although the layout is set in the heart of the black country, there was probably a little more greenery than you’d first thought.

As can be seen in this shot of Abbiss’s land sale wharf in Baggeridge.

The trees for the layout are built from simply twisting small gauge wire together and securing them with masking tape, not only to bind the wire but to bulk out the trunk and thicker branches, but it also removes the visible wire twists too.

Several strands are secured in a pin vice and twisted until the length of untwisted wire is sufficient for the smaller branches that make up the upper part of the tree.

Once several twisted strands have been completed then they can be bound together by the masking tape, until happy with the thickness of the trunk and branches.

A quick and simple tree, probably took only 10-15mins to get to this stage. Always a good idea to use photos of real trees or go for a walk in your local park to get plenty of ideas.

Wordless Wednesday

Track building, an essay in brass.

Although the current trend in track building is the use of plastic chairs on plastic or plywood timbers, there are still other ways to build your track. As much as I like the plastic chairs from Exactoscale and C+L finescale, they are bordering on the expensive side especially when 100’s+ are required, that’s not to say they aren’t worth it as they are exquisitely moulded. It’s just that for your average Dad, it’s getting harder to justify. Also there is a discussion with regards to the checkrails chairs in P4, that under a certain turnout radius the checkrails may not act accordingly in relation to gauge widening. So with both those issues in mind, I cast my memory back to reading about Masokits brass half etched chairs for running track and turnouts.

Michael Clark’s Masokits range of brass etched chairs require copper clad timbers to solder to. These were acquired from Wizard models and a long with a few packs of the etch brass chairs certainly is a step in the right direction for both cost to myself and allows exact control over the building of tight radius turnouts.

Today was spent cutting up copper turnout timbers and fitting them to a copy of my Templot plan on my workbench board. Simply cut with a pair of side cutters they made light work of the cladding and I had a full set of timbers within an hour. Shown here awaiting fixing to the templates with double sided tape.

Now I’m all set to start folding the etched chairs and get soldering.

Stock building underway

Having made life more difficult by modelling the 1920’s, with the majority of reference photos and details dating to mostly the 50’s & 60’s. Without finding details about which wagon company or companies the Railway used, not to mention the engineering talent and facilities that were available at The Wallows (the engineering works and sheds) there was a chance that some wagons were built on site, like some of the locomotives. Finding suitable stock off the shelf is very limited.

There is a reference to The Midland Railway wagon and carriage works, about a hopper wagon with a similar design built for export to Australia. Which is visible in a photo taken at a land sale wharf, which sadly I can’t post.

So to establish a base of wagons for the layout to get things underway I’ve chosen both the 5 & 7 plank Gloucester 1907 15′ po wagons. Simple but well detailed kits from Cambrian kits.

The buffers have been replaced with Lanarkshire Model white metal buffers for wooden underframed early po wagons. The coupling hooks will also be Lanarkshire models white metal which although originally designed to be cosmetic are more than strong enough for actual coupling use, especially given my rakes would be between 5-7 wagons max.

P4 wheels are from Alan Gibson and although I’ve built the brakes from the kit, they will be retro fitted with Masokits and Bill Bedford brakes and levers a long with all future builds. I always try and build atleast one to the original instructions.

The chassis is the base for the 5 plank and the 7 plank is just awaiting couplings and brakes retro fitting.

These Cambrian kits will be in a reasonable good condition given the 1907 design heritage. For the more older wagons there’s a large variation of types available to model but will mostly require scratchbuilding.

The railway used many plank variations including 1,3,4,5,6 &7 plank wagons. The railway did have many dumb buffered wagons. As seen in this photo, which will require scratchbuilding.

Dated early 20th Century, this is Abbiss coal merchant’s landsale wharf. The third wagon from the right is a 4 plank dumb buffered wagon. There’s a few variations in the rake too, near the back appears to be atleast 1 slope sided hopper.

The following is an extract from the Dudley archive which accompanies the photo:

Mr Joe Abbiss, who owned the coal merchants whose company name is on the lorry, is the gentleman standing in the lorry. The man on the left holding the horses, is believed to be a Major Westwood. The “E D” on the sides of the trucks indicate that the colliery belonged to the Earl of Dudley. The description “Landsale wharf” in the Black Country, usually means a railway siding at which coal is unloaded for sale to merchants or consumers. Coal is usually loaded from the train to lorries by hand. (Courtesy of Mr. J. Abbiss).

Courtesy of Dudley Archives and the Black country History website