This time I am returning to that ubiquitous item of the early 20th century railway, the private owner coal wagon - in this case, a 6-plank end-door type built by Gloucester RCW, in the livery of 'United' collieries. The model is of course the familiar Slaters kit, and so is very similar to a build to the 'Ocean' wagon I have posted about previously:

 

 

The big difference with this one is that it is empty, not loaded, so there is full interior detailing needed, and that is the focus of this post. But before we get to that, I made one change compared to the process I used with the 'Ocean' model that is perhaps worth noting. With 'Ocean', I went over the lettering with white acrylic paint (Vallejo) to give a more 'solid' colour, before assembling the body (much easier to do with the sides flat on the work surface). I needed to do this again with 'United', but this time I tried using white artist's ink, as an experiment. I thought I could apply this with a dipping pen, hoping it would be easier to control than using a brush. However, I found the surface tension of the water-based ink, combined with the surface of the printed lettering on the wagon, made it hard to get the ink to wet the surface. Gentle rubbing with the pen would get the surface to wet, but it rather defeated my aim, and I finished using a mixture of pen and brush. I would probably go back to paint in future.

 

The interior detail comes from a set of brass etches from DJ Parkins. These provide the planking as well as the internal washer plates, etc. - the planks are half-etched, with the grooves between them etched all the way through, and the washer plates are the full thickness of the brass. Bolt heads are pressed out from behind in the usual way. The resulting level of detail that can be obtained is excellent, but it turned out to be less straight-forward than I had hoped...

 

The set of etchings is specifically intended for this Slaters kit, but I found the sides and ends a little too long, and the floor a little too big. The instructions say to glue the etchings to the inside of the plastic kit parts before assembling the body, but I didn't do that. My reasoning was that there is always a slight vagueness around the fit of the sides and ends at the corners, and the floor within the rectangle made by the sides and ends. It seemed to me to be better to assemble the plastic parts first, fettling them as needed, and make any necessary adjustments to the etchings at the point of fitting them, rather than trying to file down an over-sized etching while already glued to the plastic component.

 

Having to remove a little from the floor etch, and the ends of the side and end etches, wasn't too much of a problem, and of course it is better these are over-size rather than under. It did though mean, by the time I had filed a bit off, the washer plates in the corners were right up to the corner, rather than having a small space between the washer plate and the corner itself. It isn't too obvious in the finished model though.

 

More problematic was that the height of the sides and ends was significantly too high - around a couple of millimetres. I have no idea why this should be the case, as the etches are bespoke to the kit, but there it is. I filed off the excess height, though this needed care and was quite a lengthy process, because the etch is mainly only half thickness, and has slits where the plank lines are, so it is delicate and hard to hold still to file. It was done in the end, but it would be nice if the etches were nearer to the correct size.

 

While I am talking about the etches, one other oddity is that the floor has etched marks on the underside to be pressed out as bolt heads. The pattern of these suggests they align with the wagon's middle bearers and the diagonals that run from the centre outwards towards the ends of the headstocks. It wasn't until after the model was finished I read a comment on the forum about floors being nailed down, so no fasteners would be visible. This of course makes sense - bolt heads sticking up would be very annoying when shovelling coal out of the wagon. Well, it's done now...

I decided to paint the etches after they were filed to fit, but before gluing them in. I gave them a coat of light grey etch primer, then of a creamy 'new wood' colour, followed by some knots and marks in brown and gunmetal. A wash of black artist's ink (another experiment) concluded round one of weathering:

 

 

The ironwork was then painted black. The etches were glued into the assembled body using Aleene's Tacky Glue. This worked well, smearing it carefully onto the back of the etchings in as thin a layer as I could manage. Once in place, a piece of thick corrugated card cut to size was clamped over the etch to keep it flat while the glue dried. Despite using the minimum of glue, some of it squeezed through the gaps between the planks - since neither surface is absorbant, there is nowhere else for it to go. The first time, this glue stuck the cardboard to the inside of the wagon, and I had to hack it out with a scalpel, damaging the paint finish. After that, I used a small piece of clear polythene (from a resealable bag) as a barrier. Glue still came through, but it was fairly easy to remove once set. You can see in these pictures where removing the excess glue has taken off some of the ink wash, which had to be touched up later:

 

 

I did some filling of the outside corners and any other places that needed it such as around the headstocks. It all looks a bit of a mess at this point, but courage mon brave, it will come out in the end:

 

 

The etchings have extensions to the ironwork on the end door, to be wrapped around the horizontal bar that forms the pivot to hinge the door. The intention of the etches is the bar sits below the top of the door, and the ends of the bar go into holes in the corner plate either side. Gloucester wagons generally have the bar above the height of the wagon, however, and in any case, having filed the sides down to size, the bit of the etch with the corresponding holes had gone.

 

I made the pieces that support the ends of the bar from some scrap etch:

 

 

The bar was made from some straight brass wire, initially cut oversize while everything was fitted and glued into position with cyano:

 

 

The bar was trimmed to length, and painted black:

 

 

The DJ Parkins etches include the capping strips, with etched marks to be pushed out to represent the bolts that hold these in position:

 

 

With the body complete apart from final titivating, the wheels and brakegear were next:

 

 

The brake pushrods should be at an angle, not parallel with the solebars, so they align with the wheels. To achieve this, and to ensure I could get the brake shoes close to the wheels (I greatly dislike seeing too much daylight between shoe and wheel rim), I cut the Slaters moulding up and assembled the parts separately.

 

To get the angle, I filed the vertical plastic piece that represents the brake shoe hangers to the right angle, and glued a small piece of plasticard on. It is easier to get the geometry of this joint right before fitting to the wagon itself, and the piece of plasticard packs out the position of the brake shoe to get it close to the wheel tread:

 

 

Then just glue the plasticard to the underframe - seen here held in place by self-closing tweezers:

 

 

Once the shoes are on, the vee-hangers are attached and the push rods can be glued onto the tumbler.

 

Buffers and couplings on, and we are nearly there! The Gloucester works plates are POWsides transfers on a black-painted rectangle of 10 thou plasticard. A 'scribble' of white paint with a very fine brush represents the writing on the other plate, which is a moulded detail on the Slaters kit solebar.

 

 

The inside after some more touching up, though I found every time I thought I was finished, I would come back to the wagon and see another tiny spot of bare brass or pale paint glaring out at me:

 

 

Weathering on the outside was a light dose of powders, mainly black to represent coal dust, and a little dry-brushing. I had had to replace the capacity and tare lettering at the bottom of each side with decals, as the original printing hadn't taken properly. The transfers silvered slightly, which I didn't notice until later - it only shows up in certain light - so I disguised it with a bit of brown paint and weathering. You can still see it in the pictures if you look, but at normal viewing distances it disappears.

 

I gave the inside a final dose of weathering powders and black paint in the corners and around the washer plates, followed by a coat of matt varnish. I use the Tamiya TS80 Flat Clear spray, which I find works well. And there it is, done:

 

 

 

 

Nick.