Acid from Marchon (N part 62)...

"I'm not doing any more kit building in N gauge" he says. How did we end up here then? Not just a kit, but a kit bash...

Whilst building the Coventry Rail Works / Peco alumina hoppers for the Scottish project I realised there may be potential in the chassis for other wagon types. The pedestal suspension was used frequently under 2 axle airbrakes wagons used on Speedlink services including a wide range of tank wagons. 

I found a photo of this prototype whilst browsing Paul Bartlett's site and was instantly reminded of my Corkickle Brake OO gauge cameo scheme. The Marchon works at Kells near Whitehaven exporting chemicals by train until the abandonment of Speedlink.  

Combining the N gauge Society chemical tank wagon kit with Will's chassis was fairly straight forward. A gentle bashing of the kit was required to add the pop up handrails (N brass scraps) to the top of the tank. Decals are a mix of those in the kit and some custom ones I had made for the specific Albright and Wilson and acid markings - as the ones I ordered from Railtec (not cheap either) turned out to be for the PCA powder tank wagons.

Of course it is absolutely filthy and stained which isn't very attractive at all - and they didn't always look like this, but the attraction of modelling this condition and the challenge of recreating it in N was too good to pass up. There is nothing innately difficult in this build, this kit conversion - but the small size just makes everything fiddly and magnifies any gaps, fingerprints, glue marks. N gauge rewards neatness over finesse, make sure the detail you include is on straight rather than including all the detail.

"I'm not doing any more N gauge kits" for now. After the two molasses tanks and the CO2 tanks this draws a line under this flourish of Speedlink wagons. Until next time, more soon...

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