I NEEDED A SUITABLE LOAD for my GWR Crocodile G built from the Scorpio Models etched brass kit. Leafing through the book GWR Freight Wagons & Loads by J H Russell (Published 1981 ISBN 0 86093 1552) I found a picture of the “World’s Mammoth Cylinder” being loaded onto a similar Crocodile wagon. This was actually an out of- gauge load but visually looked impressive, unusual and immediately a method of construction occurred to me.

To build, I started with a 160mm length of scrap 4mm dowel. I then cut six 50mm diameter discs from corrugated card using a compass cutter. These I laminated together in pairs with the corrugations at 90 degrees to give three discs, two ends and a centre support. I enlarged the centre holes through the card, originally made with the point of the compass cutter, with a 4mm wood drill held in my fingers. The two end discs then had lengths of coffee stirrer glued on with PVA, each coffee stirrer being then trimmed to the profile of the card disc with a sharp box cutter knife on a cutting mat.

The three discs were threaded onto the dowel and glued with PVA, with carefully squared rectangles of corrugated card glued onto the dowel between each disc to keep everything square. This former was next planked with 110mm lengths of coffee stirrer glued onto the three discs with PVA. To aid securing to the wagon, a strip of scrap brass etch with a 10BA nut soldered to it was glued inside the barrel, with a suitable hole between two planks. A couple of coffee stirrers were then split lengthwise to provide narrow planks to fix across the ends, to act as a mounting for the advertising notice. The notice was created on the computer, based on the photograph, and printed onto paper. The paper was laminated onto thin card from a teabag box before fixing to each end of the cylinder. The tarpaulin (in fact two, overlapping) was again printed on normal photocopier paper from a free download from Wordsworth Model Railway suitably scaled up. This was gently scrunched up, before fixing to the top of the cylinder with PVA. Two timber baulks were created from ¼in balsa, just short of the length of the wagon well, with the inside edge chamfered to fit the cylinder. The cylinder was attached to the wagon with a 10BA bolt from the underside. At each end three chains were added using the book photograph as guidance. I thought the result quite pleasing although in retrospect I should have split each coffee stirrer lengthwise to give narrower planks.