Building Some Wagons

This week I decided to try and clean some things off my work bench.  I broke out the WBAX wagon from Broad Gauge Bodies that I p[icked up last weekend at the Exhibition.  I cleaned up its flash, and then with the roof and the base banana’ed I decided to try the hair dryer method to heat them and straighten them up.  After a minute of two the heat was enough to make the pieces soft enough to bend back to a straight shape.  I then super glued it together and then got my pin vice drill out and added the various steps from the supplied wire and the two handrails.  I then added the various brake and value connections underneath the wagon.  On Saturday I afternoon, I gave the wagon a spray of yellow paint and added bogies.  It came out quite well.

The next task was to get the BGB O/OX wagon out.  Again I cleaned up the flash, and then super glued it together.  I added the various hand rails, shunters steps and the tarp hangers at each end.  I still have to see if I have suitable bogies but I gave it a paint job of light grey as well.  The next job on the workbench was a QR TGV van.  I hit its underside steps with the hairdryer and as they got hot, I was able to bend them a bit so they hung down straight instead of being splayed out.  This was then painted a QR grey.  I think it looks good.

A future task is to add decals to all three models.

When I was in the shed, I decided to add the four sections of fascia that I painted the previous weekend to the layout.  The first two were on the inner side of Cassino Meatworks.  I removed the chairs in that area to get access, cut out holes for the staff machine and the intercom plug-in-point out and affixed the first two pieces of fascia.  That looks good.  I then went around to near Dutton Park and added the first piece required at that location high up under the track benchwork.  I stopped short of adding the last piece of fascia however, as this will be a bit of a contortionist act.  There are some other sections of track on the layout that also need some very small fascia created and fitted.  These are around Dutton Park to Park Road and Dutton Park to Fisherman Islands. 

I then added the various name tags that I created during the week for the various locations for the layout.  These locations were for every road crossing, every river or creek, every major landmark, like a Tunnel name or Spiral.  This will hopefully allow people to track where they are on the layout.

My main plan for this weekend was to work on my diorama for the Armidale Convention.  I didn’t get to that until later this afternoon.  I did some work while watching the football on TV.  I still have to spend at least one day next weekend to complete the scene that I am working on in just one section of the module.  But I still have a few weeks left before we head to the Convention.