Well, the comments section of the last post took us down some interesting and delightfully esoteric byways, regarding the patenting of sheet supporters...

This post will perhaps be more straightforward, though hopefully it will include a few things of interest - its about a Slaters kit for a private owner wagon, 'Ocean':

 

 

This kit was bought as part of a lot of three wagon kits on eBay - they were all old kits, but unstarted. The price was not a bargain, but reasonable, or so I thought until the kits arrived and I discovered they had coarse scale wheels, which I had to replace. That will teach me to examine the photos more closely.

 

Another issue with this kit was that the ends were mysteriously for a seven plank wagon, not this six-planker. Whether this was a packing error by Slaters all those years ago, or someone had swapped them since for no obvious reason, I don't know. Anyway, it was no problem to sort out - fill a plank groove and cut the top down. Here they are, one already cut down on the left, with the one on the right still to do:

 

 

Due to its age, I found the lettering on the pre-printed sides was rather yellowed, and the print hadn't taken all that well to the black paint, leaving the lettering a bit mottled. The print process also means the lettering doesn't get into the plank grooves. To remedy this, I carefully painted over the lettering with white acrylic paint (Vallejo). This was a fiddly job, and required some touching up of the black, but the print letters give you a clear outline to aim for. With the smaller lettering at the bottom, I found I just needed to touch in the main strokes of the letters, not follow every detail, enough to brighten things up and make the lettering 'pop'.

 

The Pressfix transfers provided for the wagon number had largely lost their stickiness, but I managed to get them to adhere for long enough to get some matt varnish on them to bind everything in place. These too got a touch up with white paint, to keep everything consistent.

 

I did all this work on the sides before assembly - much easier than working on the completed wagon. I find with Slaters wagon kits the floor isn't necessarily the right size to guarantee all four corners will meet correctly if you just glue the sides onto the floor. I glue two pairs of one side and one end together first, making sure they are held square while the glue sets. I then check how these two 'L' shaped pieces fit together, and onto the floor, making any necessary adjustments before final assembly - either trimming the floor or packing it out with some microstrip glued to the edge.

 

The rest of the construction process was pretty straightforward, as per the Slaters instructions. The corners needed some filling:

 

 

The Slaters brake gear is generally OK, but I replaced the lever and lever guard with etched parts from Ambis, which give a nice sense of delicacy compared with the plastic ones. The brake shoes were also cut down to represent non-reversible ones, correct for my period. I also made the safety loops from nickel silver strip, for a finer effect than the moulded ones provided.

 

I also added the cap strip on the top of the sides and ends out of microstrip, and made a basic representation of the internal washer plates. As the wagon was going to be loaded, I didn't bother with internal plank lines, or the washer plates below the top of the sides:

 

 

The kit came without anything to represent the hinge bar for the end door. Other kits have this as a plastic moulding, so it might have been missing from mine, or perhaps the older kits didn't have it. I made the hinge from brass wire and nickel silver strip, seen here ready to be soldered up:

 

 

And here it is assembled into the wagon, attached with CA glue. The uprights attached to the inside of the sides are in plastic, with the nickel silver hinges doing the structural work:

 

 

 

With some paint on the inside - grey and brown coats and dry brushing for the wood, and black for the metalwork - it was nearly finished:

 

 

For the coal load, I made a former of a stack of corrugated cardboard, carved to shape and covered in papier-mâché (newspaper and diluted PVA). This was varnished with gloss varnish to make it waterproof:

 

 

I then sealed the edges between the former and the inside of the wagon with some filler - I used diluted PVA to glue in the real coal load, and I didn't want it running down into the bottom of the wagon in large quantities. It's worth looking at photos of loaded coal wagons to get the right kind of shape to the pile, when making the former.

 

With that done, it was a case of buffers and couplings (chemically blackened plus some black paint), then any final touching up of the paintwork. I've left the wagon un-weathered - I liked the patina from the original Slaters paintwork combined with my various touch-ups, plus the 'painterly' quality of the lettering, which is so much nicer than the original printed lettering. Many private owner wagons were leased, typically over a seven year period with a mid-term overhaul and repaint as part of the contract, so they often looked cleaner and fresher than railway company wagons. I'm sure I will do some other PO wagons in a grubbier state, but for now I imagine Ocean 917 is fresh from its overhaul, and back at work bringing anthracite from South Wales to Dorset...

 

 

 

Nick.