James Wells
Once coal traffic dominated the railway - coal was the reason why so many of the early railways were built in the first place. Thousands of small, boxy wooden wagons carried coal throughout the country for a century or more, before being ousted by more modern steel wagons. For the 0 gauge model railway at the National Railway Museum we're building a fleet of typical, mundane wagons to help show what was once an everyday sight. These two former private owner wagons really help with our aims. These wagons were placed in a common use fleet early in the second world war by the government but they were ultimately never returned to their owners instead passing to the newly formed British Railways in 1948. They were unloved, patched up and many were never repainted instead ending up bereft of paint or still bearing signs of their pre-war owners, some surviving until the sixties. Both of the wagons are based on photographs which appear in Volume 3 of David Larkin's 'The Acquired Wagons of British Railways'. For you modellers, both are the earlier Dapol RCH 1923 type private owner mineral wagons. New steel buffer heads and couplings using Ambis Engineering coupling hooks and Wizard Models links. The real challenge is making a plastic moulding appear to be make of old, unpainted wood held together by rusty metal. The process is slow with effects being built up over the course of a week or so for each wagon. Incidentally, the coal is real coal, smashed into little pieces and glued in place before being matt varnished to give it a dull, dusty appearance. #modelrailways #modelmaking #rollingstock #museums #modelrailway #modeltrain #0gauge #nrm #nationalrailwaymuseum