Still Working on the QR WHE Wheat Wagons

Well my 3 week stint at being the A/Director Technology Services at work has come to an end.  OMG!  I am certainly glad that has occurred.  I did enjoy certain bits of it, but it was certainly no easy run.  Anyway, I’m now on holidays for a week to recover.  

Thursday this week I had a pre-arranged day off work, as my daughter had her school formal on that evening.  I had to make myself look presentable in the morning with a visit to Tim’s Barber Shop for a  cut and a natter.  That was followed by washing the car with my son, who was already on school holidays.  The car was the delivery vehicle for the afternoon and evenings activities.  This was followed by a visit to George’s shop to pick up some paint.  While there I found that his daughter was also going to my daughter’s formal as she was the best friend  of another girl in my daughter’s class.  There was only about 4 or 5 boys attending this formal.  I picked up some QR wagon grey colour spray paint and headed back home.  Mid-afternoon, we had to then pick up the daughter’s partner for the night who also attended the same primary school, and take them to the Pre-formal get together, then go to the formal and get some photos with the family and eat a few canapes before retiring and letting the girls and their partners dance the night away.

My first model railway task for the weekend on Saturday was to make use of the can of spray paint that I collected on Thursday when I visited Aurora Trains.  I gave my three scratch built WHE wheat wagons an outside spray. 

It was then time to head out to soccer with my son.  His team was absolutely crunched by the opposition, who were older and bigger.  The score was 8-1.  At least the 1 was scored by my son, with a cracker of a goal from outside the box to the top left of the goal giving the goalkeeper no chance.  He almost had a few more chances, but the bigger opposition, just pushed them around.

So when I got home, I gave the wagons a second coat of QR grey spray paint.  I then completed some work with the Clapham Yard southern end control panel and head phone plug in point.  I moved both so they are more accessible to be under the new extended Acacia Ridge Narrow Gauge Yard.  I finally got around to searching my collection of narrow gauge bogies, and I found out I had 5 pairs of bogies that would be suitable to go under my scratch build WHE wagons.  So maybe I might think about scratch building another 2 wagons.

The next task was to paint the wheels of a PGC WHE wagon I got from Southern Models at the Brisbane Model Train Show.  I then added them to the PGC WHE kit and assembled 7 KD couplers and added two to this wagon.  Later that night I added the wheels and couplers to my scratch built wagons.  So that part of the assembly process it now complete.  I just need to make up a selection of tarpaulin supports for the PGC WHE and my three scratch built ones.

I was tossing up how I will add the tarpaulin for these wagons.  I was going to use two of my teabag tarps.  But I do not like a join or tarps in a wagon.  Today I went to the local Daiso store and picked up a packet of tea bag material for $2.80.  One had 20 tea bags in it and I could cut these out and they would fit my WHE wagons in a single sheet.  So I painted up 4 Daiso tea bag tarps and let them dry.  At that point I started to work on the tarpaulin supports for the wagons.  I remembered that the PGC WHE wagon had an etched brass fret that had 7 tarpaulin supports.  So I cut them out and then drilled 14 x 0.6mm holes with my pin vice drill for the tarp supports to be placed into.  I then cut out 24 tarpaulin supports from 1mm styrene for my scratch built wagons.  These will sit inside the wagon and support the tea bag tarps.  I used the brass fret as a template to draw on my styrene supports, and then I used my cheap Aldi grinding wheel to put the taper on the styrene supports, as per the line I just drew.  

I then double checked the coupler heights on these wagons and how well the wheels rolled on my 4 WHE wagons.  I added some KD washers under the wagons so the wheels did not rub on the underside of the wagon.  I added some lead weight to the inside of the wagons and the seem to track quite well.  I think I will wait until Tuesday to actually give then a run behind a loco from Acacia Ridge Yard to Fisherman Islands Yard.  I’m kind of busy tomorrow.  More on that later this week in another post.

My only concern now is that the tarpaulin material after it has been painted and allowed to dry, is quite thin and could potentially be seen through.  It kind of defeats the purpose of having a tarpaulin that you can see through over a wheat load – doesn’t it?  So I might have to use two tarps one over the other, or even give it another spray of paint from the other side.  So another job for Tuesday.