Morgan Design GWR underframe parts

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HowardGWR

Morgan Design GWR underframe parts

Postby HowardGWR » Sat Mar 08, 2014 7:42 pm

[This thread started as a comment on some of the Morgan Design kits coming into stock here. John McAleely]

A very interesting development John. Is there a write up on these new items somewhere? Could it be published here (perhaps the instructions sheets?). The frets are interesting but I am squinting a bit to see what is on them. Thanks for what you do for us.
Last edited by John McAleely on Sun Mar 23, 2014 7:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Edited to reflect move to new thread

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John McAleely
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Re: Stores Stock: Morgan Design GWR underframe parts

Postby John McAleely » Sat Mar 08, 2014 7:48 pm

I'm not aware of one yet. It must be said that the instructions included are brief (3 short paragraphs of the how-to-construct type), so I'm not sure they will provide much background info. For example, all appear to include number plates, so I'm not sure what marks WN4630 apart, aside from the quantity.

My own knowledge of the GWR means I can't offer much help - does anyone more knowledgeable have some advice? Do these pair with the underframes from the same stable?

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Dave K
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Re: Stores Stock: Morgan Design GWR underframe parts

Postby Dave K » Sun Mar 09, 2014 8:59 am

HowardGWR wrote:A very interesting development John. Is there a write up on these new items somewhere? Could it be published here (perhaps the instructions sheets?). The frets are interesting but I am squinting a bit to see what is on them. Thanks for what you do for us.


Howard,

The instructions for the solebars, such as they are, are included in the current general instructions for the the Morgan Design underframe system. This is not the version included in the download section on the main society website.

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Dave K
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Re: Stores Stock: Morgan Design GWR underframe parts

Postby Dave K » Sun Mar 09, 2014 9:04 am

John McAleely wrote: For example, all appear to include number plates, so I'm not sure what marks WN4630 apart, aside from the quantity.


John,

As the WN4630 fret covers DC3 fitted it wagons it covers a number of different GW wagon diagrams, both open wagons and vans - hence the 52 different number plates.

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Re: Stores Stock: Morgan Design GWR underframe parts

Postby John McAleely » Sun Mar 09, 2014 11:35 am

dave k wrote:The instructions for the solebars, such as they are, are included in the current general instructions for the the Morgan Design underframe system. This is not the version included in the download section on the main society website.


Thanks Dave. Are these instructions somewhere I can seek out - from your description, it sounds like the ones on the website need updating.

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Craig Warton
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Re: Stores Stock: Morgan Design GWR underframe parts

Postby Craig Warton » Mon Mar 10, 2014 5:09 am

John,

Do you have any information on when (or if) the society will be getting a restock of the actual under frame kits?

regards,

Craig Warton

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Re: Stores Stock: Morgan Design GWR underframe parts

Postby John McAleely » Mon Mar 10, 2014 9:31 am

I can find out Craig. Do you mean WN4420, and WN4470? The rest look like they are in stock to me.

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Re: Stores Stock: Morgan Design GWR underframe parts

Postby Craig Warton » Mon Mar 10, 2014 9:42 am

Hi John,

Yes those two are the ones. Is there any possibility of the society also getting WN4440 (9' WB Lever brake) in stock at all? Being located in Oz I don't tend to hear the gossip about what is happening and Brian Morgan has not replied to several requests for info. Also, nice to contribute to the society coffers.

Regards,

Craig

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Re: Stores Stock: Morgan Design GWR underframe parts

Postby Dave K » Mon Mar 10, 2014 11:49 am

John McAleely wrote:Thanks Dave. Are these instructions somewhere I can seek out - from your description, it sounds like the ones on the website need updating.


The instructions are on a CD which Jeremy may have - if not I can try an email you the file :?:

HowardGWR

Re: Stores Stock: Morgan Design GWR underframe parts

Postby HowardGWR » Mon Mar 10, 2014 2:22 pm

Perhaps I should make clear that it was not obvious to me whether the fret photos shew solebars for 3 or 4 wagons. There is a group of 6 and then a separate pair in a darker colour -any ideas as to what is intended here?

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Re: Stores Stock: Morgan Design GWR underframe parts

Postby John McAleely » Mon Mar 10, 2014 6:05 pm

HowardGWR wrote:Perhaps I should make clear that it was not obvious to me whether the fret photos shew solebars for 3 or 4 wagons. There is a group of 6 and then a separate pair in a darker colour -any ideas as to what is intended here?


Taking WN4620 as an example:

WN4620.jpg


The two dark panels to the left look like they fold up to form the U of a solebar. I think you then add two of the half etched panels to the right (one per solebar) in the bottom/inside of the U to get a fully detailed set of solebars for one wagon.

