When I migrated from 4mm OO to 7mm O Gauge I first moved into 7mm Narrow Gauge, having had some 30 years of experience in making OO locomotives it seemed at the time an obvious step but modelling even narrow gauge one soon gets to use to buying O gauge parts.

My early supply of O gauge parts was the workshop of the late Derek Lawrence who was a neighbour at the time. Derek had little time for narrow gauge and started me off with O gauge proper and since I only had a smallish garden shed, whatever I modelled in this larger scale had to be small.

Most of my 4mm modelling was based on the Cheshire Lines, an area where I worked as a BR fireman for nine years until the end of steam. Research on the Cheshire Lines Committee led me to the Cheshire Midland, part of which still exists today as the line between Altrincham and Northwich. I found out that the Cheshire Midland had applied for an act of parliament to build a line from Knutsford to Macclesfield but it was never built. My idea is to model part of that line as a Light Railway so I could run secondhand locomotives and stock and even freelance stock to my own design as would suit my Cheshire Midland Railway.

Derek suggested I make something small and simple so as to get the feel of O Gauge. This may sound stupid but thanks to Derek the first O gauge loco I acquired was an Alan Gibson Midland Railway 4F 0-6-0. Alan had built this for a customer who was unable to pay for it so it ended up in Derek’s workshop enroute back to Norfolk and Derek talked Alan into letting me have it for a VERY reasonable price. Once you have a Midland engine you need a Midland brake van so a 10-ton brake van kit was purchased from Slaters. I had always looked on Slaters 4mm wagon kits like LEGO, this was giant LEGO and I loved it. It was rapidly followed by a Slaters 6-wheel Midland brake van (photo1).

A gift from Derek was a partially scratchbuilt Highland Railway brake van which I finished off and lettered for my imaginary Cheshire Midland Railway (photo 2). This was not my idea of a goods brake van so the next in line came with some narrow gauge kits I was reviewing for Bill Ferguson. I was Trade Liaison Officer for the 7mm Narrow Gauge Association at the time.

The parts supplied were obviously not for a narrow gauge wagon, but as often happened parts appeared in the post but without instructions, I assembled the body parts and started doing a little research as to what the vehicle was and it turned out to be a North British railway 10-ton brake van. A chassis was soon made from Plastikard along with some Slaters w-irons and Haywood buffers and the CMR had an attractive little brake van (photo 3). Spurred on by this success, I scratch-built another one, although it was the 12-ton version this time. Again, the parts were made from Plastikard, together with Slaters w-irons and wheels and Haywood buffers (photo 4).

As time moved on, membership of the Guild became a must and more locos started to appear. A Great Western 1361ST and a 45XX prairie tank arrived so a GWR brake van was added to the collection and this van started me off with another passion, 6-wheel brake vans. The PECO kit is easy to assemble and was added to the ever larger collection of wagons (photo 5).

Then followed a LNWR ‘Cauliflower’ 0-6-0 purchased from a friend and to accompany this I purchased a Meteor Models 6-wheel brake van. Being an etched and cast kit, this was not like the previous plastic kits I had made and was a new entry into the world of using a soldering iron. Although the end product is very nice it did test my patience a bit (photo 6).

A purchase from the E&T stand was a GP Models Great Central 6-wheel brake van and although I did not have a GC goods engine, a LNER J10 (otherwise known as a Heaton Mersey Scot) was in the offing. This brake was made up and lettered for CLC (photo 7). When I first went to Heaton Mersey we had a trip/shunting job that took a train from Heaton Mersey sidings to Skelton Junction yard. In the yard there was one of the CLC 6-wheel brake vans which we used for all the short shunting trips around Altrincham and Broadheath and it was still lettered in CL livery in 1959. The van was ideal as some of the trips had to be with the train propelled, so it was always interesting to see the look on people’s faces as we propelled the train over the level crossing and into the yard at Altrincham.

