These wagons have been hanging around between the layout and the workbench for a long while appearing in the background of previous photographs of models.

I bought a few Mathieson models wagons to see what they were like, with the idea to convert them quickly and easily. They are really good models for RTR with crisp fine detailed mouldings. The length and width is comparable to the 2mmSA 1907 RCH body but the height is noticeably greater, despite also being 7 plank wagons. To use 2FS wheel sets the brake blocks need to chamfered or thinned to clear the flanges, which can be pared away with a knife or removed with a file. Either is easy to do. My next step was to drill the headstocks to fit the coupling hooks. I used a mini-drill on the lowest speed setting but the metal chassis block requires to go steady and clear the drill flutes often to prevent breakages.

The liveries are printed really nicely but look so very bright. To begin with I attacked them with a scratch brush and followed up with some black washes. The loads are 'heap' shaped extruded polystyrene bases cut to be a tight fit inside the wagons, painted black, with a thin layer of finely crushed coal on top. (I looked up the most common sizes that coal was broken into and at scale size it's pretty small at around 0.3mm.) The exterior and chassis were treated with my first attempt at weathering powders using a rust colour from DCC supplies (no connection).

Here they are sat on the slightly lowered and newly realigned back siding on Littlemore. I haven't included any pictures of this because there are plenty of pictures documenting pulling 2mm track up on here already. I didn't actually harm any track, just the wood underneath it, but I have some more pictures to come of cutting painfully close around the switches to replace the TOUs. More on that another time. For those that might be interested the photograph was taken at F22 and exposed for 15 seconds. It's still a little blurry at the back and the liveries are a little more readable in reality - I haven't completely obliterated them, although it can be difficult not to get carried away and overdo weathering!