This was a bit of a diversion for me as I have been a bit too busy to build recently. I've also stalled on the oil depot. (I plan to pick that project back up after Christmas.)

But anyway, back in April I repurposed some poorly designed cattle wagons into scrap-carrying wagons. This is what they looked like:

I have recently joined a Facebook group about Lego trains and I saw someone had built an open gondola wagon that used inverted panels for the sides of the wagon. The panels have little edges, which means they seem to have little ribs, much like industrial hoppers or gondolas have in the real world. I went and had a look in my boxes of bits, which included quite a few pieces from some Star Wars Imperial Troop Carrier sets that I had bought a while ago for the Stormtrooper mini-figures when the sets were on sale. (I've built one of the troop carriers, but two stayed in bits.)

I stripped the fencing-style edges off the scrap wagons and used the panels I had to try out how the wagon could look.

I felt the wedge plates on the end looked good. I also tried it with some inverted slopes out of the troop carrier sets. I didn't take a photo of that experiment but decided it would be the way forward. I realised I needed more parts and so placed an order on Bricklink.com. I used the Wants List system on Bricklink, listing the parts I needed and then finding one dealer who had all of them in stock. Then came the long, slow wait for a box of Lego bits to be delivered...

(I added in the train employee to boost it over the minimum order limit. He'll be working in my freight yard soon enough. The brown supports will also be useful somewhere.)

I ordered a mix of panel sizes to see which ones worked out better - one wagon has the short panels (2 bricks high) and one has the large ones (3 bricks high).

The wedge plates give the ends a bit of definition and look like the kind of reinforcing a wagon end might need.

Unloading could b difficult so I have added doors in the middle of the wagons.

There are a couple of things I'm not really sure about. I like the inverted slopes as 'ribs' but the width of the tiles used on the top of the wagon puts the panels into shadow. I could use thinner tiles, I suppose and maybe have smaller doors. In which case I need to buy some more panels.

I also wasn't sure if the short panels worked on top of the 1x4 brick with a line, so I swapped them round. I like this version more but it's still not ideal.

You can see the width of the tiles on the top of the wagon in this final photo. In real life the wagons look alright, but I will probably end up changing these tiles.

So, in conclusion, these were a fun build and I am reasonably pleased with them. I think I will revisit the issue of the upper tiles though. The 3 brick high panels look a bit better to me, so I might order more of them and replace the 2 brick high panels. I might also look to build a longer gondola similar to the one I saw in the original photo that inspired these.

As ever, thanks for reading and have a happy Christmas!