The Ratio Grounded Van kit as given away by Railway Modeller – Made ungrounded!

I am guessing that quite a few members will now be the owners of the Ratio Grounded Van Kit, as given away with a recent issue of Railway Modeller. I was lucky enough to be bought a copy at Christmas, and I was wondering if anybody else has put the model to use yet?
Not having a layout at the moment, I didn't have much use for a grounded van, so I started wondering if the kit could be made with a chassis. I measured the kit against a few model wagons, and several would have been suitable for a base. Looking on a well known auction website, there was a chap selling Dapol wagon chassis at a quite reasonable price, so one was purchased.


The Ratio Grounded Van kit with the Dapol chassis.


The sides and ends. I removed the buffer-beam as the chassis already has one. Cutting around the ironwork was fiddly, but I am fortunate to have a bandsaw which helped a lot!


The body assembled. The chassis had recesses on one end which matched perfectly the ironwork mouldings, but not on the other, so I filed these out to suit. Note the poor quality of the roof – it did not improve with painting and required a lot of work to make it look okay.


The completed van. I decided not to paint the van body, but paint only the roof with grey primer. The colour is, unfortunately, quite close, but I think that it still looks okay for my needs.


The wagon in a small train with No. 7178 at the head!

Hope you enjoyed my mini-build. If you have made up one yourself, please show and tell!

Many thanks for reading

Gordon :-)

I did not get the magazine because I didn't really have use for a grounded wagon.  It never crossed my mind to get it up and running!  Good job!

Michael

[user=1512]Headmaster[/user] wrote:

I did not get the magazine because I didn't really have use for a grounded wagon.  It never crossed my mind to get it up and running!  Good job!

Michael

Thank you Michael. I must confess that I wouldn't have bought the magazine for the sake of the kit either. I'm guessing that there are a lot of grounded wagon kits sat in drawers right now.

I have a lot of ongoing projects, so it was good to get somthing out of the way quickly!

Gordon