Model Railway Forum

I am slowly building up some waggons. These are made using my simple H frame chassis design made from lollypop sticks. (Popsicle sticks).



The basic idea is to double the width of the lollypop stick to form it into thicker parts, and use it to form a letter H for the main part of the chassis frame.



The parts are then filed to size, and then U shaped slots are either filed or cut into the underside to accept the wheels. (One needs metal axled wheels for chassis of this type. The wheels themselves can be plastic or metal).
The wheels are the standard 00 gauge 12.5mm (Or 12.6mm) wheels, so are easily obtainable as spares. I used runny superglue to stick the wood together as I personally found the wood glue I had bought not really strong enough for this design, even after 24 hours. Wood does draw the superglue into the wood, so one may need to run a little extra glue down inside the cracks, but it does join well. I have not experimented with other glues, as superglue can be found at good prices if one looks around.



A hint. If one makes a mistake and cuts a slot too deep, fill with toilet tissue and add a few drops of superglue. File back and one has a strong quick fix! (Do be aware that the chemical reaction of the superglue does give off a great deal of heat while doing this, but it does work and gives a very solid result.





I included the above as some modellers may find this useful. There is also the superglue and baking soda idea, as well as superglueand resin powder (Resin filings) if one is working with resin castings.

Back to the chassis...

A V shaped grove is filed down the centre of the H part of the chassis on the top surface lengthways so a paperclip can be used to hold the wheels in place.



Excess paperclip is cut off and the main structure of the chassis is ready as the stiff wire holds its position so that the wheels can't fall out.



Then bufferbeams are added... Those using tension lock couplings will find that half lollypopstick-width bufferbeams allow one to glue in the NEM pocket couplings (Minus the NEM pockets themselves). Those like me who make our own couplings can deepen the centre of the bufferbeam to hold central buffers (Which I will do later) or leave the bufferbeams at half height to suite ones preferences.



There we have the basic H-chassis structure in place, where we can turn to making the rest of the waggons at a later date.

So what about bodies? Well there are a few possibilities ranging from flatbeds, to a pair of bolster waggons, to open mineral waggons in either wood or metal, to vans to tankers...

So just to share some potential examples by (For now) balancing some bodies onto these H-frame chassis, have a look below.

First one can simply make open waggon bodies using tin. These bodies have been made without any soldering and are held together by simply folding the tin. One needs the thickness of biscuit tin or similar. I tried aluminium cococola tins but these were too thin and the material was too easy to break while being folded. But those old biscuit tins or other similar thickness tins can very much be used, and the idea is to come up with a design that when folded, hides the sharp edges within the fold, so one is unlikely to cut oneself.
[Safety first! When opening out sheets of tin, cut any corners into rounded shapes, as 90° corners (Or other similar angles) are the most likely places one is going to cut oneself with! So any stored tin cut those corners round!]

First draw out ones shape. I left tin outside to rust. (If one lives on a hill near the sea, rust does not take long, but one can speed up the process by rubbing the tin surfaces with wire wool (Brillopad?) and use a mix of water and salt while rubbing. One does not have to do this to the tin. I only die it to give my tin a rusty effect).
After drawing out the shape, one can cut with a strong pair of scissors which I find more accurate and easier to use than tin snips with this sort of tin.
Now one can solder tin with a 40 watt iron and lots of flux, but for a simple waggon body there is no need. Just add extra tabs into the design to fold over and one ends up with a perfectly usable waggon body!



Solid lines one cuts. Dotted lines are fold lines.



Here the bodies are balanced on the chassis to show what they look like.



Another example is when I had an old battered Jouef bogie tanker that I decided to repurpose.

The wheels and bogies were removed for other projects, and the two domes of the tank looked useful! After dissasembling, filing and cutting, the material was found to be very thin and brittle. However, by using DAS modelling clay and superglue, we end up with a pair of usable tanks.

I balanced these onto the H chassis just to show their potential. I will be reshaping the tops of the chassis so that they are a better fit.

Proper old school modelling, it is becoming a rare skill these days. Well beyond my abilities but II can still appreciate the ingenuity and skill involved, keep sharing please

I am glad you like them. 7mm narrow gauge using 00 track gauge width is easier as I can use 00 stuff to build with. I had put most of my work on another site as I could not make the photos small on this tablet. (It has very little memory as is a cheap one).
Fortunately I have just found a way by sharing my photos from another site so I hope that they do not take up memory on this site... (In theory it should not).

The waggon below is easy to build which is why I thought to share it.

The larger part of the costs of building rollin stock are the wheels and the couplings which usually are about equal price. One can halve the costs by making ones own couplings.
In this scale, as it is narrow gauge, many railways used centrally mounted buffers. We can easily replicate this and also turn them into a coupled device by adding what I call "Drop loops". (I do have an improved design in my head for these couplings, but I will need to experiment first to see if my design works, so for now, the design I know which works...)
The best way is to show you in pictures...
Drawing pins are filed to shape to form a buffer that has a point at the top.
A loop is made from a paper clip and is hinged by very simple tiny loops at either end. Best to let the photo show what I mean...



The drop loop is then lifted over a similar buffer on another item of stock one wants to couple onto, with these being cheap and easy to make.
The only real criteria are that the loops don't touch the track when lowered, and that the loops clear the buffers when lifted up. (One can trim off the lower part of the buffer head if they need a little extra roomto clear when lifted).

Apart from being cheap to make, they also have other advantages.
They allow for use on very sharp curves.
The drop loops can be balanced in an "Up" position and one can bash buffers with anothef vehicle and the bash will then drop the loop allowing hands free coupling up... (I prefer the "Hands on" approach).
Drop loops can easily be lifted manually with a piece of wire as are just swung upwards.
In this scale, one can gently hear buffer clashing if rough shunting.

One does not neccessarily need a buffer for a drop loop to couple onto as a pin or similar can suffice, as can be seen in this photo.