More for the Way and Works Department

No, I'm not mentioning the ballast hopper again just yet...too late 😆

No this post is about another wagon that has been coming through the works to follow it. This is yet another wagon in the HD family and another for the Victorian Goldfields Railway fleet. This time it is based on the short steel U van. Steam Era Models produced a kit for this van back in 2016 and is the most recent 'new' wagon kit produced by SEM at this point in time. It is available in two versions: one with a trapdoor at one end (the bigger U vans usually had one at both ends) or one with no trapdoors. I researched photos of the one the VGR have at Castlemaine, HD106, as well as a site visit to determine what version I would need to purchase and it turned out to be the later. Co-incidentally this wagon may have been the one that SEM used as part of their research for developing the kit so it has come full circle. Anyway I purchased this kit at Easter and decided last weekend to start putting it together:

Now I must confess something. I did the initial assembly of the underframe and the body at the local model railway club to show a fellow modeller who is starting out in kit building how I put one of these together. Well when I got it home and checked it over on my workbench it was obvious that it hadn't quite gone together exactly as intended (time to turn in my teaching card that I never had lol). However I was able to separate the parts and do some adjusting before gluing everything back together nice and square. That is what I get for assembling a new model for the first time and thinking it will go together exactly like the others. Then came the fun part of adding all the brass details. The shunter's steps are from my remaining pack of Model Etch ones so I will be up for some more in a few builds time.

So the plan is to paint and letter the wagon as HD106, pictured here:

Photo from Norm Bray's Flickr site: https://www.flickr.com/photos/60901191@N08/

 

So apart from a test run at the local club to check it is tracking alright, this one is ready to take it's place in the queue for paint.