Carrying the Goods

As regular readers will know, my O9 modelling has mostly centred around passenger carrying miniature railways, as these are of the greatest interest to me, and are perhaps the most realistic use of the scale/gauge combination as 9mm is closer to 15" gauge than 18" gauge in 7mm scale.

However, from time to time I've tried to dabble in industrial and/or estate prototypes, most notably recently with the never to be completed 'Misterton Fen Tramway'.  In it's latest build phase I did put together a couple of 3-plank dropside opens and described them alongside a gauge convertible i/c loco here.

The one on the left used the chassis and resin floor from the twin-oil barrel carrier that used to run in the 'Shifting Sands' works train, whilst that on the right was a new build on a spare Black Dog chassis.  These two wagons finally made the paint shop recently for a blast of red oxide primer, but not until I had replaced some of the bolt heads on the ends with Grandt Line mouldings.  They can be glimpsed in the background of this workbench shot:

Painting the two wagons turned my thought to adding to the fleet. I hit on the idea of a chassis swap for another of the 'Shifting Sands' works fleet, a rebuilt Black Dog chequerplate flat. This was carefully stripped down, removing the floor and extra some sideframes I had added from Plastruct section. The floor has been rebuilt to sit on an RCL skip frame (which in a previous plan was destined to be a static drum carrier due to issues with the wheels on MicroTrains magnets).  This will be permanently coupled to a partner to alleviate this issue.

With a MicroTrains coupler added at one end, a rather nifty link to the other wagon was constructed by shaping and twisting a long brass split pin to resemble a prototypical coupling bar - even if it does end sat in the loop of another split pin on the other wagon:

Meanwhile, the Black Dog Mining chassis emerged as a one-plank, fixed side open. This is a simple build in styrene on the recycled Shifting Sands flat wagon frame, using a floor from an abandoned Gn15 wagon project.  Detail comes in the form of Evergreen strip, rod and some Grandt Line bolt heads:

As Dave Lister of the mining ship 'Red Dwarf' would have it, there are always a few parts left over.... the wagon above was to have been another 3-plank, so the off-cuts of the sides and ends have been joined by a floor, like the wagon above this is recycled from an older project, to form a ready to build kit. This may benefit from the fake channel section frames removed from the Shifting Sands flat and the 'research' into using Dapol railbus axle boxes....