So I think that counting the 'dark' pairs gives you the number of wagons the etch is intended to support.
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Re: Stores Stock: Morgan Design GWR underframe parts

Postby John McAleely » Tue Mar 11, 2014 12:02 am

Craig Warton wrote:Yes those two are the ones.


In short yes. No promises on timelines, but we are working actively with Brian at the moment, and restocking these kits is on the list of things to do.


Craig Warton wrote:Is there any possibility of the society also getting WN4440 (9' WB Lever brake) in stock at all? Being located in Oz I don't tend to hear the gossip about what is happening and Brian Morgan has not replied to several requests for info. Also, nice to contribute to the society coffers.


I was away from my PC when I spoke to Jeremy, so I was working from my memory of this thread. If I understood correctly, these 'gaps' in our stock will be filled eventually, but Brian is working on items which can be obviously used with kits from other manufacturers, before underframes which would need a scratch build approach to the body. So, it seems likely we will stock these items, but 'in the fullness of time', unlike the kits we list as out of stock, which are more imminent.

jayell

Re: Stores Stock: Morgan Design GWR underframe parts

Postby jayell » Tue Mar 11, 2014 11:18 am

Whilst reading the latest entries in this thread a packet from the 'Stores' dropped through my letter box.

In it was an etch WN.4620 Skeleton DC Solebar, having looked closely at it (there is minute lettering on it, needing a magnifying glass for me to read) it seems it is for a pair of solebars for ONE wagon, with several alternative rivet overlays, one pair for DC(offside and near) and the other three for DC1, DC2 and DC3 'vee' not offset. I think the 6 small items are 'axle box bumpers' .

I am still not sure how to make use of this etch after reading the instructions several times but it does seem that an underframe etch is also needed as the instructions say "locate the solebars to the underframe sides using 0.5mm wire. Solder/Araldite in place.

So my original idea that I could use these in scratch building a wagon chassis using the w-iron etches I already have and plastic strip may not work out and I may have wasted my money, all of £2.60 - :cry:

John Lewis

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Guy Rixon
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Re: Stores Stock: Morgan Design GWR underframe parts

Postby Guy Rixon » Tue Mar 11, 2014 3:01 pm

johnlewis wrote:I am still not sure how to make use of this etch after reading the instructions several times but it does seem that an underframe etch is also needed as the instructions say "locate the solebars to the underframe sides using 0.5mm wire. Solder/Araldite in place.
John Lewis


…which is curious, as I can't see any 0.5mm holes in the solebars. From the stores-catalogue photo, the only holes I can see are the horse-hook holes and those are bigger than 0.5mm.

You should still be able to use these on a scratch-built underframe. If you have springing, and the axleguards don't move, then just glue the solebars to the outside of the axleguards. If your axleguards are the rocking kind, then you can probably fix the solebars by gluing their top flange to the wagon floor. You might even get away with gluing just the ends of the solebars into the headstocks; I'd expect the channel solebars to be stiff enough that they don't distort along their length.

You would need to get the V hangers from some other source, or recycle plastic ones from the kit.

jayell

Re: Stores Stock: Morgan Design GWR underframe parts

Postby jayell » Tue Mar 11, 2014 6:10 pm

Guy Rixon wrote:…which is curious, as I can't see any 0.5mm holes in the solebars. From the stores-catalogue photo, the only holes I can see are the horse-hook holes and those are bigger than 0.5mm.

You should still be able to use these on a scratch-built underframe. If you have springing, and the axleguards don't move, then just glue the solebars to the outside of the axleguards. If your axleguards are the rocking kind, then you can probably fix the solebars by gluing their top flange to the wagon floor. You might even get away with gluing just the ends of the solebars into the headstocks; I'd expect the channel solebars to be stiff enough that they don't distort along their length.

You would need to get the V hangers from some other source, or recycle plastic ones from the kit.


I have the Morgan sprung W-irons so can try your first suggestion. I am starting from scratch, no kit to source bits from so next job is to sort out a supplier of the various brake bits and bobs.

john lewis

HowardGWR

Re: Stores Stock: Morgan Design GWR underframe parts

Postby HowardGWR » Tue Mar 11, 2014 10:22 pm

As things stand, I am now equally struggling to understand the value of a fret, most of which has to be discarded, at least, if I have understood correctly what you have discovered, John. If the choices were in separate frets, that would seem more sensible to me.

