As it was my Birthday this month, celebrated by going to the WSR and visiting the Taunton members day (thanks Tim and team) I had some money to spend, so I bought a pair of GWR Conflats, in this case the Peco version.
My reasoning was that in Autumn 1943 many local families were evacuated from the training area around Slapton, some of whom would have taken advantage of the railways removal service if they were travelling outside the local area. Service personnel from other areas would also be relocating to the area, either as a result of service dispersal or on postings, so I figured the Conflats would be quite common at the time my layout is set.
With this in mind I set out making the containers a little more "worn" to reflect the fact that many would have been hard used in the period and unlikely to have been given much painting.
The first task was to take the body and chassis apart, fortunately the Peco ones are easily separated by undoing the bolts on the chassis. If you break off the plastic thread they can be glued back later. This would enable me to spray the chassis.
Next I "faded" the livery, I hate this part, it was very crisply printed. I used a scratch pencil and a small piece of 800 grit wet n dry to wear away some of the lettering.
I cut off the ugly Rapido coupling and its mounting, as I will be using DG's as usual.
I then primed the solebars and break gear black, with citadel spray, seen here wet.
Whilst that was drying I washed the body with Windsor and Newton "peat" brown ink to shade the planking. I did the same to the deck and side plates of the Conflat wagon.
I left the ink wash to dry fully, then drybrushed the black parts including the roof, with a dark grey.
Once the ink had fully dried it was time for a stippled layer of brown dirt, done with a flat ended stippling brush wiped almost dry. I did this with the whole model assembled to unify the finish. It was nearly finished!
As a final tweak I applied sone Tamiya weathering powders to add a little sooty grime and dull it all nicely, then varnished it all with Humbrol matt acrylic varnish. Here it is set next to the un weathered second model.
Close up of the finished item.
I plan on finishing off the Python from the last entry some time this month and get some more DG's to sort out the couplings.
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