As a bit of a change to all the scenic stuff I decided to make an inroad into the rolling stock. Some Wrightlines skips would be ideal. My first task though was to find them! I knew where 4 were but was sure that I had bought 3 more - or was I imagining it. Spent ages looking for them only to eventually find them pretty much in front of me and in a Wrightlines box which for some reason I hadn't been looking for. Just to carry this theme on, something dropped out of the box when I opened it. Iis hard enough to find anything on this floor at the best of times but when you don't know what you are looking for ..... Still don't actually as never found it. Anyway, this is what I had;

Seven skips of three different designs but all making up into the same thing. Incidentally, the Hudson type skip was the most numerous of all the wagon classes of the WDLR, not that you would know it though from the lack of pictures! One chassis is an exquisite lost wax brass casting, three are white metal one piece and three are white metal two piece castings. After much cleaning up of chassis bits, I realised that I had a bit of a bearing problem as there were not enough flanged bearings to go around and I couldn't find any in my various boxes. All I could find were the plain ones but these are too small. So I turned to the skip bodies. I had made a start on one of these a couple of years ago but hadn't really got very far. It is all butt joints in pretty thin half etched brass and I found it impossible then to get it to hold together properly. This time though, I got a bit more creative;

What we have here is a sheet of glass with a square sitting on it. The clever bit though is the magnet holding the end piece square to the square. Things got even more interesting when it came to the other end as held the side down also with another magnet attached to a Stanley knife blade on the other side of the glass. There were a couple of little bulldog clips in there as well to act as heat sinks.

So here we have a basic tub;

And, about two hours later, it finished with all the side, end and top pieces in place. I really hope I can speed the next ones up a bit or this is going to turn into a two week job!