A SPOT OF SCRATCH-BUILDING

Now that the darker, colder evenings have set in, I've been indulging in a little scratch-building. With boxes and boxes of spare parts from previous kit and RTR detailing projects, I thought it would be nice to use some of them up in producing some service wagons for my Maudetown Colliery layout.

Can this be called scratch-building in the purest sense, or kit-bashing? It's probably a bit of both: the chassis frames and brake shoes are leftovers from a Parkside kit, the bolsters are from a Bachmann BDA and the brake handles are from a Mainly Trains set of etched parts. The timber planked floor is embossed Plastikard, which has been roughened up with sandpaper prior to an attempt to recreate dirty, bare wood with acrylic paints.

There's a few more bits required before it's ready for priming and painting, but I want to maintain a fairly basic look to the finished model. Mind you, with projects like this, it can be tempting to keep adding small bits here and there, so I may need to rein myself in!

So, what will this wagon carry? The answer is all manner of colliery equipment, such as ironwork for tunnelling, rails for the narrow gauge waggonway, pipes or girders. In fact, the more I think about it, I could probably do with more than one such vehicle. I wonder how many I can erect from what lies in the spares box...?