Cloning sheep

Having constructed an open topped cattle wagon from an IP Engineering kit and repainted a secondhand Tralee & Dingle open topped cattle wagon in PLR livery, I decided to give them both sheep loads. 

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Having acquired my own 3D printer (see How I assembled my Anet A8 clone printer), I printed out a dozen sheep using files downloaded from the Thingiverse website - https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:182273 and loaded them into the wagons.

However, someone with more knowledge than me about transporting livestock, pointed out that sheep were usually crammed into wagons to prevent them from falling over and injuring themselves or getting trampled-on and so I needed a whole load more sheep. I reckoned I needed around 20 per wagon. I didn't fancy printing out that many (they are a bit fiddly to print effectively and take three or four hours each to print out) so, being a bit impatient, not to mention, penny-pinching, I looked for another way of filling the wagons more quickly and cheaply.

Why not make castings using plaster, I thought?

The first job was to make a casing for the mould. This was made slightly smaller than the internal dimensions of the wagon from five pieces of corriflute. The base was the size of the internal dimensions minus 10mm to take account of the thickness of the sides of the mould box.

The sides were 35mm tall. These were fixed to the base with hot glue.

Some cheap PlayDoh was acquired from my local Bargain Store and this was squidged into the mould box to about half its depth,

A couple of my 3D printed sheep were then carefully pressed into the PlayDoh and removed, leaving an impression.

When the entire surface had been impressed with sheep backs, a sloppy mix of plaster was poured into the mould and left for an hour to set.

The sides of the mould box were then prised off and the PlayDoh removed.

The cast was then scrubbed under the tap with a pan-cleaning brush to remove the more persistent pieces of PlayDoh.

The false floor was then painted black with acrylic paint.

The sheep were then painted a yellowy cream colour ........

..... and then dry-brushed with white so the cream colour showed through in the depressions. Their faces were painted black.

 Their bums were painted brown, leaving their tails white. They were test fitted into the wagon and, although they looked OK, they did give the impression they were swimming in molasses.

Furthermore, when the sheep were removed from the PlayDoh, some of their heads became misshapen.....

So, I decided to have another go. 

I had noticed that when pushing the back of the sheep into the PlayDoh, there was a tendency for the previous adjacent impression to become distorted, causing some of the sheep to have narrow ridged backs. So, for my second attempt, I used six sheep, varying their size slightly (in my slicer - Cura), I left most of the sheep in the PlayDoh while I made the new impressions.

This helped to prevent the adjacent impressions becoming distorted. I was also very careful when removing their heads from the Doh to try and preserve as much detail as possible. Eventually, the mould was finished ........

...... and so was filled with plaster, paying careful attention to ensure it was poured into the head cavities.

After an hour or so, the cast was removed and cleaned-up.

This was a big improvement. Before the plaster fully hardened, I carefully removed unnecessary pieces of plaster from around the edges and tidied up some of their heads with a craft knife and the blade of a small chisel.

I then painted them as before.

As the sheep are more tightly clustered, there is less impression of them swimming in treacle and, providing they are not given close scrutiny, I think they could pass for a load of sheep.

I think the PlayDoh cost less than £4.00 (though you could make your own from flour, water, salt and oil) and the 1kg of plaster was £6.99 on eBay. There was enough plaster in the bag for three castings - hence £2.33 per casting as the PlayDoh is reusable.

A word of warning! Don't mix the plaster too thickly. It needs to be about the consistency of whipping cream so it can flow freely into all the nooks and crannies. I made the mistake of making one batch too thick (more like rich double cream) and it simply wouldn't flow. In fact it was starting to set as I tried pouring. The result was headless sheep with no surface detail.

If the sheep were clustered even more tightly, so little if any floor was visible, then I think the casting would be even more effective. I am sure some of you will be far more patient and skilled than me!

An added bonus of using plaster is that it provides much needed additional weight in the wagons - not to mention keeping costs down in filling wagons. I am beginning to wonder what other loads could be cast using this method: packing cases, stacks of timber, stacks of bricks, stacked slates, coal, minerals? The possibilities are endless!

How I created various wagon loads

Contents

• Introduction
• Open wagons
• Flat wagons
• Timber wagons
• Tipplers and hoppers
• Conclusion

Introduction

It's no secret that the mainstay of traffic movements on my railway relates to freight operations (eg see Managing freight on the railway). Over the years, I have steadily increased the number of goods wagons and from time to time described how I have made removable loads for them (eg see How I made some open wagons). However, I have never gathered together all these disparate chunks of information into one place. This post aims to rectify this.

Open wagons

I have constructed open wagons in three different ways; making them from scratch using plasticard, making them from my own resin castings and modifying cheap commercial models. Apart from a couple of my very first plasticard models, I have made all the loads on my open wagons removable so I can run them loaded in one direction and empty when they return.

The majority of my open wagons have coal loads, to reflect the preponderance of this traffic during the period when my railway is set (ie the early 1930s).

Real chunks of coal are used (therapeutically created by bashing normal house coal with a hammer),  glued to rectangles of plywood mounted on strip wood as strengthening battens and to allow the loads to be more readily removed.

I have also created various other loads for open wagons based on the sort of other general merchandise which might have been carried at the time on a light railway serving a rural community. For example, a load of barrels travelling to or from the brewery at Beeston Castle.

The barrels were bought from a trader at the Llanfair Garden Railway Fair, painted and glued to a piece of plywood scribed to represent planking.

Another wagon has been loaded with sawn timber, representing a load which might travel from the sawmill at Peckforton to any other station, but most likely to the main terminus at Beeston Market.

