Detailing a model railway, as the excellent BRM Guide to building your first layout suggests, can eat your time like a fat footie fan can chomp his way through a pie at half-time. Painting figures can easily consume as many hours as slapping plaster over the landscape. As far as I'm concerned, it's a lot more fun though.
This probably explains why I'm a magpie for detail bits on second hands stalls and swapmeet tables. Not for me the gleaming locomotives proudly displayed on the counter, I'm rooting through the little boxes of bits on the floor.
Which is probably where this venerable Slaters kit for a Dog Cart (actually a 2-wheel horse drawn trap) came from. At the time it probably looked a good bet for space on the Hellingly Hospital Railway. Now, I need something that can sit in front of the station on Edgeworth and should 1930s.
While Slaters nowadays make kits of breathtaking quality, especially the larger scale items that I covet in a big way, this ancient model is a bit more basic. The parts don't have any locaton aids. The springs need to chopped up if you want the wheels in the right place relative to the sides and I had to make my own seat base as I couldn't work out which random plastic rectangle was to be used.
Despite this, it looks nice and is a heck of a lot cheaper than an etched model. The wheels have a depth that the metal versions can't match either.
It just goes to show that not all the stuff in those boxes under tables is rubbish.
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