O Gauge Herring Wagon finished and in service

Another wagon I have managed to finish recently is the Herring wagon, which will form part of a ballast train on the layout. This wagon was built from a 3D printed kit supplied by Skog and it was my first attempt to build a 3D print; therefore, I approached the build as a learning experience for future  kits. Overall I am pretty happy with the finished wagon - it is not perfect but this is a reflection of my building skills and not the kit design.

Finished Herring wagon ready for the layout. 

During the building process I attempted to file down the 3D printing lines. Once in the painting box some of the 3D print lines were still visible so I hand painted some varnish onto the body sides to act as a filler, before further painting. This largely worked, but with hindsight I should have spent another evening or two with the file out, removing as much of the print lines as possible. The kit was largely built as supplied by Skog, however I swapped out the axles/bearing boxes for some Slaters ones. I also replaced the brake levers with some brass Slaters ones, which I modified to suit the wagon. Wheels and bearings also came from Slaters. The wagon was painted using Railmatch enamels and some AK interactive washes, with transfers a mixture of Fox and Railtec. 

Now that it is finished, I will buy at least one more of these wagons, which will run with a catfish, dogfish and possibly a sealion or two.

In conclusion, I think these Skog kits are brilliant value. Now that it is finished, I can see where I could have applied a bit more time to filing process, but otherwise I have a wagon to run in my ballast trains that is not otherwise available in O gauge. I said it on a previous post, but give it 10 years and we will be able to have much higher quality 3D prints of virtually any rolling stock type. Hopefully, we can all have 3D printers in our homes, happily printing off wagons! So back to other modelling tasks, I still have plenty of other projects on the go, but I am slowly working through these. I have made some more progress with the buildings for the layout and the next job (still) is to reassemble the Class 33 and add the DCC sound chip. So hopefully, more to report soon!

Slaters 12t Planked Van into service - another one finished!

Over the past couple of weeks I managed to finished another 12t planked van for the goods train. This is the fourth 12t van I have finished, with 3 slaters wagons built and painted, including a Vanwide and a weathered Dapol 12t van with plywood sides. The Slaters kit was built as per the instructions and went together pretty easily. The paint was applied using Railmatch enamels via the airbrush, although I did a little hand brushing in an attempt to bring out some rust patches, especially on the wagon ends. The transfers are from Railtec.

Finished 12t planked van.

Two view showing the rust patches on the end of the van.

So another wagon has entered service for the layout. The four 12t vans were the minimum I wanted for a small rake of wagons, which were used for propelling fertiliser traffic along the branch line. So finally I have finished the first rake ready to use on the layout. I am looking forward to giving them all a test run and to do some shunting moves with these in the small sidings. The layout is planned to have a number of fixed rakes, with the 12t wagons for the fertiliser train the first one. The second rake will be somewhere between 4-6 milk tankers for the dairy and a healthy array of parcels stock is being built/detailed, including 2 SPVS and some CCTs, alongside a number of engineers wagons that I am slowly getting around to building. 

So further modelling tasks for the coming weeks are to finish the herring wagon, which is awaiting transfers, alongside progressing with the main dairy buildings for the layout. The class 33 paint job is finished, but the locomotive needs to have the DCC sound decoder/speaker wired in, a driver to be added and then to be reassembled. The layout needs to be put up but I just cannot find the time at the moment to make it worthwhile. Hopefully later in August or September I will be able to get a run of a few days where I can really attack the layout detailing. However, until then, I will push on with finishing off these other projects and getting ready for when the layout is finally put up.