Slaters O Gauge Milk Tanker Built

The layout I am building has a small dairy siding for the delivery of milk to the railway and I am building a small train of milk tankers for this imaginary facility. I expect I will need somewhere up to 6(?) milk tankers for this train, although building these will be a slow ongoing process. Anyhow, I have finally finished building the first milk tanker from the Slaters kit. This is one of the best model railway wagons I have built, being a superbly designed kit. However, it is quite an involved build and constructing the first one was a bit of a learning curve. I am hoping that the subsequent builds will be a little quicker (and a little better), now knowing some of the knacks that are required for the kit.

The build of the wagon is now finished. The body/underframe/ladders are not yet glued together and will be painted separately.

The kit was built as per the instructions, with the exception of the strapping that I constructed from plasticard strips rather than the brass castings. This was just an oversight by me not reading the instructions properly, but once painted I doubt it will be noticeable. On the ends of the plasticard strips I glued some brass rod, which fits into a brass socket glued onto the tanker solebar. I wish I had drilled out thee brass sockets first whilst hey were still on the frets, before gluing them in place. At least I know for next time. The ladders were also tricky to build and will need some careful fettling to get them to sit squarely on the tanker. In the photos there are also some extra holes on the tanker ends that have subsequently been filled in.

End view of the milk tanker. The drill holes on the horizontal beam have now been filled in.

In its current state the tanker is not yet glued to the underframe and the ladders are not yet glued in place. The plan is to paint/transfer the underframe, tanker and ladders separately, before a final assembly. The milk tanker tanker and the recently completed herring wagon will have a good wash this afternoon and head into the paint boxes. In terms of the paint boxes there are a number of wagons that are getting close to completion, with the SPV now ready for transfers and a lowfit wagon getting close to having the painting finished. So I have plenty of projects to keep me busy during the Christmas hols and hopefully I will be able to finish a couple of these projects.