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Slaters Gauge 3 Midland Railway D299 and D351 wagons

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My MR open wagons are progressing well. D299 is the side-door-only version, D351 has an end-door only – obvious from the hinge along the top end of the door.

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These are the two wagons, as constructed by myself.

the upper one here is the D351.


The lower one is D299.

They haven’t been “weathered” yet, so look unrealistically clean, but that will soon be fixed.

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I am particularly pleased with the wood-look interiors, as shown here.

 

 

 

 


Here they are, side-by-side.  

Click to enlarge, as ever.

 

Slaters Gauge 3 Midland Railway D299 wagon – 3 and D351 wagon

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Even before finishing my D299 wagon I have started my Slater’s kit of a D351 wagon.  Also, I haven’t even finished my model of the MR flat wagon D336.  There are reasons for this, but it’s mostly that I simply like the construction phase and the painting is less pleasurable.  As for adding the lettering – well that’s just stressful!

Here are the two wagons.  The one on the right is the newly-constructed D351.  The only difference between the wagons was the end-door.  When this pic. was taken I had only put primer on the D351 though.

 

So this weekend I have airbrushed the wagons so that they look very similar.  One will have brakes on only one side (see the left-hand wagon on this picture, as most did until the 1930s.  The other will have brakes both sides.  Slightly different lighting makes them look cream-coloured but they are both Midland-grey!

Clearly the two wagons are very similar and the Slaters kits mean that making the second one is a lot easier.  The detail on these kits is astounding.

These are pictures of the end-door version (D351) – the catches to hold the end-door closed.

I suppose that this is why I find the kits so satisfying to make.  The catches almost look as though they would work!

 

So there you are – next will nearly complete, I guess …

Slaters Gauge 3 Midland Railway D299 wagon – 2

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“Slaters Gauge 3 Midland Railway D299 wagon – 2” because I have shown a little bit of the construction of this kit from Slaters Plastikard in my entry “Gauge 3 action” earlier.

Despite name of the company who made it, this kit has almost no plastic!  It is nearly all wood and metal, which I greatly like.  It is also phenomenally well-designed and made, and all fits together very precisely and accurately. My previous entry left it at the stage where the body had been put together, but then I had the opportunity of having help with my “live steam” Dyak, and so the wagon project was abandoned.  

Well here I am back at the wagon works.

After the wonder of putting together the beautifully laser-cut wooden body, and the tedium of inserting over a hundred dummy bolts (about 1x5mm each!), I have put on the wheels, including the suspension, and the rest of the underframe details.

As you can see from this and the previous picture, these wagons often only had brakes on one side, and that is what I am modelling.

Painting should be straightforward – in theory, if not in practice!  Everything above the bottom of the sole bar in wagon grey, and everything below in black!  What is more, wagon grey was variable in shade, so almost any light- (or indeed quite dark-) grey is realistic!

I found a grey. primer, but once applied, I have decided it is a bit dark to look nice (I want to have a variable grey fleet of wagons, even if I cannot have a colourful collection).  So I will apply a lighter coat of grey later – I had hoped that the primer would double as a final colour.

In any case the primer came from a “rattle can”, and didn’t provide an even coat, not getting into the corners well at all.  Using the airbrushes with a lighter grey should fix that issue as well as making the colour more acceptable (to me …).  On the other hand the primer appears to have covered all the metalwork, which is what I really needed it to do.