Over the years between layouts (almost 30!!!!) I slowly collected locos and rolling stock for my mid 1930's layout. However, I still had the wagons from my early train set. I sold all the diesels and coaches as I packed up the final layout of my youth. Some of the wagons were early Triang wagons and included a bright yellow tank wagon.

Over the years I collected a number of UD 4 wheel milk tankers in the wrong belief that they would be right for my layout. I now know they were wrong. I have now bought what I actually need for Buckingham West. So I sold a few of the UD tanks on line and decided to recycle 2 of them and the yellow tank.

Buckingham West will have a gas works and will therefore need tank wagons to ship outbound loads of tar, so I decided to recycle these tanks into tar wagons. For this exercise I sprayed the wagons with Halfords grey primer, then black Humbrol satin finish enamel.

I left them for 2 weeks to fully dry because putting acrylic on enamel can easily cause orange peel. I believe the paint needs to fully cure to avoid this. I trialled adding tar runs before I weathered them. It seems best to layer finishes anyway, to get decent results.

I heavily weathered them firstly with white Humbrol weathering powders on the tanks to age the paint and then spraying the underframes in an upward direction so there would be some overspill feathering onto the body. I used Lifecolor rail weather acrylics frame dirt for this.

I finished them off with the weathering powders, mainly dark earth and rust. A very quick misting of acrylic varnish sealed the powders on. The final additions were to represent the tar overspill around the fillers. This was done with liberal amounts of black acrylic paint run down the side from the filler, simply dribbled off an overloaded paintbrush. I did that once, but then dribbled copious amounts of acrylic varnish down from a pipette, letting it dry between applications. The liquid acrylic varnish I use is Johnson's Pledge Klear floor polish. I only have the new stuff at about £6 a litre, not the old mythical stuff you may read about, which people are selling on line for stupidly high prices. The new stuff seems to work very well.

I cannot imagine that even in the 1930s tar wagons being in good shape. I appreciate that most wagons will be in better condition in the 1930s than the 1950s, but these would be well over-used and unloved. The end result looks pretty good to me and is a good example of recycling.

Rich