Abandoned and forgotten…

It was bound to happen, those two abandoned MGR wagons at Newport, the subject of a blog post themselves a few weeks ago, would be realised in miniature… 

The wagons had a styrene ‘removable’ load made up, with several thicknesses to stiffen it, carefully cut to sit just inside the top of the wagon. A small hump was formed in filler and once dry, primed and painted. A layer of real coal dust from the bottom of my coal bucket was applied to PVA and this formed the basis of further work. The trees and saplings are ‘the broken bits’ left over from the Woodland Scenics forest canopy sets I use on commission layouts. These are fitted in small holes drilled in the loads, secured with a dab of PVA, and then later, once dry, some fine earth blend scatter is used to cover any ‘seed heads’ visible in the structure and around the bases to suggest more vegetation growth. Secured with scenic cement. In larger scales you might also use some poly fibre to create a little more airiness to this greenery.

The buffers weee carefully sanded a little thinner and plastic screw couplings fitted to small holes drilled in the buffer beam. Weathering of the wagons uses my usual blend of 33 and 98 washes, mixed on the go, removed vertically with a wide flat brush. The finishing touch was an overspray of 133/245/27004 mix to soften the edges. The results are full of character, a lovely quick project that can find a home on the ‘modern’ yard layout I have planned for when the Revolution 66s land. The idea can be used for other wagon types, on my recent trip to Durham I didn’t see much of the old infrastructure I remember rusting away in the late 90s, but there still is a Grampus in the trees and hedge at Helsby! Until next time, more soon…

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