Keyhaven

Ingenious! I'd suggest maybe just adding a 'top' to the vacuum brake cylinder and finishing off the missing beams might be worth it Andy?

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Nice to see you getting in some modelling time - messing with servers must get dull at some point

Looks interesting. ?

Personally I'd stick with the cambrian kit but Its quiet hard to get square

 

Your mods have made a definate improvement

 

What couplings are you going to use?

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Hi  The reference "GWR Freight Wagons and Loads in service on the Great Western Railway and British Rail Western Region"   by J H Russell  Pub.  OPC   shows exactly what these wagons look like as they are unloading and clearly shows the floor position.  If only Flangeway had done some proper research they would have raised the floor of the body to the CORRECT position and put the ballast weight in the recess underneath. This would have allowed the chassis members to have been made full depth,and the top of the vacuum cylinder to have been moulded on. Modifying the position of the floor may have prevented the unfortunate sag of the body. The axleguards, brakegear, buffers and guide mechanism would still need total replacedment or major reworking to produce a reasonably accurate model of either the early BR unfitted version or the GWR version and even more work would be required to produce the later vacuum fitted variants.  It is pity they mistakenly assumed the vacuum fitted versions have the Vee hanger in the same position as the unfitted wagons. They have finished up making a true chimera which is very difficult to convert into any of the 3 possible variants with many components which cannot be used at all for a reasonably accurate model.!!  A

Thanks for uploading the details of the modifications to the Mermaid, very informative. OK, nine years a long time before responding but we have only just bought our first Mermaid........

 

cheers

 

Jack