Mark Horley
Photos by the author.

Clean condition, as built. Whether to weather? Personally, I like to see wagons and stock slightly dirty, although I find it a daunting prospect to attack a freshly painted model. The ex-Great Central Railway bogie 15-ton, 45ft fish van is quite an iconic vehicle. While the body kit from Rail Model combined with Ian Kirk bogies were quite modest in cost, it is still a leap of faith to weather, with only limited confidence that I will achieve the finish I want.
After assembly I used car aerosol primers to spray the body red oxide and the roof grey as suggested by the instructions. However, at Kettering, I bought a pot of Railmatch LNER red oxide and painting a swatch on the underside I found this was a much browner hue than the primer so I resprayed the body with this colour using the airbrush.

Using pictures in Peter Tatlow’s book, LNER Wagons Volume One (LNER Southern Area) as a guide, I applied HMRS transfers. The letter ‘A’ visible on the solebar was not provided. For this I used white ink applied using a sharpened barbeque skewer. I also used this method to suggest the LNER lettering on the wagon plate.

For this wagon in particular, I wasn’t sure how to do the weathering. With the heavy outside framing on the body, I wanted to ensure that the dirt was concentrated in the nooks and crannies. I settled on applying a ‘dirt’ mix of enamel paint, using an old paint brush working into the panelling.

I wiped off the excess with kitchen towel and cotton buds. Kitchen towel is more economical for large areas, though you need to take care not to leave bits stuck to the surface.

Cotton buds work well around the frames but very quickly become saturated. I worked on small sections at a time, progressing around the wagon body.

This procedure resulted in the centres of the panels being pretty clean, with the dark dirt mix in all the corners of the outside framing.

To tone down the contrast I then airbrushed the whole body with a light coat of the ‘dirt’ mix. Doing the spraying in the shed where the light is not the best and with the airbrush playing up (not properly cleaned) I ended up with a somewhat heavier overall weathering than intended.