Wednesday, July 22, 2009

How I Anglicised an LGB tank wagon

The raw materials
A bog-standard tank wagon (the least well detailed and cheapest) was bought on eBay:

and a kit of bits was bought from Garden Railway Services (GRS)

Shortening the body
Firstly, the wagon was disassembled which involved unscrewing six screws:

One end of the body needed to be shortened to match the other end and leave room for the uprights. This was achieved with a few strokes of a craft knife:

The tank was sprayed with Plasti-kote grey primer (the standard colour for all my goods stock)

Modifying the chassis
I also removed all vestiges of the brake gear using a razor saw (I now wish I had left one brake block in place) as per the Welshpool and Llanfair.

Adding the tank stays
First, the two baulks were trimmed and glued to the ends of the body:

The uprights were then glued together and added to the ends, and the two upper baulks were glued in place.

Holes were drilled in the sides of the chassis and the upper baulks and the wires provided in the kit were superglued in place.
Finally, I decided to snip the heads from four suitably sized bolts, added a nut and superglued these to the ends of upper baulks. I ought to have done the same for the diagonal ties but decided there was insufficient room.

All the added paraphernalia and straps across the top of the tank were then touched up with black acrylics.

A nice little job which can be completed in an afternoon and to my mind is well worth the effort.

Update - 9/3/15

 Since completing this wagon, I have converted another tank wagon (using square section Plastruct and wire - see Progress Report 37) and weathered both wagons.

2 comments:

Jack AT said...

Do you weather them after you have sprayed them with primer?

GE Rik said...

Hi Jack
Yes. Here's an example of how I go about weathering - http://riksrailway.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/how-i-weather-my-wagons.html - but I also use weathering powders and aerosols depending on the sort of weathering I want to represent.
Rik