Tinplate Girl Side-dump ore car.

[Annie]

http://tinplategirl.com/2011/07/27/023- ... p-ore-car/



I was wondering if anyone had built a side tipper wagon from these plans.  They are to 7/8th scale, but I would imagine that it would be straight forward enough to reduce the plans to 16mm.
Many years ago now when my children were small I built a 10mm scale 'Sir Handel' and one or two narrow gauge wagons to suit from galvanised steel sheet and tinplate because my kids were very keen on the stories by the Rev Awdry.


I made a 10mm scale tipper wagon back then, only whatever drawing I was working to I no longer have, - which is I why I'm wondering about purchasing the tinplate girl plans.  I have a stash of catering sized coffee cans so I'm not lacking for a source of material.

[Busted Bricks]

I built one. Not hard to do and good fun.

[Annie]

Thanks BB Looks like there's going to be some tinplate tippers in my future.

[Busted Bricks]

I think it would be a bit more fiddly to make in 16mm gauge but doable.

I had intended to make some tooling so speed up building them. I wanted a rake for myself in 7-8ths and thought I might try and sell a few. In fact this was the reason I started carrying tinplate sheets in my shop. Hardly sold any so I still have loads of it. Much easier than to work with old tins (not as cheap of course). Anyway, best laid plans and all.... So far I have just built the one in the picture.

[Annie]

When I made the 10mm scale one I basically used a small pair of tin snips, a pair of smooth jaw pliers, a fine toothed file and a pencil torch.  It wasn't too difficult to do, but then on the other hand before that I'd been working in P4 making tiny 19th century colliery locos so I suppose after doing that 10mm scale was huge.

Tinplate is a hugely underated modelling material.  I had put the word out where I used to work to keep the big catering sized coffee cans for me and as a result I have enough to last a lifetime.  It's lovely smooth clean tinplate and very easy to work with.

I built this 0 gauge loco mostly from tinplate,

[Tropic Blunder]

amazing job on that O scale loco Annie!

[Annie]

Thanks I was seriously into coarse scale 0 gauge for a while there.

[-steves-]

That's an amazing loco from tin plate, go you

[Annie]

Thanks Steve  I sold the loco a while ago which I still kind of regret, but when I built the 14xx I made a steel template for marking out the cab roof, cab sides and tank sides all in one piece.  I still have it somewhere which means that it wouldn't be too difficult to build another 14xx if I wanted to.  Once I'd figured out how to create that most distinctive part of the loco's appearance the rest wasn't that difficult at all.

I do still sometimes wonder about going back to working in coarse scale '0' gauge again, but it's too expensive these days even for a scratchbuilder like me. I still have an unfinished LSWR G6 put away somewhere, though I don't think I'll ever complete it now.