On Friday I was pottering around the shed, trying to find an old Main West Bow Bending kit for my NOCY wagon. I had seen it recently. Do you think I could find it? Anyway I found some photos and then tried to make my own jig to allow me to make my own wire frames for an NOCY wagon or two. I found some fine wire and bent up 20 frames, before I ran out of wire.
Saturday morning I went looking for plans for the NOCY wagon. I could not find any. Then I remembered that I had an old NSW wagon plan book. So I found the plan I was after, but it was reasonable small and not to scale.
Anyway around lunch time I started looking at two of my old scratch built NOCY wagons. It was then I realised that I had never put the underside gussets on them. Bugger! So I cut the gussets and added underside caps to the gussets. I then searched my spare parts box and found some old sprues for underfloor details, from various manufacturers. I think I found everything that I needed on a couple of AR Kits sprues. Not surprising when you realise that Al sells ready to run NOCY’s as well as some shake the box kit versions of the NOCY. I then added the uncoupler lift bars to my NOCY.
Luckily I had a few of the AR Kit Ready to Run NOCY wagons laying around. I used these wagons as templates for my versions. Just to see where the various pipes went on the ready to run model. The hardest part was drilling holes in the gussets after I glued them onto the wagon, instead of before I did it. The holes were for the brake pipe going from one end of the wagon to the other via the various reservoir tanks and triple values etc. So I added all this detail and the last thing I added were a couple of KD air hoses. The wagon needed a new coat of paint and then it will need a set of decals added. Given my luck I will assume that I do not have a set of decals in my spares box. So I might need to contact Al for a version.
Early on Sunday with fine weather, I painted the NOCY a black colour. I had planned to take a photo before painting, but I forgot. The next task was to drill all the bow rig holes to support the tarpaulins over the top of the wagon. There was above 20 pairs of holes to drill. I used an AR Kits model as a guide. The bow rigs were added this afternoon. Decals are the only thing left to add.
Because I was in the zone, I continued with doing some more detail work on another wagon. I got my scratch built NHBF ballast wagon out. I studied some of my photos of NHBF wagons. I had built a variety of these wagons over the years. But they were all near enough to run on the layout, and lacked any super detail. Most near enough but with different internal hopper detail. So when comparing one of the ones I was taking further along the path to be superdetailed, I realised that I needed a change to the internal hopper, with the two dividers added. That was quite quick and easy. Next the air hose from one end of the wagon to the other was added. The 8 hand rail supports were then added. Uncoupler lift bars were next to be added. The various shunters steps will then need to be added. I’m not sure I have any detail parts (shunters steps) that will look correct. I will look through my detail parts box during the week. The wagon will need a new paint before work continues next weekend.
Next week I will continue work on my scratch built NHBF ballast wagon and scratch built ballast plough. I seem to have plenty of photos of these wagons on hand to assist with detailing. Again decals might be a bit hard to come by for both wagons.
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