More on Wagon Suspension

A bit of info on W-irons (apparently called 'axle irons' on the real railway), courtesy of Bill Bedford on P4_talk:

In the beginning each railway company produced it's own design of components for wagons.

Then the Railway Clearing House(RCH) produced standardised designs which many companies adopted for their own wagon designs, so at the grouping all the big four were using RCH designed components.

After nationalisation BR produced two w-iron designs for their own wagons, an 'open' which was a beefed up version of the RCH design and was used for wagons of less than 20T capacity, and a plate which was used for high capacity wagons.

A new design of w-irons was used for newer air braked wagons built from the late sixties.

BR 16T steel mineral wagons were built with standard BR w-irons, but those that were rebuilt with vacuum brake gear received plate w-irons.

This goes some way towards helping unravel the mysteries of all the varieties of W-iron available as etches from Bill Bedford. Non-vacuum-braked 16T minerals require BWF080. 21T minerals and vacuum-braked 16T minerals require BWF081.

Apparently you also have to be careful which bearings you use, as some are the wrong depth - see Craig W's comment on my last post. I've ordered some Markits/Romford bearings.

As an alternative to the Bill Bedford springing units there's also the Exactoscale ones: http://www.exactoscale.co.uk/downloads/Buffer%20Hight%202d.pdf

Their W-irons come either as a chassis etch with a choice of wheelbase or as W-iron assemblies - see: http://www.exactoscale.co.uk/4mmrollingstock.html#4WC4

1mm bore parallel bearings and spring wire are included.

Instructions for assembling these are at: http://www.exactoscale.co.uk/downloads/INS%201000.pdf

Thanks to Andrew Jukes (of Exactoscale) for this info.