Yes, just ten short weeks have passed since I started this blog and already I've made some progress! Go Me! High fives all round!

In truth, I did virtually no modelling at all for the first half of that period. Real life came crashing in in the shape of a family bereavement which took up all my time and didn't really leave me in the mood for wresting with tiny shards of styrene in what little spare time I did have. In the last few weeks, though, things have been getting back to normal and I've been (by my standards) quite productive.

The plan was to construct four IHA steel coil wagons. Moria pointed out that there is actually a kit available for these wagons from Ian Stoate. I hadn't realised that, but I've decided to press on down the scratchbuilt route. If it doesn't work out as I'm hoping, I might fall back on the kit; but for now I'm still committed to building my own.

I'm building a single prototype model so that I can iron out the build sequence, note any pitfalls etc. Once that's completed to my satisfaction I'll build the other three as a batch. I expect to make mistakes with the first wagon, so there'll probably be a fair bit of fiddling with the design as I go along. For a start, the original underframe needed beefing up considerably with a hefty stiffener of 40-thou sheet.

Here it is in its current state:

The mass of filler is the result of trying to build the body section straight on to the underframe without taking proper measurements. In the batch-built models I'm going to assemble the body separately and then attach it to the underframe when it's done. That should be a lot easier than the way I've done it here. Above the bogie on the left, you can just see where I damaged the flange at the bottom of the underframe while I was trying to get the roof to sit down properly. This was more difficult than it needed to be because I made the roof too thick. On this wagon it's 30-thou, but it'll be 20-thou on the production batch. The end platform will go on the left end of the wagon. You can just see that the underframe extends beyond the end of the body to form a shelf which the platform will rest on.

The idea is to lay 20-thou rod up the sides and across the roof at the points where the hood supports go; then fill between them with filler, which will be sanded back to create a degree of sag between the supports. The hood will extend as far down as the lower edge of the strip that runs along the side of the underframe. After that, there's detailing to be added to the ends, various lettering panels on the sides (those on the body will be attached to mounting pads set into the filler), the hooks that secure each end of the hood (also attached to pads), ferry fittings, buffers and a few other bits and bobs. In this photo the wagon is just placed on top of the bogies: I use acrylic rod to mount ATM bogies, because I've never found anything else which is quite the right size. Short lengths will be superglued into 4.5mm holes already drilled in the bogie bolsters.

Here's the model alongside a Farish BYA. This really illustrates just how dumpy these wagons are:

More on this as things progress.

Jim