Although my Stafford and Feldbahn had both primarily been used for pulling passenger trains I had always wanted to build and own some wagons of my own, so when I joined a society that did not conduct public running that desire had to be turned into a reality.  My original idea was to build some simple wagons that could carry all the tools, cameras, lunch boxes, etc. that always accompany me when running the Feldbahn but when I saw this narrow gauge guards van at the Hollycombe Steam Museum I changed my plans. Due to the problems of fitting the Feldbahn and its driving truck plus a wagon into my car I had already decided that any wagon would have to have a lightweight chassis with removable flat panels so that the parts could be fitted around the engine and truck already in the car.  I reckoned that a guards van would only have one more panel than a simple wagon and that although they would be taller the panels would still fit into the car, so the guards van was sketched out using my CAD program.  If you have looked at my webpage about the Hymek diesel you may have noticed that I already owned a wagon that was used with it but I was convinced that a much lighter chassis was now required.  That wagon used a Ride on Railways 7 1/4" gauge driving truck chassis but the chassis and wheels alone were almost a two man lift.

I already owned a pair of lightweight chassis side rails and several sets of suitable, but too heavy, wheels so I machined out the inner faces of four wheels to make them very much lighter.  The wheel discs ended up just 3mm thick but that is more than enough for the weight of the guards van and its intended load.  The photo shows how the chassis rails had been laser cut with lots of holes to save weight and you can also see the wooden frame that forms the base of the guards van which uses a sheet of 4mm thick Birch plywood for the main deck.  The entire chassis complete with the wooden deck and wheels is an easy lift for a single hand so my light weight target was certainly achieved. I also chose to use simple plain axle bearings because they would only be lightly loaded, so the axle boxes were machined from scrap Delrin bar.  Being very easy to machine all four axle boxes were completed in a single morning.  Another possibly unusual choice was my decision to make each axle in three parts.  The centre main axle section has its ends turned down to fit into the wheels with the machined sections not quite reaching all the way through the wheels.  Each stub axle has a large diameter section that butts against the outer wheel face to act as a spacer between the wheel and the axle box while a short turned section locates the stub axle into the wheel.  An M6 bolt goes through the stub axle and tightens into the end of the main axle.  The advantage of this arrangement is that the shorter lengths of the parts meant that they would fit my small lathe and that the stub axles can easily be replaced if they do eventually wear.  Whilst the arrangement probably isn't suitable for high loads it's more than adequate for the guards van. With the chassis almost complete the last parts to be specified were the suspension springs.  Ride comfort obviously wasn't a priority but keeping the guards van on the rails is critical so the springs have to allow the wheels to follow any undulations in the track.  With soft springs on a lightweight wagon like this guards van it's very easy to end up with something that rocks and rolls about, especially as a high percentage of the weight is quite high up, and a wobbly wagon is more likely to derail.  The solution that I use on all my rolling stock (including my driving truck) is to select springs that are almost fully compressed under the normal load.  With little, if any, more compression available the wagon (or whatever) can't wobble about and every wheel has the maximum possible pressure available from its spring to force the wheel onto the track over any undulations.  Thankfully the spring suppliers that I use all have websites with programs on them that let you enter the spring details you know, diameter, free length, load etc. to produce a list of suitable springs.  For the guards van and pipe wagon this let me purchase the perfect spring without any need to experiment with different ones.  In the photo on the right you can see that the suspension spring is almost fully compressed under the normal weight of the guards van and its load with 8mm of downwards wheel travel available.

To keep the guards van light the body panels were all made from 4 mm Birch plywood with 16 swg aluminium angle and strip for the frames and detailing.  All the panels were routed through their outer ply layer to give the appearance of a planked construction and everything was held together with "no slot" steel roundhead 5BA screws to give the appearance of coach bolts.  Additional aluminium angles were used on the inside faces of the side panels to create slots in which the transverse body panels could slide.  The photo on the right shows the front face of the van being slid into a side panel, and small brackets were later added so that just four 2BA screws would lock the top aluminium angles together thus allowing for very easy assembly and dismantling. As this guards van was never intended to be a scale model I took liberties in reducing the number of planks that were routed, and hence the number of screws (coach bolts) needed to assemble it.  Even so there were over 250 sets of holes to be drilled but that seemed better than the 600 plus if I had used narrow "plank" widths.

