O gauge wagon building - GWR milk tanker and Herring wagon, plus a small platform

I have managed to make some sporadic progress on building some wagons O gauge in the last few weeks. It is all slow going, but it has been very enjoyable. I have two kits currently on the go and both have presented challenges in different ways. The first of these is a Slaters GWR milk tank. The construction of the chassis is now just about complete. I found this quite fiddly to build and I think the instructions could have been a little clearer. However, the chassis is now rolling freely, although there were a few leaps of faith with the brake gear. I plan to build a rake of these, so the first one was always going to be a learning curve. I am now looking forward to building the body of the wagon and working out how to paint it!

GWR milk tanker chassis, just about finished, although it needs tidying up in places.

The second wagon I am building is 3D printed Herring wagon from Skog. The availability of 3D wagon kits is rapidly increasing and I was keen to have a look at one. There is no doubt that 3D printed rolling stock will become a mainstay of railway modelling over the next decade and this rise in cottage industries will allow ever more wagon types to be modelled. The first impression of the kit was favourable, but it is not without its issues. There are not a huge amount of parts for the kit and the most noticeable aspect of all the components are the 3D printing lines.

The Herring wagon kit.

The wagon hopper was a single printed piece and on closer inspection, the solebars were clearly warped. To try to cure this, I pit the wagon in clamp and applied some gentle heat from a hair dryer. This worked to some extent, but it also bent some of the wagon struts.

Trying to sort out the warp on the solebars.

To build the wagon, I have been raiding my spares box. The axle boxes and V hangers are from Slaters sprues and I still need to purchase some buffers and install the coupling. The printing lines on the body side were very noticeable and I have spent a fair amount of time sanding them down, although there is more to do. I intend to use a thick primer for the first coast of the wagon, mixed with some varnish and see if this will tidy up some of the rough sides of the wagon. Anyhow, it is shaping up and I should be able to finish this off in the next week or so and get it in the paint boxes.

Herring wagon so far.

Finally, I have managed to knock a small platform together for the micro layout.  This was a pretty simple build, just using some pasticard and Slaters embossed stone. However, I somehow managed to build the platform far too low, so I have raised it up with some spacers that will need to be disguised when this is built into the layout. As for the micro layout, well it is being extended by 3 feet! I have the baseboard ready to build and hope to get the track down and laid next week.......so hopefully some quicker updates to follow.

The small platform for the micro layout.