Despite it looking like the hottest weekend of the year, I have been wanting to get on with some wagon building...

So on the way home from work today I dropped into the model shop and came away with a Ratio LMS van, a Cambrian "Wheeler & Gregory" 4 plank PO and a Cambrian chassis kit (giving the bits to re chassis another old Bachmann model along with the missing bits for a Cambrian LMS open)

This evening I have made a start on building

first up the ratio LMS van, I want to have a few of these to mix up with my Cambrian ones. The horizontal planking makes a nice difference to the majority of other vans I have built so far. The kit was a bit of a pig to assamble the chassis, I think when I build another I will bin the chassis and replace with Cambrian parts! The way the solbars fit to the narrow floor doesn't work too well when you want to file back the clearances to accept new W irons!

The body on the other hand pretty much fell together, constructed with plasticard spacers to hold the sides / ends together then dropping in the completed chassis unit and securing with Butanone. The roof is just placed on for the time being, (I want to be able to add more weight inside if I struggle to get it under the chassis.

Next up was the Cambrian PO, I am trying to get a good mixture of different manufacturers PO designs. At the moment its all made up of Bachmann RCH designs, and a single Bachmann all steel. So its about time I start adding some variety.

I like the curved ends, making it rather different to the rest of the open wagons on the layout. As usual for Cambrian it fell together very nicely (and the flat floor and thinner solbars made life simple for fitting the springing units. This was followed by another Cambrian LMS 5 plank which fell together equally nicely.

Finally I have fitted the chassis bits to the Parkside LMS 3 plank and LNER lowfit mentioned in my last post.

In each case I am at a bit of a blocker now, as I have just realised that the (second hand) axles I bought with some exactoscale wheels are the parallel type, and I don't have any parallel bearings to use with them. So need to decide now whether to buy new axles or buy bearings. Either way it prevents the final assembly of brake gear etc and final w iron fitting until I get it sorted.

Hopefully I will be able to dig out a few spare 12mm P4 wheelsets out of some modern stock which will fit for the time being until I get some more...