Having left the Baldwin and it's dodgy cranks to mature for a bit (maybe some Christmas elves will sneak in one night and fix it for me!), have turnrd my atention to something else I have been avoiding - ammo boxes. These formed a very large part of the wagon loads so obviously have to be tackled. First option would be to just buy a load

These are available from PLM but would be prohibitively expensive and would need loads of cleaning up and filling before they could be used. Second option was to just cast my own from these - cue ethical debate! Well I didn't and took the only practical step and set about making my own from which to cast. After a bit of thought and scratching around in the vast array of bits and pieces that always seems to build up, I found some American 'sideing' wood. This was cut into strips which were then easily cut into two plank sections, glued together and clamped with mini bulldog clips. Strapping was then added with micro strip plasticard;

Problem here was that I found the plasticard quite difficult to stick and was hard to get it accurate enough - it also takes quite a lot of it and I didn't have much left! Cue the Cameo cutter. I have had this a couple of months and apart from one rather unsuccessful play it has remained in it's box. That is nearly where it stayed as well, as took a huge amount of experimenting to get it right but got there in the end. By cutting out a fairly heavy paper and including a sacrificial joiner at the bottom I was able to make plenty of straps accurately and at a decent scale size.

I made up ten and mounted them on an off cut of foamboard which was then built up to be filled with rubber mould making compound;

Small amounts of resin were then prepared by weighing and mixing on a small set of scales and then poured. It is remarkable how quickly this sets and made ten batches easily in an evening;

So if you have ever wondered what a hundred 7mm scale ammo boxes look like - here you are1

Have primed them in grey but will leave them like this for the moment as I need to make up some larger boxes as well to vary the loads a bit. When I have done this they will be finished of and made up into several new wagon loads.