I believe the GWR 12 Ton vans had canvas roofs so thought I would experiment with sticking Calico to the roof of my Parkside kit before painting it with my version of “aluminium grey” ( for one that made into BR era) to try and achieve a more realistic effect than perhaps the super smooth plastic would give. It is far from perfect as the edges are a bit rough but the overall effect I think might be worth pursuing again. The photos are not the best but I hope give some idea of the effect. There are no coupling hooks as I am intending to make and fit Dingham couplings.

This is the first Parkside kit I have done and compared to my first attempt with a Slaters BR 13T open was much easier to build but it does have a lot of lateral play in the axles. I have gone through the instructions with a tooth comb but cannot see that I have missed anything out that would have reduced the play. I am building a Parkside double bolster wagon and there is nothing like as much play. Does anyone know if the van is just this way?

Pete

Buckley10339 - Mar 19, 2018 at 7:38 PM

Pete, some Parkside kits are like that and some are not dont worry about it its not important.

To simulate canvas roofs try one or two layers of tissue paper stuck down with matt brushing clear varnish - try one layer and let it dry then another if it needs it. All my fish vans and twelve ton ones are painted with GWR freight grey brushed Precision paint and then weathered with Humbrol weathering powder for a grimy gruby well used look each van being done very slightly differently.
Pat.

PeteHutch18467 - Mar 19, 2018 at 7:50 PM Hi Pat, Thanks for letting me know about the Parkside wagon axle play. I’ll cease fretting about it. I like the idea about tissue paper. I am sure Mrs H will have some in the glory hole that really ought to be a railway room but I would need one of Putin’s tanks to effect the change and several skips. Pete

RobPulham - Mar 19, 2018 at 7:56 PM
Hi Pete,
Instead of tissue paper, I use spectacle lense cleaning tissues which I put on one side as we use them for their intended purpose. I stick them on with pva which wets them enough to make them very flexible and the folds that remain in them simulate the seams in the canvas on the roof.

PeteHutch18467 - Mar 19, 2018 at 8:47 PM
Rob, thanks for that idea. I tend to use a micro lenses cloth but have some Zeiss “disposable” cleaning wipes somewhere that may well get recycled as no negotiations will be required.
Pete

Paul Bartlett - Mar 19, 2018 at 9:38 PM
I don't bother with sticking tissue down, the paint does the job perfectly well. Why an aluminium grey finish?
Paul

Jim Snowdon - Mar 19, 2018 at 10:38 PM
My standard cure for the excessive slop when using Slaters wheels on the Parkside 9 and 10' wheelbase underframes is to put a 7BA washer over the bearing before putting it into the axlebox back plate. That brings the bearings in by just a little too much, which is compensated for by filing the pinpoints (?) off the axle ends. The result is next to zero sideplay, which is as it should be, which makes the brake blocks easier to position in front of the treads and sensibly reduces the amount of buffer side throw. In many ways, it ought not to be like this, but there is no standard for either axle length or bearing positions in O gauge.
Jim

DavidAtkinson4172 - Mar 19, 2018 at 11:06 PM
In the marine world they used canvas as a means of waterproofing the cabin tops etc. of small craft. The method was paint it first and before paint had dried put canvas on and stretch to shape and smooth out air bubbles. When dry trim up and paint again.
I see no reason, why, on a smaller version, Paul's suggestion wouldn't work.
David A

PeteHutch18467 - Mar 20, 2018 at 5:50 AM
Hi Paul, It is the colour suggested in the instructions…
Pete

PeteHutch18467 - Mar 20, 2018 at 5:51 AM
Jim
Thank you I’ll try that next time.
Pete

SimonD - Mar 20, 2018 at 7:15 AM
I have used bog-standard Andrex in the past - just one ply - on plastic roofs, stretching it on to avoid wrinkles & using MEK to stick it down. A light coat of white spray primer, trim the edge when dry & weather to taste. It provides some texture.
I have seen articles where a model has been made with deliberate roof damage - scribe planking, stick tissue down around the to-be-damaged area, finish roof as above, then scrape the tissue away to reveal the planks below, which can then be painted & weathered. I suspect this does not want to be either common, or overdone. Aluminium grey does seem a little unusual.
Best
Simon

Paul Bartlett - Mar 20, 2018 at 12:59 PM
I cannot recollect every seeing a mention of the colour that the roof of BR vans should be finished with - I have used matt black, but I think in future I might use Vallejo Model Color Smoke 70.939 which might be a lighter more canvas colour.
Paul

