Thursday, July 02, 2015

Mineral wagons

P and trucks3

Once upon a time, I thought all 16T mineral wagons were the same. I'm old enough to have seen trains of them hauled by blue diesels through my local station. At the time I didn't think anything of it - it's just how things were. If only I'd known that the future would see the end of interesting trains like this and a freight network consisting of containers with the occasional train of bogie wagons, not even MGRs, I might have paid more attention.

I also remember how excited I was to borrow An Illustrated History of BR Wagons Volume One from my local library. All those plans! All the different wagons! I could have a go at building some of them!

It didn't quite happen like that of course. I photocopied loads of plans but before construction could commence, Parkside Dundas came along with their reasonably priced, easy to assemble and pretty accurate kits.

I still tried to build a variety though. I didn't know before the book about slope sided or French type wagons. It just goes to show how much variety you can have in a rake of grey coal tubs.

When I was ignoring the trains of four-wheelers, I also didn't realise that one day I'd be able to buy most types RTR. Even if the sides do look a bit thick to me.

1 comment:

Keith P. said...

And so it is with 21T mineral wagons. A minefield of variations, I am making up a small rake of these from various sources including Parkside Dundas as well as proprietary.