The timber planks are a mix of coffee stirrers, lollypop sticks and offcuts of stripwood. They are tied down with book-binding twine which doesn't tend to fray like other string. This load isn't removable at present, but eventually I will modify it so it can be removed.

Based on an old photo of a wagon on the Welshpool and Llanfair Railway and another taken on the Southwold Railway, one open wagon has a mixed load of packing cases, a gear wheel and a couple of milk churns. The gear wheel could be delivered to the water mill or maybe to the brewery.

The packing cases were made by cladding wooden blocks with coffee stirrer planking, the milk churns were bought at a fair and the gear wheel is plastic bought on eBay and mounted on a cradle made from cut down lolly sticks. This load is removable in its entirety, everything being glued to a plywood base.

One wagon has a load destined for a builders' merchant with a stack of bricks, a pile of cement bags and a heap of sand in one corner. It's assumed that this could travel to or from any station on the line as a building project could happen anywhere and the builders' merchant similarly might be anywhere.

The bricks were bought on eBay though several dolls house suppliers also stock them, the cement bags were moulded in Fimo then painted and covered with tissue paper coated in PVA and painted to represent a tarpaulin. A piece of balsa wood was shaped with a knife and file before being covered in PVA and sprinkled with sand to represent the pile of sand. Everything was then stuck to a piece of plywood so the load could be easily removed.

Two open wagons have tarpaulin covers.

One cover was made from a piece of cotton fabric dyed green and attached with button thread to the wagon. This is not removable which isn't important as anything could be carried by the wagon in either direction. The other was made by draping a couple of layers of paper towel over a wagon protected with cling film, then soaking the towel in diluted PVA. When the PVA had dried, the cover was removed and painted with acrylic paint. As it has hardened to form the shape of the wagon it is removable.

Flat wagons

I have a range of flat wagons derived from various sources. Their loads are designed to reflect the needs of the rural locality served by the railway.

One wagon carries farm machinery.

The machinery is actually a couple of Brittains model ploughs bought on eBay and painted with red oxide primer. Although they are under scale, when clumped together they look suitably workmanlike and agricultural.

Another wagon is loaded with a tractor.

This was originally a resin cast moneybox, again bought on eBay. It is roped down to a couple of stripwood blocks glued to a piece of plywood.

One wagon is loaded with milk churns. This wagon tends to be attached to the first mixed train of the day and also to the afternoon mixed.

Because I needed quite a few and the cost of resin cast 1920s conical milk churns was prohibitive, I made my own using the ends of some cheap plastic party toys (see How I made some milk churns).

The match truck for the mobile crane is loaded with a mixture of  appropriate paraphernalia.

The jacks are white metal castings bought online from Garden Railway Specialists, the timber baulks are pieces of stripwood, the chain was bought from Cornwall Model Boats, the rope is a piece of garden twine and the toolbox was made from a piece of balsa with paperclip wire handles.

The permanent way wagon was similarly loaded with tools and other suitable oddments.

The bits and pieces are all from the Bachmann platelayers' accessory pack, weathered with acrylic paints.

Timber wagons

The sawmill at Peckforton (see How I constructed the sawmill) requires some quite specific traffic. As can be seen above, one of the open wagons carries sawn timber but the sawmill also requires the raw material, transported by various timber wagons.

Half a dozen stake wagons are loaded with plastic logs, glued together with Evostick and draped with chains. The logs can be removed as a unit.

Pit props of various lengths cut from twigs pruned from trees in the nearby wood were loaded on to some of the other timber wagons.

It seems that there was no standard length for a pit prop. Mines required a range of lengths to suit the needs of the tunnels below ground.

A large tree trunk was formed from a card tube, covered in paper towel soaked in PVA scrunched to represent bark. This was wedged into the stakes on the bolster wagons.

Tipplers and hoppers

I have two rakes of tippler wagons used to transport ore and spoil from the copper mine to the exchange siding at Beeston Market. One rake is permanently full and the other is permanently empty. The full rake runs up the line and is then swapped for the empty rake to run back down the line. There is a hidden link between the exchange siding and the copper mine to make the swap.

The tipplers have false floors made from plywood covered with PVA and then sprinkled with crushed sandstone.

There is also a rake of hopper wagons similar to those which ran on the Snailbeach and District Railways. These serve the sand quarry and so have removable loads of sand made in a similar way to the tippler loads.

A rectangle of 3mm plywood was cut to the same dimensions as the inside of the wagon, together with a piece of foam packaging (rescued from a parcel received in the post - I seldom throw anything 'useful' away!). Note: the foam can be 'tidied-up' later.

The foam was then stapled to the ply along three edges

Offcuts of foam were then squeezed into the pocket and the fourth edge stapled.

Battens from ply or balsa were then glued to the inderside of the ply (these varied in depth so the loads for each wagon would be non uniform).....

.... and foam was then given a generous coat of PVA and sprinkled with solver sand (the sand intended for children's play pits), .......

...... before being inserted into the wagon.

Conclusion

To my mind, the wagon loads add to the interest of trains running up and down the line. I really enjoy watching a mixed goods slowly meandering through the undergrowth and the logistical puzzles involved in shunting wagons at each station en route.

I need to make a few more loads of sawn timber for the stake wagons and probably need a few more varied loads for open wagons but, otherwise, I am reaching the stage where goods traffic on the line has reached its optimum level.

Of course, I could always make more loads than wagons - and swap them around a bit for variety. That would mean making some amendments to my home-grown freight management computer program (see My freight management computer program) - but, of course, that would make it better reflect the varied nature of goods traffic on a light railway in the 1930s....... I wonder what they might have to carry if the circus same to town???