The removable roof used three 12mm Birch plywood cross braces cut with the required top curve with five longitudinal beams made from triangular section softwood mouldings.  These beams were set into the cross braces so that the widest face aligned with the curve of the roof and glued into place.  Once the glue was set the top edges of the assembled guards van body were then lined with aluminium cooking foil to stop any stray glue sticking the roof to the body panels and the 1/6" thick Birch plywood roof panel was glued in place using slow drying epoxy adhesive and a lot of luggage straps to hold the plywood sheet against the roof sub structure.  Whilst I normally use waterproof PVA adhesives for assembling wooden components the slow curing epoxy adhesive was used here for two reasons.  First it allowed sufficient time to apply the glue, but more importantly it is also thick enough to fill any small gaps that may have existed between the roof substructure and the roof sheet.

All the finished external aluminium components were sprayed with etch primer (ACID 8 is my preferred aerosol paint) and then finished with gloss black using normal Halfords aerosol paint.  The wooden roof assembly was given four coats of Ronseal Walnut (a suitable very dark colour) quick drying varnish before the outside was sprayed using matt black aerosol paint.  The advantage of the Ronseal varnish is that with its one hour drying time you can easily apply and rub down four coats in a single day to speed up the painting process.  The plywood panels were all painted using Johnstone's Universal Red Oxide primer.  It was the first time that I had used this paint and I was amazed by its quality.  It brushed on easily and any brush marks quickly disappeared, but best of all it created a nice smooth thick layer of paint in only one coat.  A quick rub down of that single coat was all that was required before the top coat of red oxide could be applied.  This was by far the best wood primer that I have ever used.  Once the top coat had dried the window and door frames were masked up and spray painted gloss white.  All of the steel "coach bolts" were treated using Metal Blacking solution to avoid the need for painting them. The windows were cut from mirrored finish acrylic sheet and are all held in place by the internal aluminium framing with some silicone rubber sealant applied to stop them rattling in their frames.  I used the same technique as on my Hymek locomotive of lightly rubbing the outer (non mirrored) surface of the acrylic with very fine wire wool to remove the normal "vivid" reflections that mirrors provide.  I find that this produces a dull mirror effect that looks far more like the reflections you get from normal glass windows. The photo also shows the pipe wagon which was very quickly built onto the chassis of the Hymek's match wagon that was no longer required after the Hymek had been sold.  The chassis was originally from a Ride on Railways 7 1/4" gauge driving truck so all I needed to do was add three pieces of 12mm Birch plywood and four sections of 19mm mild steel angle to create a flat bed wagon.  The pipe load is held down by 19mm ratchet straps (which proved difficult to source) and can be fitted with a saddle to allow a single passenger to ride along on the train.  Since the whole wagon was built from "stuff" I already owned in under a day it proved to be a quick, cheap, and very useful addition to my stock.

And finally here's a photo showing how the guards van chassis travels in the front passenger space of my car.  Thankfully my ideas proved correct and all the guards van panels and roof fitted into the back of the car around the Feldbahn and driving truck.  Sadly there is no way to carry the pipe wagon at the same time but hopefully that will eventually live at the Andover track. You can see short video of the Feldbahn with these wagons by clicking here.

Postscript.

Since writing this page my Feldbahn has been restyled to become a tender locomotive (see the Cosmetic Modification pages) and that resulted in me having another spare chassis.  That has now been converted into another wagon as explained below.

The driving truck from my Feldbahn already had vacuum brakes fitted so because this wagon was intended to carry a heavy stone load I decided to retain the braking system.  A pair of new operating arms were installed so that the vacuum servo mounted directly onto them between the axles.  The orange sphere in the top right of the wagon body is a 6" (150mm) diameter plastic ball cock float that acts as a vacuum reservoir.  These are very much cheaper than the reservoirs sold for vacuum braking systems but work just as well.  All you need to do is drill a small hole right through the brass rod bush and fit a suitable pipe adaptor. The vacuum piping and electric cables for the train lighting system are all retained with cable clips and ties to ensure that nothing can drop onto the moving parts or track.

If the wagon had simply been filled with stone chippings it would have been very heavy (and a waste of chippings).  But if only a thin layer of chippings was used they could slide about on the false deck and leave exposed areas of the deck in plain sight.  My solution was to fit a stiff wire grid cut from some fencing wire and spaced up from the false deck using cable ties and M8 nuts.  The stone chippings were then held in place by the wire and the load appears to be stable.

Here is the finished wagon.  The body was made from 6mm plywood, routed to create the appearance of planks and the strakes are all aluminium attached with black finish wood screws.  With the addition of some vinyl labels and the stone chipping load I think it makes a reasonable narrow gauge wagon to go with my Feldbahn's other wagons.