Thankfully with my good lady being an artist modelling time fits very nicely with painting time so we are both happy, everything else we do together.
Returning to the topic, having visited Beamish last week and gathered a few photos of various NER hopper wagons, I suspect that I might be tempting you further in the coming weeks
While I was off for the last week I also did more work on the NBR 4 plank Dropside wagon. It's a good job that I did because since returning to Wakefield with big plans to crack on with the G5 my mojo seems to have taken a holiday too and no modelling has been done for the last couple of days:(.
Sorry about the poor quality of the photos the white styrene is quite difficult to photograph and I am not yet at the stage where I can give it a coat of primer.
The door bangers had me scratching my head - the Evergreen strip kept snapping as I bent it to shape (despite using a coat of solvent to soften it). My solution was to use the broken ends of styrene as the outer strap and cutting about 2/3rds of the circle from a small length of styrene tube to use for the main protruding part of the door banger.
Before the mojo deserted me and in between building the G5 (pretty much in the thinking time when I needed to work out the next step) this just about fell together - It's a GER Wool Wagon from Andy Beaton's Ragstone range that I picked up at Telford last year during what seemed like a GER frenzy (I ended up with 3 GER wagons, one D&S, this one and a Powsides GER 5 plank open).
I have a couple more of Andy's kit's in the stash and if they go together like this one I will be very pleased.
All the strapping and brake gear are lovely brass castings and a dream to fit.
It will be finished in very faded and worn GER livery as part of my engineers fleet.
I had last week off but it was a bit of a working holiday.
Turning this:
or rather that's the neighbours back garden, because I forgot to take a before shot of ours which is a bit wider.
into this:
The top section of decking is 5m x 2.4m and the lower one 3.4 x 2.4 (but we didn't actually plan on the second section it just developed from the first as they do:rolleyes:
Before my energy deserted me completely, I did manage to complete the NBR 4 plank dropside ready for painting. - While the paint dries I will solder the links on the couplings and do something about all the turning marks on the buffer heads.
Modelling has taken a bit of a back seat to gardening and work the last few weeks so it was good to do a bit over the weekend.
I started by re-roping the NBR open - the sisal string that I used originally just didn't look right. Chris found me something better and I also took Bob Alderman's advice and ran it through block of beeswax which makes it much easier to use and smooths off the "hairiness" of the cord.
I took the opportunity of shredding a bit more sisal string and colouring it to add to the 'straw' packing. It all looks big in this close up but it's quite fine cord at normal viewing distances.
Although they haven't been in front of the camera yet I have painted and added transfers to the NBR dropside and another Slaters Salt wagon. Plus I have weathered the wood insides of both the dropside and the NBR Floor Cloth wagon that I built many moons ago. Once I have weathered the outsides I will take photos.
Although I haven't managed any modelling while in Wakefield for what seems to be far too long I did manage a bit more painting and weathering over the weekend. Apart from couplings the NBR Dropside wagon is finished.
It's not clearly visible anymore but I have added a paint date of '19 in the crescent on the sides and weathered it based on photos of NBR 3 and 4 plank wagons in Tatlow.
Lastly I added it's load after playing around painting that with some 'wood' coloured paint....
I have been tinkering around painting some of the wagon loads that I have made from coffee stirrers and thought that I would share them posed in the NBR dropside wagon.
While I had the paints out I also finished the weathering on the NBR Floor Cloth wagon that I built from a Majestic Models Kit (Now with Chris Basten at Dragon Models).
The 'floor cloth' rolls are made from coloured light card (file dividers). I just need to add a tarpaulin sheet now to finish it off.
Nice work there Rob! I hope that, after all that effort to add the cloth, you're going to keep a corner or two of that tarp open so you can show off that wonderful load!
Next are a few that are the result of messing about with image stacking - each shot has 5 images that are stacked. - apologies for the repeat subjects but they were what I had to hand while experimenting....
Your models are really convincing looking but may I add a couple of what are intended to be constructive comments.
Firstly; I'm not sure how many floor cloth manufacturers there were at Kirkcaldy, but the one that survived until recently was Nairn. Up to the time that linoleum ceased to be produced in quantity the choice of colours was very limited, and probably 90% was in a mid brown shade used not only for floors but also for desk tops and similar purposes. The only other colour I personally encountered was mid green, and I would suggest that pastel colours were not produced.
Then there's the question of loading barrels. The railways specified loading as tightly as operational and signalling matters so as to leave nothing to chance. I attach an example that has particular emphasis on barrels.
None of my remarks are intended to take away the achievement of authenticity in the wagons themselves; just to point out how that authenticity could be enhanced.
Thanks for the contribution 1H. I based the floor cloth on Lino I remember as a child which was a pale yellow in colour and I recall seeing some in a pale pink ype colour too - but I would much rather have something more authentic so I will look for some thin brown card to replace them.
With regards to the barrels and their loading, I based them as best I could on photos of wagons in both Tatlow LNER wagons Volume 3 and Esserys Midland wagons volumes - Tatlow was where I got the idea of the plaited rope fenders from.
Over the last few weekends in odd moments in between gardening I have put together and painted another Slaters Salt van.
In contrast to the one I built earlier which was depicted as faded and worn I wanted this one to be in a recently out shopped version of the livery so I started by giving the wagon a good coat of paint (as opposed to the deliberately patch finish on the first one).
Next I pondered on how to get over the fact that the transfers which are homemade and printed on clear decal paper have a tendency for the colour to wash out of the yellow when applied over a green base coat.
While it worked brilliantly for the faded livery it doesn't for a newly painted livery so I thought that I would have a go at over painting the yellow bit of the lettering by hand.
I used Vallejo Sunshine yellow but found that it took a few coats to get it to cover on the slippery surface of the transfers. In all it took six sessions over two weekends to do both sides it's far from perfect but I am happy with the results and I will use the technique again.
