I said in yesterday's post that another tanker wagon was on its way from eBay. Well it arrived today (along with something else!) and so I had the chance to take some photos of the modding process.

Here it is straight out of the packaging. For some reason, some people send them pre-built, which I think surely costs more than sending a packet of Lego pieces. As you can see from the picture, this had been built for a while and had gotten a little dusty.

Fortunately, Lego is easy to clean. A quick dust with a dusting brush later and most of it was fine. However, the top red plates were very dirty, so I used a dab of Fairy Liquid and an old toothbrush to gently scrub them up all shiny.

This wagon has a short, fixed wheelbase, unlike the longer wagons that have bogies. Here is a picture of the chassis and tank separated.

I wanted to make this one look like my others, so I gathered the necessary parts from my trusty bits box. (You can also see how shiny the top pieces are now.)

Ah, yes, the bits box. Every AFOL has to have one. I've actually got five like this. They cost £2.49 in Home Bargains and are worth every penny.

Anyway, the bits went on (the grey 2x2 jumper tile went back into the bits box) and here it is modded and ready to roll.

This gives me a nice rake of three wagons. The new one is the middle of the three - you can tell because the Octan logo sticker and the stripe sticker are placed in a slightly higher position.

I'm OK with this asymmetry as in real life wagons differ slightly depending when and where liveries are applied (which is the case here). This also illustrates a downside of buying from eBay - someone else has stuck the stickers on. Also, because it has been out on display, the stickers have started to peel slightly. If they hadn't been fragile I might have risked peeling them off and re-sticking them, but I didn't want to damage them. I have peeled and re-stuck the logo and stripe on one of the other wagons I bought, but it is a nerve-wracking process. Of course Lego could avoid all this hassle for builders by printing the pieces (grumble, grumble).

In case you are wondering about couplings, Lego have used magnets to link rolling stock together since they began doing trains. (I think. I'll check that, but I'm pretty sure they have.) They used to have little magnets that clicked into clips. Now they have all in one magnetic units that attach very firmly. They also have a stud on the top so if you wanted to create fixed rakes it would be very easy to reinforce the linkages with 2x1 plates or tiles to lock the magnets together. Here's a top-down pic to show what I mean.

So that's the new addition to the fleet. I'm happy with it, despite the dust and the slightly peeling stickers. However it was one of two packages to arrive off eBay today. Here is the other one, but you are going to have to wait to find out what was inside.