Useful Tips for Carriage and Wagon Restorers

Please put any useful tips you have found/been shown for doing carriage and wagon work here to help others, especially volunteers new to this type of work. Can be for Mark 1s or later, or earlier wooden bodied rolling stock.

 

Tip No.1; nothing is impossible with enough time, finance and determination...

 

Okay so I will start with re paneling wooden coach bodies

1 For the panels to go on correctly, the body frames underneath have to be inline (so you don't get wavy panels). To check them. Get a long piece of wood say about 1/2" x 3" x 70" (approx) , Run one edge along your surface planer to get it dead straight (or alternatively use a long steel ruler or piece of steel that is known to be straight)
You can then hold it against your framework and see if all the frames are inline, or if some are sticking out a bit. If they are a bit proud (sticking out) you can remove wood with an angle grinder/fibre disk to get that one inline and check again with your straight edge.
If it is less, you can glue on spacers, (might just be a few mm you need to 'add'). I used contact adhesive for this as you can apply them quickly.
Once you have finished it means your panels will go on dead straight and you wont get any wavy look when it is all finally painted.

2 Putting the lower panels on. It seems almost strange, but you start by screwing along the bottom edge of the panel first and put all these screws in, Then you can pull in the panels gradually until you get to the top. Doing it this way then allows you to temporarily clamp (with g clamps) at the top through the frames and hold the panel in position whilst you drill and screw the screws in. There is quite a force to pull the marine plywood panel around the curve of the coach body and if you start at the top you have no way of clamping at the bottom, hence why you start with the bottom screws first.

 

Simple -
Don't be afraid to ask for help or advice, we can't all have all the necessary skills from the offset, but with the right mind set we can aquire them and produce a decent result

 

Something we do. If something is removed, and re-useable, then it is cleaned. If metal, wire brush in an angle grinder/repaired by the welders. It then goes for painting.

Such items then go into 'stock'. There is nothing more irritating, when nearing the completion of a Restoration, to find that necessary items are still in an 'as removed' state when, with a little forethought, and effort from the outset, such items can then be picked 'off the shelf' and readily available for use.

 

From signalling and loco restorations, label what the refurbished component should be attached to. Paint on a surface which will be consealed when complete has the advantage it won't come off like a tied on label. If you must use labels, secure them with wire - it's harder to break!

Cheers, Neil

PS So where did that signal pivot casting come from??

 

Don't run out of Teabags!

 

We use Williamsons paint on the SVR wagons and have recently started adding 5% varnish to try to stop it fading. GWR grey is particularly bad for this, going a pale blue after a few years.
I'd have expected paint that costs £90 for 5 litres to be right, straight out of the tin, but that's what was recommended to us by the SVR Carriage Department.

 

Some people seem to be using the Craftmaster paint. Not tried it myself yet but plan to do so in future

http://www.craftmasterpaints.co.uk/

 

One mistake I see preservationists make a lot is a follows:-

When you are putting in boarding, either wagon body boards (or internal casing boards inside a coach.), or boarding in a building. It was normal that the boards were 'V' eed. Quite often I see boards have been put in on projects and they haven't bothered and it looks wrong and not how they were typically done originally. Seen wagons replanked with this mistake.

1 I would recommend the edges of the boards if not already dead straight then you run the edges over a surface planer so they are exactly straight and then the boards fit well alongside each other.
2 Then with either a file or plane, run the plane along at 45 degrees along the edge. (You could do it potentially also with a router cutter), I normally gently plane and finish with a file. The when the boards fit together it makes a v shape along each joint. In my opinion if the boards are showing it doesn't look correct without this. I would recommend to do it all with a file if plywood is being used (especially cheap ply) as a plane will just rag the plywood.

You can make the V as big or small as you want (see what they did originally), but bigger boards will probably have a bigger V.

See diagram below


You can see the boards below are ' V' as they should be. (taken on the SVR). The ones on the right are probably original and done as it should be. The ones on the left are not to obviously 'V' so maybe are new replacements ?

 

Paint roof boards and roof sticks before final assembly, you get a neater finish. It is also a lot easier than trying to paint over your head. I used the NSR127 image before, so here is WHHR's no 9 / 25 for the same detail.

No.25 - full length internal par StoneRoad2013, on ipernity

 

I much prefer to paint before assembly too, the only thing I refuse to do is ceiling painting! We paint all wagon planks etc right up to top coat before putting them together as well now to better protect all the wood rather than just the exposed surfaces.

 

If you don't want to paint tongue and grooved boards before assembly, then cramp a load together on edge and then give the tongues a coat of the final colour. Then if there is any shrinkage it movement, you won't get lines of unpainted wood or primer showing.

Sawdust.

(This is an internal partition in a carriage.)

 

We've painted all surfaces on the Bowes waggon currently being rebuilt.
The reasoning behind this - very few places now have the staff / time / resources to keep up with continuous maintenance that a partially painted C&W fleet would incur ... so better to do the painting job properly (or even excessively) now, and prevent water ingress as far as you can. The vehicle will last a lot longer (and even more so, given care and shelter) than it would have had to, in the original working railway system.

 

One thing you can do also is coat exposed wood in clear Cuprinol https://www.cuprinol.co.uk/products/wood_preserver_clear_(bp).jsp
and then paint. I have done that with all my frames and outside woodwork. See picture below. Originally they used to coat all the frames etc with White Lead Paste. The roof canvases were also bedded in with it and then more paste put on top. It why the roofs on things like Royal Saloons are white. It was just the colour of the paste, but you can't buy it now because of the Lead content.

 

This is going to be a LOOOONG post, as I'm "quoting" most of the hints and tips from the thread that inspired this one. I say most as I might end up missing one or two, so, apologies in advance.

and

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and I think that is all the significant ones ...

 

@toplight - aye, I'm a great fan of five-star, I use extra in the joints as well on the other surfaces ...
(as for lead paste, we were going to get some for the Miller Fifer we were restoring - for that sort of job, it tends to end up in the anti-fouling, but we used something else in the end)

 

This is a brilliant thread (and thanks to all who are freely sharing their accumulated knowledge), but would 'Mutual Improvement Classes' perhaps be a more appropriate location?

 

And a basic one :- when using cramps etc ; put scraps of timber in to prevent indentation marks. Ditto when giving something a mallet smack to unlock a dry joint !
(I have been known to forget these, which is not too bad if the damage is not going to be visible otherwise it is "go stand on the naughty step" to myself !)

 

Another basic tip, keep your hammer head clean and shiny by rubbing it on sandpaper on a flat surface. Pins and nails won't get bent as easily and it'll save your fingers too.

Sawdust.