Thought I'd post a few low light pictures of mineral wagons I've got, all of these are kits sourced from collections put up for sale, some of the wagons were part build already and have been brought up to standard. In one instance I completely separated the body and frames components because the wagon was warped. So here we have 20 wagons that consist of four wooden 13 tonners, one 21tonner and the rest are 16 ton steels build mainly to diagram 108 although there is one SNCF mineral which BR took ownership of several. The kits are either old Parkside or Peco ones and here they all are parked in the Co-op Siding on my layout Elton Crossing which is a segment of the North Staffordshire Railway Wheelock branch. Enjoy.
These look good York Paul. All with varying degrees of weathering and finishes. You'd need a nice long run to fully show them off. Great stuff. Thanks for posting the photo's up. Toto
Yes trouble is Elton Crossing is only 12 feet long and originally it was only ever intended to be a diorama backdrop for photographing my build projects, I had considered some add on sections and still may do this as time permits however I'm planning a new portable layout which potentially can go to shows but that project is still in the planning. Whatever I do it will be simple and lightweight. Sorry for the poor quality of pictures, they were done quickly and under bad lighting on a cheap camera phone. I'll post up a few better ones in natural daylight.
I'd say the layout does a great job. From what I can see the scenics and ballasting look top notch. Toto
They look excellent Paul, I haven't really tackled steel minerals because they are really too late for my modelling period although they were built in numbers just after the war so I could justify some LNER/LMS examples. The nearest I have is a Parkside steel hopper and a couple of Piercy/DJH kits for hoppers still to build. I have a few wooden opens on the go and really should make an effort to finish them.
Apparently the LMS introduced 16 ton steel minerals in 1947 ) I think) see R.J Essery's book on LMS wagons. The LMS ones had pressed steel doors as per the Peco version, the LNER took the design and introduced a riveted version with slightly inward sloping sides, all were unfitted and none had Morton brakes. When I worked for BR (many years ago now) a lot of the Pressed Steel 16 toners only had acting brakes on one side of the wagon, e.g two brake blocks on two wheels, they were known in the business as MOT's ... so gawd help if you had a rake of loaded MOT's you were fly shunting and trying to stop on a trailing brake. Oh happy memories riding between buffers on a shunting pole.