A pleasant diversion on the way to somewhere?

As those who have observed my construction of the Unit Models wagon kit may have mused, I seem to be on the cusp of one of my industrial/agricultural minimum gauge phases.  Those who know me well will know that these periods don't often last that long, this time might be different, we'll have to see!

At Narrow Gauge North a conversation with Steve Bennett of Black Dog Mining about what O9 bits he had to hand resulted in the purchase of two wagon bodies that by close of play that same day had been attached to two chassis from my stockpile and were ready for painting:

The biggest/longest part of the build was cutting out the mountings for MicroTrains couplers....

A few weeks ago I had started an experiment in building O9 wagon bodies from Basswood, a technique I had wanted to play with for a while.  I hadn't got that far really, but a spare floor that I had marked out to fit a 5ft Black Dog Mining Chassis has been put into use to rebody my chequerplate flat wagon (itself a throw-together of surplus bits).  All the staining/painting/weathering work on this was completed in an afternoon:

Who knows where it will all lead?!

Colin