These wagons, designated Coil S, were converted from pre-nationalisation and early BR built wooden-bodied Highs some time in the very late '60s or early '70s - I'm not sure precisely when - and are the kind of prototype I like: relatively obscure, but interesting conversions of 'ordinary' wagons that might be seen in pairs or threes without shouting 'oddity', or, moreover, stand much of a chance of turning up in kit form.

They also lend themselves to batch production, though the 'batch', in this instance includes another three 'traditional wagons' of different types (a shock open, a fruit van and a china clay wagon, more of which anon), of different types because it's simply more time efficient to do them in that way. Intial assembly, brakegear, solebar detailing, capping irons, etc. are more easily done on four wagons at one go as individually and take only a little more time: rather than wait for the solvent to go off, you can do the same job to another two wagons and have more to show per modelling session.

A couple of Parkside underframes, ABS buffers and brakegear with Masokits levers and vees make for a reasonably conventional starting point, but they present some interesting challenges to model as the pictures on Paul Bartlett's site* should demonstrate. The nature of these conversions means that there are a host of small detail differences which makes them fun to do, whilst retaining the advantages of batch production. The first is based on an LNER open:

The second is based on this ex-SR example: http://paulbartlett....c3d7d#h337c3d7d

The side raves will be knocked up from brass (the real things were steel section) which will go some way towards reinforcing the ends as will a load: a few metres of soft iron wire should do it...

Adam

*without which this sort of thing would not be possible. Thanks again Paul.