Continuing the current fashion for kit-built wagons,I tackled 3 GWR china clay wagon kits that I recently got from the N gauge society.
(Parkwood Models)to fit the Peco 9 foot chassis kit(NR-120).


(Excuse crappy pic…too much light from camcorder,discovered too late!)

The kits were incredibly easy to assemble.The hardest part was making buffers from pin heads!!! These were snipped off,and the locating holes on the buffer beams were opened up with a small pin drill.I like the "real metal" effect of them so much compared to the plastic buffers on most N gauge stock that I just might go through my freight stock and upgrade some more wagons!:roll:

Here are a few shots of them so far….







They still need weathering(as they are currently ex-works condition!),solebars and some more transfers for weight,load,etc.
so more to follow on them.
  Now while doing these wagons…having the GWR freightgrey paint and GWR transfers to hand,I decided to grasp the thorn of my cattle wagons.And that's another story for later…

Cheers,John.B.:thumbs

Actually,Just reading this lot back,I realised I told a great big Porkie-pie.The hardest part was putting those tiny numbers on the wagons and trying to get them to line up right!!!:oops:;-)

Cheers,John.B.

John

Great set of wagons, and in N gauge as well, I had enough problems trying the sort out the brake gear on the OO wagon that I built, I haven't got a clue how you do it in N :hmm. Do you need to put any weight in these or do they run okay.

Those wagons look great - the cotton buds really give a good sense of scale..the N scale must be very difficult to do...

John you have made  really nice job of those wagons as they are N gauge the detail on them is extremely good.

i presume the N gauge society supply a number of wagons that fit on the standard Peco chassis

cheers Brian

 

 Well done John, nice wagons. I would struggle to put the "big" letters on, never mind the small numbers :thumbs

As I said,while the paint was open and the transfers out,I decided to have a crack at my cattle wagon fleet.
   The Peco N gauge GWR cattle van is a cute little thing,but several things bother me about it when I compare it to the pictures I see of the real thing.
   Top of the list is always those awful huge couplings…so they're OUT! Secondly,the roof.I've never seen the real thing with a curved rainstrip.The ones I've seen all seem to have 5 'sections' to them.(and they rarely appear as white as the Peco model,more often than not the roof is light grey)
  So the rainstrip gets cut off/sanded flat,and ribs of thin strips of sticky tape are applied and painted over in acrylic.Roof is kept white for the time being at least.
   This is how far I've got with the 1st one,with the virgin Peco one besde it for comparison.The moulded bar has also gone in favour of a finer brass rod.(This is a bugger of a job to do!)I've only done one side so far!!!





Transfers to be put on sides and ends,new couplings also to be fitted.
  (Some may even get some cattle put in them!!)

Cheers for now,John.B.

As a point of interest john ,i read the other day that the practice of spreading lime on the wagon floor ,had been abandoned in 1922. I stuck a bit of straw and white for lime on the floor of my one , poking out a bit at the sides at low level i didn't know about the lime being stopped at the time .

Brian,
        The N gauge society produce a lot of kits themselves,and also sell other manufacturers' kits that all use various Peco chassis kits.
     I'm a big fan of the P D Marsh whitemetal ones,as you don't need to worry about adding weight to them!
     On the downside,you have to make your own roof for them,they usually comprise of just sides and ends!!!

Cheers,John.B.

Sparky,
         That's right,it was decided to be dangerous and abandoned in favour of disinfectant.However,I would imagine that the lime would've bleached out the paint and even after a few years,the bottoms of many cattle wagons would've been lighter if not white until their next repaint!(which might have been some time)
   
Cheers,John.B.:thumbs

These all look good, John. The ribbed roof works very well.
 I can see why you like the pin-head buffers. That's a clever idea.  Makes me wonder if it's possible to use suitably shaped nail heads in 00. It's probably been done already.

 Mike

Nice work John,

The brass rod rails look very good but I don't know if I'm game to tackle them.

Looking forward to seeing what you use and how you upgrade the couplings.

Keep it coming, tuned right into this one.
cheers

John, I added brass bars to my 00 cattle wagons & that was FUN so I can imagine how you must have enjoyed doing that in N - good job mate.

Very good John - those ribs really improve the look of that wagon.

Don't forget that these wagons were used in their hundreds in Cornwall to transport Brocolli to London and beyond as well.  The good thing with this was that they never loaded higher than the grills so they look exactly the same loaded or empty! Also as a matter of interest what we call Brocolli you colonial types call Cauliflower :roll:

Chris, we have both Broccoli & Cauliflower in the shops - 2 different beasts

http://easter.coles.com.au/images/recipes/broccoli.jpg

for Broccoli

http://www.thomasdux.com.au/content.php/66.html

for Cauliflower

 

So Chris, what do you call the things we call broccoli (corrected spelling) if our cauliflowers are called broccoli by you when you are talking about our cauliflowers?

Very good work John.   Re the question of weight,  I recently tried  pushing some wagons together to auto-couple but they just bounced off and went gently down the track for 6/9 inches or so and the coupling kept riding up without holding!:twisted::roll:   It occurred to me then that they would indeed need to be weighted but do any of our "N" gaugers have any other answers?

Ken.

[user=269]MaxSouthOz[/user] wrote:

So Chris, what do you call the things we call broccoli (corrected spelling) if our cauliflowers are called broccoli by you when you are talking about our cauliflowers?

Something has gone drastically wrong with my keyboard - cannot spell!

That would be what we call Green Sprouting Broccoli but by Colonials I was referring to all the immigrants to Cornwall, going back to the days of Angles and Saxons!  Seriously though I think it is a real shame that all the various dialects of the regions are being lost as we become homogonised by broadcasters and chains of supermarkets and other large businesses.

Bet you had no idea where this thread was heading when you started it John - I now officially hand it back to you :pathead

 

Nice G, nice G oh help mnice wagons you have made there mate :thumbs

Phill