Max Stafford's Kennel

Whilst I’m off after a small but important hospital procedure I’m getting back into some modelling.

A secondary project I’m running involved what will ultimately be a display case with representatives of Scotland’s five major pre-1923 railway companies.

I just feel it’s another bit of our national industrial heritage that needs celebrated a bit and the liveries are nice too.

From what will ultimately be the Caley goods train, here are a cattle wagon and a five plank open. Two modelling generations apart in terms of media and construction, both have challenges of their own. The cattle wagon, supplied by the Caledonian Railway Association, is fairly straightforward superglue assembly and as long as you clean the parts up (careful of the dust!)  and make sure the sides/ends go together squarely you’ll have no real problems. If you are using Bill Bedford spring suspension like I did, you’ll also need to mill a smidgen from inside the one-piece floor, solebar as the units are a wee bit neat for it. The trickiest bit of the whole job was millling out the axlebox rears to allow some travel in the sprung bearings. I’m not convinced I was using the right tool though.

The open is one of the 51L range of kits and required a lot more low end trickery to produce a ‘runner’. The sides and ends solder together easily enough if you take care but having bored out the axleboxes to accommodate bearings, the distance between bearings is over long for a standard 26mm Gibson pinpoint axle. I opted for the crudest possible solution of physically pushing the axleboxes in towards each other. It’s undoubtedly lo-fi though and will surely run like a three-legged dug!

I think the next one of these I do will have the supplied set-up removed and replaced with BB ‘bouncers’!

Anyhow, I’ll chuck some primer at them today and see how things look.