Three Wagons Roll

The three new wagons seen in my last post have now received a coat of primer, doing it's usual wonder of making everything look a lot better. It also allows us to look at the wagons in more detail.

Firstly this is hopefully the final incarnation of the (ex) Shifting Sands 1-plank wagon. You may recall that this 6ft Black Dog Mining chassis gained a 2-plank 'Tops' body not many months ago with the original load transferred... we'll pretend that didn't happen... that body is heading back to it's original chassis and the load will go in another of the more miniature railway outline wagons in the fleet. The chassis was stripped of old paint and this new body uses one of the floors from the planned batch of wagons and one plank recovered from intended sides and ends.

Next is a fairly standard (for me) 'Tops' wagon on a 6ft Black Dog chassis. Another floor from the intended batch build and sides cut down to 2-plank (spare planks went to the body above). End handrails are recycled from the similar body that became the 009 Christmas present wagon, which was a shorter body intended for a 5ft chassis so I haven't gone totally mad! 

That 5ft body had been intended to go on the chassis of the last new wagon, a Sidelines Gnine chassis. This is the same length as a Black Dog 5ft chassis but with a longer wheelbase and taller from rail level. I had acquired this with a mine tub body as it was all Steve had at the time. I reduced the chassis height by about 1mm some time ago and had originally created a 'Tops' body for it. But it never looked balanced right in that form and the chassis seemed to look better with a flat or 3-plank body. As I have another 5ft flat in the works I opted to use a shortened set of 3-plank sides intended for the batch build, with a newly marked up floor. I used modified Grandt Line hinges again but only a pair each side rather than three, which looks a lot better balanced for a shorter wagon in my eyes.

 

They'll now join the queue for the paint shop (there are already be a couple of wagons in there to complete first).

Colin