LNER Wooden Body Hopper Wagon PMP2

Purchased and Reviewed by Mark Horley

I was given a pair of these wagon kits as a birthday present many years ago so there may be some changes in the version of this kit currently available. The kit is a set of very nice flash free whitemetal castings supplied in a stout cardboard box. The builder also has to provide wheels and plastic card to make the internal hopper.

The instructions were a single page of text encompassing history, livery and assembly description with an exploded assembly diagram on the reverse.

The body shell is four large castings with nice detail on both sides. To build up the wagon I soldere d side/end pairs together using a square then joined the two units together. The W-irons and axleboxes for each side are cast with a dummy solebar the ends of which have to be reduced in thickness to clear the insides of the buffers.

After drilling out and fixing bearings the two dummy solebars with the wheels in place are dropped into the bottom of the upturned body shell. The dummy solebars locate on pegs inside the body and are easy to solder in place.

Construction then moved to the hopper doors. This is quite a complex assembly with working hinges and sprung latches all in white metal but good quality castings made completion easier than you might expect. I drilled an extra hole through to the tube in the fixed body hinges so I could solder the hinge pin into position well away from the door hinges to avoid solder run. It is worth making sure that all four doors sit centrally in the frame so that the atches engage evenly.

The buffers and couplings are again all white-metal but they are well cast so little cleaning up is required to get them to fit. The buffers are sprung by piano wire across the wagon behind the buffer beam and through the coupling hook. The brake rigging is also a straightforward assembly from white-metal castings although the builder has to bend the safety loops from plain brass strip supplied with little guidance.

All in all this is a very well designed white-metal kit with good quality castings that fitted together well. The operating door mechanism is a joy but a little fiddly to put together with low melt solder.

A copy of this review was sent to DJH for comment:
Thank you for sending me the review. DJH always admired Walter Hodgson's work (Founder, Owner & Toolmaker of Piercy Model Products) and following his sad passing we didn't hesitate to acquire the tooling from his estate. Such was the design quality and reputation that we made the minimum changes possible when integrating the range into our manufacturing style. So these kits are generally as originally issued and are still held in high regard by modellers today.

Stephen Widdows, DJH Engineering Ltd