Model Engine Works: 009 Morris J Rail-Van

Built with Die Cast body and Kato chassis

009 Morris J Rail-Van

4 mm scale

Hunting through the internet on my prolonged absences from work April 2020, I came across an Oxford Classix Morris J Van for sale on eBay, as this was for a very reasonable price and I had an idea for a small service van on a backwater railway, I bought it.

Having received my van and dismantled it, I took a Kato 11-109 chassis and had a go fitting this into the body shell. The major alterations to the chassis had to be done to the front part of the unit, some metal had to be removed, this allowed it to sit in the right alignment to the wheel arches. To do this bit of cutting, I removed the plastic shell from the chassis and cut the front off using a cutting disk in a mini drill. One thing to observe when doing this the metal chassis is in two electricity isolated halves, so when the cutting is done make sure that there are no little bits of metalwork still bridging the gap between the two. This will cause a short circuit.

I then carefully removed just over half of the metalwork which held the plastic floor pan and wheels in place at each end of the inner body shell. This allowed the chassis to sit far enough into the body to place the centres of the wheels at the bottom line of the bodywork.

I then cut off the front and rear mudguards from the floor pan, which was a tricky job on the front ones as I did this by keeping the front part of the floor pan connecting them together, this made it much easier to line them up when fitted. These were glued to the metal bodywork with a little super glue, I did remove the paint from the wheel arches on the body first. The inside of the rear ones were made flush with the inner body, but the front ones I left to overhanging a bit and cut back the chassis to suit.

The chassis needed trimming at both sides mainly at the front to squeeze into place. Once this was lined up I drilled a series of holes to suit 1 mm soft steel wire and formed some side rails and a front and rear bumper rail, and that was it, a relativity quick fix with no painting or finishing needed, though I will probably give it a coat of matt varnish and a bit of weathering.

The little van is a good weight because of the metal body and runs very well with the new style Kato chassis.

Sunday, 16 August 2020

009 Morris J Rail-Van

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