The next project for tonight was a start on the first wagon for my cattle rake, following Martin Goodall's articles from MRJ as a guide and using a combination of Coopercraft and Airfix kits.

The plan is for a 6 wagon rake comprised of:

1 W3 with rebuilt doors (shortened Airfix)

1 W8 Airfix

1 12 Airfix

2 W5 (one with rebuilt doors one with standard) Coopercraft

1 W1 (coopercraft)

To start with I am going with the W12, followed by the W3

The ends will need to be modified to get the correct pitch on the roof, this will be changed using microstrip and a big file following the Goodall drawing

The chassis follows the usual method, removing the ribs from the floor then slimming down the solebars.

The sides have had the huge hinges from the working doors removed, along with the bar (which will be replaced with wire). The slots in the side were drilled out, my feeling is that I have used too big a diameter of drill and they are now too big a hole. Hopefully painting should reduce this width a tad, but I am thinking about stopping now until I get a smaller drill bit.

As well as drilling out the Airfix slots, I have added the additional third slot drilling along the plank line (this is slightly incorrect as the centre point of the slot is fractionally too low), but it give the affect thats needed.

This all takes an awful lot of time on the preparation of the parts, drilling and tidying up the slots. And will require a lot more to fix all the little bits of damage from removing the hinges etc.