Paul Bartlett - Mar 20, 2018 at 1:35 PM

OK to do what I should have done earlier, I've looked up the repainting instructions of 1959 and Works Paint mixes. The repainting of a recanvassed roof is complex. To cut a long story short (there are three coats) there is a lot of aluminium paste used in the mixes. BUT for the BR Mixture no. 223/A Finishing coat roof paint the main constituents are

• Protective white paint paste, 52lbs
• Aluminium paste 10lbs
• Boiled linseed oil 15lbs
• liquid drier, not more than 5lbs
• White spirit 10 -15 lbs
• Linseed stand oil 5lbs
• Yellow ochre in oil }
• Black in Oil } In sufficient quantity to produce a close match to B.S.C 635
• Prussian blue in oil }

Looking up [URL]http://www.e-paint.co.uk/other_bs_colours.asp[/URL] BSC635 is “Lead”
So a smoky grey could be quite useful!
Paul

Quentin - Mar 20, 2018 at 1:48 PM
I have used cotton poplin fabric (from old shirts, handkerchiefs, etc.) for many years, also using MEK to stick it to plastic roofs. Fix the main area first, then trim for a small overlap underneath with mitred corners. Paint finish to personal taste/preference.
Nothing looks more like fabric, i.e. canvas, than fabric!
Quentin

Jim Snowdon - Mar 20, 2018 at 2:17 PM
Unarguably, but the surface texture of real painted canvas scaled down by 1:43 is a good deal finer than any effect we can create using actual cloth. As ever, it is worth looking at photographs of the real thing.
Jim

PeteHutch18467 - Mar 21, 2018 at 8:48 AM
Paul,
Thanks for this fascinating information! Is it information from an old book that you have or could I have found it by asking the right questions of Dr Google? I did not know that there are British Standard Colours. Clearly BSC635 is much darker than I imagined “aluminium grey” to be. I have checked the Parkside instructions to confirm that I had not misread them and they clearly state that for this van in the BR era that is the roof colour. As Jim says in his post I should have tried harder with getting a good photo as even if in B&W I would have been able to tell if light or dark grey.
I wonder how many real van roofs the quantity of paint produced by the recipe above would cover as it is about 60Kg when made up.
Thank you for taking an interest and the trouble to find out the information.
Pete

Buckley10339 - Mar 21, 2018 at 9:49 AM
The other problem regarding colour is that the paint would have been mixed in the paint shop to order and just enough to do however many van roofs were needed and being mixed by hand every single batch of paint would have been a slightly different hue and after only a week or two it would have been even more faded and discoloured through dirt ash and sun and rain ! thats why i paint all my roofs the same basic colour the weather each one individually with white -black and dark and light weathering power using a cotton bud to smear and meld all the dirt and discolouration together.I am not really all that good at it but good enough to make a difference in each wagon and i have 21 LNER fish vans and 22 12 ton mixed XP vans all done !
Pat.

Paul Bartlett - Mar 21, 2018 at 11:24 AM
All of these official BR Workshop mixtures have approximate contents and usually have In sufficient quantity to produce a close match to B.S.C. NNN
When I was a very young member of the HMRS one of the elders, an ex Welsh born headmaster, whom modelled iron/steel mineral wagons (from the 1800s onwards) mentioned going to a workshop in deepest Wales and asked for official BR wagon grey. They got some black and white paint and mixed them together. Although there were a few main workshops the list of workshops that BR gave a four figure code number to was in hundreds if not thousands. Any of these could do these repaints, or at least patch repaints - look at how many BR mineral wagons have re-plating on parts of the sides which needed to be painted.
Paul

Paul Bartlett - Mar 21, 2018 at 11:44 AM
This is official documents from my personal collection. I don't know anyone or anywhere that has these or, more usefully, a full set as they will have been regularly revised.
Don't overlook that I mentioned this was only the top coat of three different preparations. I know nothing of paint production but clearly the Aluminium paste is a very important part of providing protection to the canvas. Very little has been published about BR wagons. There were very few whom were interested and now covers a period of 70 years (unlike the very brief period the Grouping companies existed for). Modern archivists are much more likely to destroy than preserve and what archives that do exist are very dispersed, as is what has been published. A good place for information is the closed YAHOO group
[B]British Railways Wagon Research 1948-99[/B] [URL]https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/BR_wagon_research[/URL] I have made about 32k photos available and seeing roof colour would not be too difficult.
Paul

PeteHutch18467 - Mar 21, 2018 at 2:11 PM
Paul,
Thank you.
I find wagons just as interesting as locomotives even if considered somewhat less glamorous by most. I am enjoying reading Merry-Go-Round on the rails by David Monk-Steel at the moment.
I will take a look at the Yahoo group.
Pete

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