Riverside freight and wagons, wagons, wagons

I have been doing a little bit of web research recently regards the Riverside freight. This freight ran from Exeter to Barnstaple, only stopping in 1987. It was only 1 of 2 scheduled mixed freights on British Rail and according to one website consisted of an SK, BCK, 3 or 4 ex GWR Fruit D vans, 1 or 2 BGs and about 5 empty vans. Barnstaple is curious in this respect, as still had a relatively high freight volume even in the 1980s, with wood carried in OTAs from Lapford, cement and resin carried in PCA tankers, fertiliser wagons, and also china clay from the Torrington line until 1982. In addition the early morning passenger train was locomotive hauled (normally class 33 or 31) and had c. 4 or 5 mk1s and a newspaper/parcel van.

All of this makes for some great modelling potential, as many of these trains were short, say only 3 or 4 OTAs and 3 or 4 PCAs. I have been building up a fleet of Cambrian OTAs over the years, but with the release of this wagon type from both Bachmann and Hornby I am going to purchase the rest. Yesterday I brought a Hornby fertiliser wagon, which has some awful mouldings/couplings on. This is going to form the basis of a super detailing job. I also purchased a Bachmann 50ft parcel wagon which is going to be heavily weathered, just like the prototypical stock on the Tarka line in the 1980's, which was extremely dirty. I need to purchase 2 or 3 GW Fruit D vans from Parkside Dundas and then the modelling of this freight will be possible on my little layout.

In addition to these projects detailing of my class 20 is coming on really well, although adding the couplings to this loco was a complete nightmare. The first walrus is almost finished, the second walrus and lamprey are in the paintshop and scenery of Amberleigh is continuing full speed ahead. I intend to build my kit of the Cambrian whale wagon on Sunday morning and start the detailing of the fertiliser wagon and parcels van. I will hopefully finish my walrus wagon this weekend and will put up some pictures of it and progress on the class 20.