Over the time RMweb has been offline I have been getting on with a couple more wagons:

The first is a Hornby CDA, the intention with this was to get a wagon working reliably enough to be used for track testing on Bodmin, The CDAs I had converted with Exactoscale wheels on the last layout were very unreliable (part due to the finer wheel profile, part due to the awful axle design), as such I've decided to go with Maygibs for the fleet which will hopefully be fitted with etched break disks.

In order to provide clearance I have attacked the insides of the wirons with a milling bit in the dremmel opening them out to accept scale wheels.

I have also started work on looking at how I am going to detail them up, at the moment I am looking at:

• New roof
• Add missing end detail
• New buffers
• Remove fictional ballast box
• New couplings
• Drill slots in the side
• Thin the tops of the sides

Of course given the fundamental errors with the basic shape of the hopper it wont be perfect, but hopefully it will get it passable. The sooner someone makes a decent HAA/CDA in 4mm scale the better!

The plan is to have one rake in their original blue livery with ECC logos, and a second rake in EWS condition.

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The next wagon to go through the works was a Dapol KIA in Tiphook blue livery. Was rather disappointed by the model as it came, missing half its lettering and with shockingly bad quality control (the whole thing fell to bits after taking it out the box). Still so far I have glued all of the 'steel' loads in place (giving a little bit of extra weight) then glued the roof/end into position (they kept falling off the model). final job so far was to cut 4 lugs off the inside of each bogie in order to be able to fit proper wheels. Still want to do some more work, including adding the missing lettering, getting rid of the rubbish buffers and the hugely overscale hand-break wheels.

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The final wagon is a Bachmann VDA, this has been renumbered, fitted with Bill Bedford suspension and 51L axleboxes, and converted to P4 using a set of Colin Craig 10.5mm wheels. Just needs some couplings, extra weight and a bit of black paint on the w-irons now...

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Along with the wagons I have been working on was a Regional Railways Bachmann 150, This is the start of another major detailing project which is principally concerned with getting rid of the OTT all axle drive mechanism that Bachmann fitted and replacing it with a full inertia, black beetle (or similar) motor bogie and clear windows.

So far I have been concentrating on the non powered end (mostly because I need to have a 150 available for testing clearances on the new layout.) Working off some incorrect information I fitted it with some disk fitted wheels (which now need to be replaced with plain ones). Thankfully the wheels just droped in (and better still the breaks are in the right place!)