Every Light Railway has to have either an LBSCR A1X Terrier or a SECR ‘P’ class 0-6-0T. I built one of each so Derek gave me a body of a Southern Railway birdcage brake van. I do not know much about these vehicles but made the chassis as best as I could from photographs (photo 8).

Another Southern brake van, ex-LBSCR this time, came while exhibiting at a Stafford show. I was actually doing a 7mm narrow gauge demonstration and forgot to take something with me to do, so I purchased this kit from Invertrain. Making this etched brass 6-wheel standard gauge brake van was an absolute joy but as the van has a brake standard on both verandas how the brake linkage goes together remained a mystery to me. I did add the brake blocks and drag beams but have not added the linkage. I will work it out one day (photo 9).

As a Guild member, trips to Telford come along as an annual treat and there, on the E&T stand, I spotted a Slaters SE&CR 6-wheel brake van kit. Purchased at a price that was an absolute steal, it was soon taken home and assembled as CMR Brake van No.9 (photo 10).

The latest 6-wheel brake van came about following a visit to Keighley’s Clubrooms, (What a fabulous place) on their O gauge layout were several North Eastern Railway goods with a 6-wheel brake van at the end of a train, with the assistance of the Guild TLO I was able to contact the maker of the kit, NER Days and purchased one mail order, a prompt service I may add. (Editor’s note: a review of Howard’s experience of building this kit appeared in the May 2014 Gazette.)

Another loco kit I bought was the Chowbent North Stafford Railway New L 0-6-2T, a beautiful kit that unfortunately Peter Waterman has no plans to rerelease in his JLTRT range. To go with this I have scratchbuilt two NSR brake vans, first a 20-ton brake followed by a 10-ton brake for a friend.

For the 20-ton brake, I used the drawing from North Staffordshire Wagons by G. F. Chadwick. All the construction was done in Plastikard. To get the correct spacing for the planking on the sides, I photocopied the drawing, overlaid the copy on a sheet of 40 thou plasticard and scribed the planking with an Olfa ‘P’ cutter. The outside framing was made using lengths of Evergreen strip styrene. This worked reasonably well until I got to the corner stanchions of the veranda end where it took a bit of fiddling to get the corner stanchions right. They were strange brake vans in that the veranda ends are half closed in with an open side which had the brake standard. A full drawing of the brake linkage appears in the NSR wagon book; the linkage runs down the outside end of the van to a lever that linked to another central lever under the veranda floor and from there to a central arm that linked to the brake block beams.

Photo 11a shows the brake linkage more clearly. On the inner, closed side of the veranda was a sand-box which dropped sand onto the rail on one side only; the guard would get a hand full of sand and drop it into a funnel that worked like an hour glass allowing sand to drop slowly onto the rail.

I attended a wedding of a nephew of mine who married an Indian girl, at the reception all the men sat at one table and all the women at another. To drum up a bit of conversation I asked some of the chaps where they worked, much to my surprise I found about half were miners and the rest railwaymen including one very old chap who was a guard at Stoke-on-Trent. He retired before BR came along. I asked him about NSR brake vans and he said most NSR guards did not like them and when the Big Four came along most of them disappeared. He much preferred the Midland/LMS style of vans as you did not have to go from the warmth of your van to put the brake on (photo 11).

When I built the 10-ton van, I made the sides in a different way. I bought a sheet of glass and after fixing the drawing to the bench overlaid it with the glass and made the side framework on top of the glass first from Evergreen strip styrene then added the planked side afterwards. This proved to be fiddly but gave a much better result. Early vans had large wooden brake blocks but due to the shortage of hardwood during the Great War all vans were converted to cast iron blocks. Whereas the 20-ton vans had clasp brakes, the 10-ton vans had blocks between the wheels only.

Another strange thing about North Stafford brake vans was the spelling of the word ‘BRAKE’ as the NSR spelt it ‘BREAK’ on early 10-ton vans but reverted to ‘BRAKE’ when the 20-ton vans were introduced (photos 12 and 12a).