Ready to Rock On- Part 2

Well it has taken a couple of weeks but the ballast wagon is finally finished. Just in the nick of time with the weather turning a bit poor for painting:

I opted to stay true to the prototype and code it as a VZMA rather than the original NN code. The wagon doesn't have a load yet and I opted not to put the internal braces in at this stage either because, as I found out via a friend who did some research of the real thing for me, they copped a fair bit of abuse due to the nature of the material they were loaded with.

Those with a sharp eye will note the ends of the truss rods are not exactly in the right position and there is only one simple answer for this: if I put them in the correct spot it would have restricted the swing of the bogies which, being the old plate frame type, have a bit of detail that can foul such things because of the way the leaf springs are set up. The prototype does not have such issues as it is not expected to go round the tight radius curves that model railways typically have.

Another detail that is not so obvious in the above photos is the use of disc type wheels with one pair of spoke wheels just like the real VZMA 40-L:

You can also see in this shot I like to paint the wheels and axles a dark grubby colour. One of the few 'weathering' jobs I deliberately do on my rollingstock.

Well time to get cracking on painting that HD. And maybe commence something else 😉