Beer and Buckjumpers: Making progress

It's time to move things along. I have too many pieces of rolling stock that are sitting around waiting to be finished, and I'm dithering from one to the other.

So early on Sunday morning, I bit the bullet, picked up the paintbrush and had a really good session of getting to grips with my work in progress. The first thing that I went for was an LNWR wagon.

This is the Ratio plastic kit, fitted with MJT rocking W-irons to provide suspension, and an etched nickel silver brake lever which I think came from Ambis. This wagon was basically completed, and I can't remember how long ago it reached that stage - ten, fifteen, twenty years? Anyway, it had been battered a little bit in moving from house to house, and it needed some paint chippings repairing, and the rather mangled Sprat & Winkle couplings replacing.

When that was done, it was time for some weathering to reflect the reality of late Victorian/Edwardian railways. This was done with a mixture of Citadel miniatures washes, which really do work as well as others describe. I think that it was Craig Welsh that first brought them to my attention. I think that there will still be room for "traditional" weathering techniques, such as described by Martyn Welch.

Anyway, this is how it turned out. The load is an assortment of packing cases from an old packet - made by Knightwing, I think. I still have a lot of them to go through! The pale grey sheets are actually lead sheet, folded and glued into place to add weight to the plastic kit. They started off dark grey - normal lead colour - and have oxidised to this colour over the years. An illustration that acts as a warning to support those tales of exploding boilers!