Scratch-built milk van

After my "success" in building a new roof for the 14xx tank engine, I thought I'd try to build a wagon from scratch - specifically, a milk wagon with slatted sides (for milk churns, used in the days before glass-lined tankers). Why? Because they look nice!

So first, the prototype. The GWR had an 18' 4-wheel milk van (Siphon B) but I couldn't find a picture of it. So instead I've taken my cue from Thomas the Tank Engine, specifically the story about Daisy the diesel railcar in the book Branch Line Engines.

I started work with a scale drawing. The overall size was based on a GWR mogo van (I had one handy). I figured 3mm for the slatted sides with 1mm gaps; that's 9 inches and 3 inches in scale, which is probably about right.

The entire body is made of 30 thou plastic card, except for the corners. I used a v-shaped moulding for them, for strength, but after more practice I'd probably make my own in future. I used a steel ruler to cut the planks, with dubious accuracy. The "metal" braces are also cut from plastic card; in theory they're 1.5mm wide but there's a lot of variation!

I started by sticking the horizontal strips to the corners (resting the sides on another sheet, as the corners are wider than the thickness of the sides). Then I had great fun marking off where the vertical door edges should go, then laying a strip across diagonally and cutting it where it met the edge of the door / roof / floor. I layed out the planks for the ends and put the end bracing on, then stuck them to the corners / sides. (This wasn't entirely satisfactory, as the planks weren't quite straight somehow).

Next came two half-moon sections for the ends to support the roof, followed by the roof itself, made from two 20-thou rectangles curved by wrapping around my knife handle and glued together. At this point I had a very nice van body.

I wasn't going to attempt a chassis myself, but conveniently I had a kit for a CooperCraft 11' wheelbase chassis, so I made that up. It turned out that I should have thought more about this in advance, because when I came to put the two together, they didn't really match for size. With hindsight, rather than cut the bracing on the sides off scrupulously at the bottom of the lowest plank, I should have had it carry on to the bottom of the thickness of the floor - and worse, I should have measured it so that the floor matched up with the planks rather than being about 1mm wider! But it's a first attempt.

Putting that off for a while, I decided to paint the body. This was the next big problem: the paint just didn't go on very well, both the brown for the sides and the grey for the roof.

So I now have a chassis and a ropey-looking wagon body which doesn't fit it. I think my next step will be to abandon the body and build another one, only this time the right size to fit the chassis (whatever that is). I still need to think about buffer beams too, as the chassis didn't have any.

But I have good reasons to think I'll do better next time:
- More practice cutting the plasticard
- I'll measure it properly next time
- I might use 20 thou instead of 30 thou for the sides, or perhaps a mixture (easier to cut accurately, but weaker - not sure about this one).
- I'll try spray-painting the sides and roof with an undercoat (black) first in the hope that the paint goes on a bit better ;)

That was actually two weeks ago (I'm a bit behind on blogging this) but I might start the new body this evening as I've reached a pause in my next project - to be described ...