At the recent Modelling the Railways of NSW Conference, I
purchased a 4 wheeled lourve van kit from Casula Hobbies. This particular kit
was a model of the longer 11ft 6in wheel base version of the LV coded wagons. A
few years ago, I had purchased an IDR 10ft wheel base van and the difference
between the two versions can be seen in this photo of a wagon from the Oberon
Tarana Heritage Railway website
(http://othr.com.au/rolling-stock/goods-wagons/
photographer unknown) shows the longer wheel base van sitting on top of
a 10ft chassis.
Conceptually, both kits are the same, a cast body and a
separate chassis. Details such as handrails can be added to the model. The main
difference between the kits was that the Casula kit has a separate CGI roof. I
understand that some wagons had the CGI removed but I elected to construct the
van with the separate CGI roof. The
Casula kit included two CGI roofs from the GSV that needed to be cut to size,
joined and then fixed to the body. My problem with this arrangement was that
the battens were in the wrong locations and whole arrangement seemed too thick.
I decided to create the roof from a commercial CGI product
but the main challenge was to determine how this would be fitted to the van
body. My research uncovered a few images that led me to deduce that the roof
was supported by a number of ribs supporting the CGI sheet sandwiched between
thing battens. I fashioned several strips of styrene to match this and fixed
the roof to these.
The photos below show a side and end images of the van. The
side image appears to be to be a reasonable representation of the prototype and
compares reasonably with the IDR model of the10ft version. The photo from the
end also seemed to match other photos from the same angle which I had found.
So, thinking it was completed, I started the painting with
the usual coat of primer. Concurrently,
I also started to put together a few thoughts for this post. As I went
searching for the Oberon Heritage Railway site to get the reference correct, I
located a few of Keiran Ryan's photos (http://www.krmodels.com.au/topic01.html
). These clearly showed that I had misinterpreted the support arrangements for
the roof with independent brackets used to support the CGI and supporting
battens. While the image from the side still seemed to work, the ends should
show the individual supports rather than a continuous rib that I had
built. With a few choice words that
cannot be printed, the roof came off, the outside ribs were removed and
replaced with individual supports under the battens. The final version before
painting is shown below.
Fortunately, I was able to correct this error but it makes
me wonder how many others have fallen through the cracked. Probably quite a few
I suspect!
Postscript. It never rails but it pours! During a visit to the great Epping Model Railway Club exhibition at Thornleigh on the weekend, I purchased an Austrains LV pack on special, so now I have five of these wagons plus the smaller IDR version.
Postscript. It never rails but it pours! During a visit to the great Epping Model Railway Club exhibition at Thornleigh on the weekend, I purchased an Austrains LV pack on special, so now I have five of these wagons plus the smaller IDR version.
