I'll be honest, tinplate is not really my thing, but I gave the contents of the box a good looking over to see what could be done. First impressions weren't good, but the closer I looked I realised that two of the wagons weren't tinplate at all, but litho printed card overlays on wooden bodies, with cast metal chassis.
They are certainly not the best examples of the breed and I suspect have no heritage value, but the mazac cast chassis of the one on the right looks like a potential 7mm scale narrow gauge underframe to me. The one on the left is very curious, cast whitemetal with rather fine wheels (though on plain-end axles), but the wheelbase is 35mm - that's 10 feet in 3.5mm scale rather than 9 feet in 4mm scale - is it actually to HO scale? The body is rather warped and appears to be some sort of fibreboard in places rather than wood. At some point I'll try and use the useful bits of these wagons.
The Hornby Dublo wagons were very battered, this brake van is typical:
The eagle eyed will notice the rather shiny wheels, they are modern Hornby examples! As the body on this was beyond repair they have been reclaimed for the spares box, the chassis frame may go on eBay as a spare....
A totally non-conservation approach was taken to the best of the battered tinplate wagons. Two open wagons became one (more modern Hornby wheels reclaimed); I swapped some other wheels about amongst the interesting 2-rail conversions and the oldest length of Peco Streamline track I could find seemed apt for display:
Colin
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