RhB cattle train in G

[PaulRhB]

I bought some dvd's from JSvideo in Switzerland which cover the operation of various RhB freight trains in full. They included a section on the transport of cows to the meadows for the summer which continued up until 2004. Getting the first cow in usually involved a lot of persuasion with one cow being virtually lifted in by 6 men.

 

I decided I'd like to have a cattle train for my collection and went surfing to see how much the vans would cost, now the thought of paying £90+ per van only to have to repaint and modify the LGB ones caused me to make the probably controversial decision to look at the NQD version instead. By making this decision I could now get 4 vans for the price of one and when I had to conduct some surgery, repainting and new lettering this actually made a lot of sense.

 

So we start with this shiny thing, I chose the brown version to give a close base colour if it gets bashed.

 

 

Strip them down to the component parts

 

 

I used two colours to recreate the variations seen on the real vans. Tamiya TS1 is the lighter shade and Plasticote 2117 Chocolate brown.

 

 

The underframes were primered with Halfords grey and then painted with Plasticote 3102 grey as it's a bit darker.

 

This is what washing lines are really for

 

 

The lettering on the doors needs to be rubbed down to remove it as even though the primer covers it without any sign when I use the aluminium (plasticote 1149), paint it re-appeared like the turin shroud!

 

 

A quick test of the first two alongside an unaltered version.

 

 

Starting to assemble them again, note the drop hatches are now open. The hatches pop out and then I cut off the raised lip and clip on the back and just glued them back upside down.

 

 

The rest of the detail parts still need to be painted and attached again and those on the platform end need some detail painting too.

 

I usually use dry transfers but as my usual supplier is proving somewhat erratic I'm investigating waterslide ones through James. Weathering will follow and a few cows from Schleich.

 

The finishing may take a while waiting for the transfers.

 

So so far the cost is £106 for 5 wagons, £18 on paint and I'm going to need some brass for handrails, bovine passengers and probably around £40 for custom transfers. Controversial starting point maybe but at £320 less . . .

 

 

 

 

 

 

[James Hilton]

This looks a really interesting project Paul - making the most of the low cost NQD stuff, to show that you can take a bit of Chinese copied LGB and make something unique out of it - I look forward to seeing the progress.