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I pulled the boxes out a few weeks ago to have a look at what was needed to build the wagons. The kits are mainly produced in resin with a few white metal castings, and included brass wire and nice couplings. They appeared to be quite easy to build if the parts could be straightened. The basic body comprises only seven resin parts, nicely moulded apart from distortion. On reading the instructions, almost the first item mentioned was how to correct the distortion, by ‘placing the panels in hot water and then laying the part on a flat surface to cool’, I suppose nobody at the club had actually read the instructions! Anyway I tried it and it very much improved the parts. So I decided to build the wagons.

These wagons must be amongst the longest of four wheel wagons and I felt they would need some sort of suspension to cope with track un-evenness, but apart from this the kits would be built without further modifications. So I built them following the instructions (which are basic, including photos and sketches, but adequate) with the exception of fitting Bill Bedford’s sprung inside bearings on one axle, to each van. I obtained these from Eileen’s Emporium.

Using Loctite superglue, I assembled the van bodies as per instructions after dressing off surplus resin flash. There were some rather large gaps between parts on assembly, which were filled using Plastikard and plastic filler. I found quite quickly that the floor/underframe moulding distorted very easily if any stresses were induced during assembly. Supplied weights need to be added before sealing the body ‘box’.

On completion of the body, the fixed axleboxes were bushed and fitted with the wheels, and then fitted to the floor moulding, nesting nicely in the moulded floor/underframe pockets. The second axlebox castings were then fitted. The wheels were mounted on the sprung bearings, outside axle extensions cut off, and after making some packings from plasticard to set the height, they were secured to the floor.

Sprung buffers and the very nice coupling hooks were fitted next, along with the few resin underframe details, handrails and remaining details, all fitted in accordance with instructions, sketches and photos. I cannot comment on the accuracy of the finished model as there is no dimensioned drawing in the instructions, and no information on the original data used for the kit. Looking at photos of the prototype, there is an amount of detail that could be added, and the moulded body parts also look a little bit heavy, but we now have a couple of quite robust, unusual wagons.

When bought these wagons cost £45, each plus the cost of wheels and spring bearings, which I think was a fair price, and with patience nice models can been constructed. Plenty of photos of the prototypes are on the internet. I used some as guides to livery and weathering, they also helped during the build. Thank you GJH Plant Company.