checkrail

"And for those of you watching in black and white the green ball is behind the pink."

Thanks Robin. Nice variety of wagons in that photo. What date do you think it is?

Now 8709 approaches on the down line with a pick-up goods including the new Renwick Wilton wagon by Rapido. Same treatment as the other two but with the addition of a removable coal load. The little rubber blocks that come as part of the Rapido packaging were just the job as a base for making these. Bit of card glued on top and some Peco coal glued on that with PVA. John C.

A couple more of the coal empties train passing through the station. I do like PO wagons. I keep saying I have enough but somewhere in a drawer I still have two old Trix 'Ocean' wagon bodies and a couple of Cambrian 1923 RCH underframe kits as well as a set of POWsides transfers for Tirpentwys (later badged T P and P). John C.

Following the work on the wheels and couplings I painted the insides of the new Rapido PO wagons with Revell matt black and tested them in the coal empties train. All was well so I toned down the outsides and underframes using Vallejo black wash, applied in downward strokes with a flat brush. In one or two places where the white lettering resisted the wash I added a little Humbrol black weathering powder. Ah, that's better. John C.

Yep, so hopefully problems were resolved. There was some national media coverage of this issue recently in relation to preserved lines in general. Here's the train at Bewdley. It's some yesrs since I visited the SVR so it was great to walk along the train looking at each vehicle before it moved off. The Hawksworth coach in the foreground is of course the youngest in the rake. John C.

Nice weekend in Bridgnorth and day out with son and grandsons at the SVR spring steam gala on Sunday. Shame 'Betton Grange' couldn't make it but 'Hagley Hall' and 'Erlestoke Manor' were looking great, as was the Stanier mogul and the delightful 'Fenchurch'. Here are son and grandson getting in the way as 4930 runs into Bewdley. But for me the best bit was the wonderful train of GWR carriages of various types. Lovely to see the real things after a few years of occasional kit building and peering at old photographs. We actually rode in the set of Stanier LMS coaches on Sunday, but that was no loss. As Steve Forbert sang, "Driving a Jaguar's impressive, but you cain't see it go by ..." Now back to those new PO wagons. John C.

Thanks Miss P. Even expanding the pic to max. and looking through the bottom of my varifocals and a hand-held magnifier I couldn't make that out. So well done Rapido for including such microscopically fine detail (which I'm afraid is now about to be obliterated with matt black).

While on the subject of PO wagons can anyone tell me what the lettering/symbols on the axleboxes of all three of my new Rapido items signify? John C.

Thanks Robin. I've seen a 'Beer & Co.' wagon somewhere on a layout in the past but hadn't connected it with Kingsbridge. I note that the POWsides listing describes it as 6 plank but uses a Slater's 7 plank as a base, presumably because there's no kit or RTR 6 plank item available? In spite of my stern remonstrations to self about no more PO wagons I'd find one of these impossible to resist if a RTR model appeared.

Wow! What a layout. Thanks for alerting me to it. Who's the writer? I see that he bought it in fairly embryonic form but has made a lot of progress with it since. This is Pendon-standard stuff isn't it?

Robin @gwrrob, please tell us more about the Kingsbridge coal wagon. It's a new one on me. John.

Talk of POWsides reminds me that having built some of their kits in the past, often supplied with Slater's or similar kits as a base, I already had some 1907 pattern RCH wagons. An example ( two in fact) is the Renwick Wilton wagon below (left). I always wondered why it and its companion were slightly different dimensionally from my two Bachmann versions. The new Rapido RW wagon has a different lettering style to those others. Here it is sandwiched between the aforementioned POWsides one and one of my Bachmann R, W and Dobson ones. I realise I've got quite a mix of periods here for one firm's wagons, but they're interesting and hopefully add a bit to the sense of place, I guess the Rapido one is the earliest livery, the black ones next in age and the R, W & D one the final version after the merging of the companies? Any further light on this would be welcomed. There's a good picture of the black ones (if they ever were really black) in Tim Bryan's 'A year in the life of the Great Western', showing three of them in the yard at Bodmin in 1925. John C.

Shortened couplings so that the front of the coupling loop is in line with the buffer heads, and weathering. The RW wagon (of which more anon) will also get the Brian Kirby coupling modification and some added friction as it will from time to time work in and out of Stoke C. yard so needs to be 'shuntable'. That won't apply to the other two which will go into the returning coal empties train.

Some more new toys arrived yesterday. Suitable cases for treatment. Rapido have done a great job with the complex lettering, workplates etc. They've allowed for variants too - the Bwlch wagon here is the only one of these three with brakes on both sides, which I'm assuming is prototypical. One thing I note is that the end-door hinges are an integral part of the moulding, unlike the Bachmann 1923 pattern models which have the hinge rails separately applied. I think the Bachmann ones look better, though they can sometimes be dislodged when putting removable 'coal' loads in or out (by me anyway!). John C.