This project though moving along painfully slowly, is moving again!

The wagons have had the blue and grey paint applied, this has been such a long time coming and although theres still a lot to do, its good to see them starting to look like JMA's.

I used precision paints national power blue and grey, but to fade it to the level that these wagons have appeared in for the last few years a lot of white paint was added. I decided this would be the easiest and hopefully the way to get the most convincing finish, rather than trying to apply a lot of washes for example. To get the grey looking about right i used 1 part grey to 2 parts rail white, i still think this could've been slightly lighter but i'm happy with it. The blue was thinned a similar amount but with standard white paint to give a brighter look.

I've been having another look at the bogies as well, while they are still based around the s-kits kit and aren't ideal i've re-done the brake gear to make it look a little better and i'm now happy with how they'll look when in a rake and rumbling round the layout, they prob won't stand up to close scrutiny, as this pic shows one of the dampers seems to to stop in mid-air and looks a bit odd!

The next stage is to look at applying the Fox transfers, with all the various bits to apply this'll take a while, ideally i need to find some good pics of these when running on the LBT-fiddlers ferry circuit to get an idea of different wagons as some had logos painted out and the fading was worse on some. Either before or after this i need to distress the upper bodysides mainly, where the blue has faded/vanished? to look white in places, also there are three vertical blue lines to add on some where they've been partially repainted?

Weathering can follow this, plus i need to add the uncoupling levers on the end of the bufferless wagons, re-fit the couplings, possibly put a load in them and they'll be done! theres a bit to do there and at the current rate it won't for a while yet, plus at some point i need to look at some suitable traction (60's )and that'll distract me a bit, it was one of the reasons i was keen on doing these wagons in the first place.

Hopefully i'll be updating a bit more frequently as i've a list of other stuff piling up on the workbench & i'm trying to get stuff finished before starting new stuff!

Chris