Carriage and Wagon

Winter maintenance occupies a lot of miniature railway's time at this time of the year, and it is no different in O9. The carriage and wagon department for 'Shifting Sands' has been busy (despite the railway not operating this 'season'!) with a few bits of catch-up work.

Coach 15, one of the scratchbuilt Exmoor-style fleet, has received a new roof. It is in fact the second new roof on just over a year, as the thicker one that it had last year looked out of place compared to it's stablemates. The new roof is formed from 20 thou styrene, heated in boiling water and reinforced underneath with various sections of Evergreen strip.

Meanwhile, one of the open wagon fleet has had something of a transformation. This is based on an example from the Cleethorpes Coast Light Railway and originally built upon a Black Dog 5' chassis that dated back to my early O9 days. The chassis was robbed for another project and the body initially put to one side, until I decided to add a new chassis based on a Peco chassis, styrene section and axle boxes from Wizard Models/51L.

This has lowered the wagon a little and got rid of the slightly 'tip toe' look it had before, here is it when first built by way of comparison.

I have to say that both of these projects have created a fair bit of frustration in the paint shop, must be the time of year....

Colin