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Craig Warton
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Re: Stores Stock: Morgan Design GWR underframe parts

Postby Craig Warton » Tue Mar 11, 2014 10:57 pm

Howard,

They seem fairly clear cut to me. You can build solebars for 1 wagon underframe from a set. There are several variations of rivet patterns on the actual sides of the sole and this is covered in the etch. I have built a couple of the underframes now and while they take time and are a bit fiddly in parts everthing is there and it fits together properly. With that in mind, I would be very surprised if there is not a provision to fit them to the frame etch - especially if mentioned in the instructions.

I will be ordering some shortly to try out because I am sick of thinning down plastic ones to fit, i find it a very tedious process.

John,

Thanks for the info on restocking of the frame kits. The lever brake one can be used on the David Geen 3 plank wagon, outside frame van, loco coal wagon, Ratio iron mink and even under the Coopercraft 4 plank wagon... so it does have uses. Similarly, the 9' DC2 underframe can be used under the parkside O13 if looking at stocking parts suitable for kits first.

regards,

Craig w

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Dave K
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Re: Stores Stock: Morgan Design GWR underframe parts

Postby Dave K » Wed Mar 12, 2014 8:49 am

johnlewis wrote:I have the Morgan sprung W-irons so can try your first suggestion. I am starting from scratch, no kit to source bits from so next job is to sort out a supplier of the various brake bits and bobs.john lewis


John,
I used Morgan solebars and sprung underframe when I built a W3 (a vacuum fitted cattle wagon for the non-GW modellers) from a Coopercraft kit. The solebars are glued to the wagon floor (for which I used Evostick solvent free glue) and bolted the underframe to the wagon floor.

HowardGWR

Re: Stores Stock: Morgan Design GWR underframe parts

Postby HowardGWR » Wed Mar 12, 2014 11:28 am

Craig and Dave
Thanks for your information.
From your experience, could the spare surface etches be stuck onto a blank (e.g.) Evergreen 'solebar'? This could make the fret very useful. I am looking at Morton 10ft wb 17ft 6" standard RCH size solebars here, as on fret WN4660. Mr Morgan provides several options with this one, which I admit puzzles me, as I thought the Morton RCH stage of development, on GWR at least, were practically all the same. There are some very good close-ups of these solebars in Russell 'GWR Freight Wagons and Loads'.

As I say above, I have not denoted any significant differences in the solebars on V24 vans, O32 open wagons (et al). I imagine the fret could be useful to modellers of other Grouping lines with RCH vehicles and of course BR copies of same.

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John McAleely
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Re: Morgan Design GWR underframe parts

Postby John McAleely » Sun Apr 06, 2014 11:59 pm

I've been recently supplied with updated instructions for these kits.

Instructions for assembly of GWR underframes. (PDF)

Also in the downloads section of the website. I understand these are a later version of the instructions from the CD Dave mentioned above, so I believe the website now has all the instructions available.
Last edited by John McAleely on Mon Apr 07, 2014 12:05 am, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: add mention of DaveK's reference to additional instructions on a CD.

HowardGWR

Re: Morgan Design GWR underframe parts

Postby HowardGWR » Thu Apr 10, 2014 6:18 pm

Just to update members with the fact that I ordered a bunch of the 17ft 6" 10ft wb solebar types (WN4660) and these were delivered with alacrity by Stores. Having examined them, you get three overlays per fret but only one solebar. The three overlays are so similar, it would be so easy, say, to fill the horse hook hole on one of the three if you didn't want those on your implementation. So in fact the otherwise extraneous extra two frets are available for fitting to an Evergreen or Plastruct 3.1mm plastic 'solebar' which can of course do for several solebars.

What led me to this was that some of of the plastic kit people (e.g. Parkside, Cambrian, Ratio) are making underframe kits of this RCH size but without headstocks and providing a load of RTR gubbins you don't want. So you pay a lot (when multiplied by how many wagons you are building) for stuff you are mostly, in P4, discarding.

So adopting the Morgan Design fret, it still only remains to make your own headstocks, as would have been the case with the above underframe kits too. These are reasonably easy to knock up in a batch out of brass or N/S and as I have a bunch of RTR van bodies bought as spares, I can now start equipping them with underframes and including compensation axle guards also from stores, etc. As I wrote earlier, it seems to me that these Morgan solebar kits can be easily adapted for other Big Four RCH standard wagons or BR ones -but I had to see them in the flesh (well brass) before taking a big plunge. I may deposit an enlarged photo (when I've worked out how) as the Stores photo is a bit of a 'much squinting needed' example. :-)

Hope this gives some ideas to colleagues.

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Re: Morgan Design GWR underframe parts

Postby John McAleely » Sun Apr 27, 2014 4:54 pm

Some new items from this range have come in stock online today.

Details here.


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