In between getting 'Cuyahoga' ready for Zedex 2010 and sorting out full size problems on railway wagons at work we have also been getting our first five wagon kits ready for release. These are a spin off on some new developments we are doing on our British Z layout 'Midsomer mardy'. We were going to need a few more typical private owner coal wagons for a 1930's freight train I am working on. Tens of thousands of these humble 10 and 12 ton wooden bodied vehicles were to be seen on British railways and were the equivalent of the billboard boxcars and reefers seen in the U.S.A. Most collieries and local coal merchants had their own wagons in their own distinctive livery. The kits are low tech, a bit of a blast from the past, being pre-printed cardstock that are used as overlays on a simple plastic card body and we have left the choice of chassis to the builder. We are going to put them on sale for the first time at Zedex 2010 this weekend and it will hopefully encourage a few more people to try their hand at British Z modelling. each pack contains sides and ends to do 5 wagons with individual running numbers and also pre-printed chassis solebar sides as they were usually the same colour as the body if it was a wooden chassied wagon. As some people will never have had a go at card modelling I thought an instructional video showing the basic techniques and some of the 'dodges' we have worked out would help and it can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6VJr7HfiUY cheers KEV
Kevin, Brilliant! Let me know when and where I can buy these beauties!!! I have a Grind-Bashed Marklin 0-6-0 that kinda looks like a GW Tank Engine and these would look great behind her. Cheers Joe MTL
Thanks Joe. Once I have got ZEDEX 2010 out of the way I am proposing to send some over to my folks in Goleta Ca. and they can post them out from there rather than sending individual packets across the pond. Ball park figure would be about 10 bucks plus post and packing I have also got some great Western coach sides in development to go with my LMS 57 footers. I'll stick a preproduction pic here in a while cheers KEV
Aren't digital cameras brilliant Not so long ago you would take a picture, take the film to the lab, get it processed in an hour if you were in a hurry and post it. Now you whip out the EOS, take a picture, dump it straight into Photobucket, link it to Trainboard and ten minutes later people 6,000 miles away can see it! I mentioned the Great Western coach sides. Here is a test shot of the artwork propped up near the LMS 57 foooters and the Midland mainline HST125 coaches. I'll keep everybody posted on progress as they come along KEV
The HST coach bodies are cast in resin but the overlays were self adhesive paper which have not worked particularly well. The trucks are Marklin UIC ones with the bolster pin drilled out so that the trucks can be screwed directly to the body.I am going to redo the overlays in gloss finish card stock I am going to do the same with the 57 footers i.e cast a basic shell in resin and use MTLs 4 wheel passenger trucks. One thing I have done with the LMS stock is use a simple link and pin connection between the coaches as they run as a fixed set on Midsomer Mardy The possibilities are endless! KEV
Kevin, Is that your layout ? ? It looks really great from that angle, how do you get to the upper level? I live in Riverside County but attended UCSB in the late 60's. I haven't been back since but I guess it has changed a lot. Robert
