We have been in the new house for about a month and are still sorting house things, but the railway room is becoming less crowded by the day!

In the meantime the final part of my recycling is about producing a batch of wagons.

For those of you that have followed my blog you will know that the junction station on my layout is called Newton Purcell. The real NP is south east of Banbury where there is a belt of ironstone. Accordingly I have an ironstone quarry and therefore need some private owners wagons. As I owe my love of railways to my late father I decided to use his middle name as the quarry name: Hewitt. I decided on a red oxide type colour and white lettering. They had to be well weathered taking on board ironstone colouring.

I had collected 10 old Triang opens from exhibition stalls. Plain green and brown usually. I cleaned them, primed them in the same way as my other paint jobs and then sprayed them with Railmatch enamel rust.

Next I printed HEWITT on the PC, put some clear hard plastic sheet over it, taped it in place and using a sharp craft knife, carefully cut out the letters to form a template. The plastic came from some packing. I'm not sure but I think it was from a cake box or something.

Once I had cleaned up the edges of the cuts, I trialled white paint from the airbrush onto coloured paper. It was clear the trick was to keep the stencil hard up against the wagon side, to use the paint sparingly to be thin and look worn, but not runny. Some spraying was more defined than others, but that prevented all the wagons looking the same.

Once properly dry, I added a very very thin and watery black wash along the grooves between the planks to provide definition. I also hand painted (brush) the insides using a badly mixed combination of tan, white and rust acrylics. The poor mix gave variation. Weathered and aged wood is a grey silver colour. I later added rust weathering powders to the inside to represent the ironstone residue.

On the outside I then sprayed Lifecolor frame dirt and track dirt upwards over the underframe and wheels, overspraying onto the lower sections of the body.

Humbrol weathering powders were used to add more weathering around the underframe, picking out rust on the brakes, brake handles and axle boxes as well as black (grease) on the boxes. I added rust powder around the body, concentrating around the top and around the doors, to reflect the ironstone residue.

Finally, it was all sealed with a fine and quick misting of acrylic matt varnish from an aerosol.

Although many say never try to put acrylic on enamel and vice versa, I have found they are fine if they are left to dry fully.

I'm really pleased with the results. Okay there are no numbers, tare weights etc., but the overall effect is what I wanted.

Now I need to get that railway sorted so they can run.

Rich