Way back in 2015 I started building five PO wagons from Colin Ashby kits picked up from the now defunct GOG Executor and Trustee service. Over the intervening years I had slowly added brake levers and guides and ultimately  a couple of them just required buffer stocks before they were painted. In my recent quest to move a few of my shef queens along I fitted the last ones with buffer stocks and I have painted them ready for transfers.

When we lived in Wakefield we were just up the road from the former Newmarket Colliery of J&J Charlesworth and that’s whose I livery Intended to do them in. Powsides do J&J Charlesworth transfers but they are the rub down type so I think that I will get some white transfer paper and draw up my own for cutting on the Silhouette Cutter. Hopefully it won’t be another nine years before you see them finished.

Tonight I managed to get a shot of them all together – not the best photo in the world but you get the idea

Colin Ashby PO Wagons

All in all they were worth taking a punt on.

At the Guild summer show I collected some kit’s that I had reserved with the E&T service.

In amongst them were some Colin Ashby PO wagon kits in between doing other builds I have slowly been putting them togther.

First a note from Colin that was included with the kits.

This makes the kits quite ancient history but that said the detail is pretty good for the age of them.

Colin Ashby RCH PO Wagons

I have included some of the missing internal washer plate detail but quite a bit was there to start with on the internal sides.

Colin Ashby RCH PO Wagons

I did have to scribe the floor detail though – which is a reverse of some Slaters kits which have planks on the floor but no internal side detail.

Colin Ashby RCH PO Wagons

I also had to raid the spares box for the brake safety loops indeed not having enough I had to cut some from styrene sheet.

Colin Ashby RCH PO Wagons

The brake levers and guards were one piece mouldings which I will replace with a mixture of Slaters/Parkside and Bill Bedford etched spares.

Overall I am quite impressed with them, the only minor discrepancies are that they seem slightly longer than the equivalent Slaters 7 plank wagon and the moulded buffer bases. The size I can live with but I am undecided about the buffers at the minute – the heads were plastic so either way they will get replaced.

This kit (Slaters LMS 7 Plank Loco Coal Wagon) was another of my swaps with a gent at Telford. It was one of the older kits in the grey narrow boxes and when I got it home and had a look the brass etches were missing (compensated W Irons/brake levers etc.) By pure chance a meet up with Graham Beare (of this and other parishes) on the Saturday evening saw me presented with an Exactoscale underframe to try under some cattle wagons that I am building (very slowly). It wasn’t suitable for the cattle wagons it being either too deep or not deep enough, I can’t remember now. Graham being the kind soul that he is told me to keep it anyway in case it came in for something else and it did immediately.

Having rather enjoyed the bit’s of details that I added to the brake van I decided to attempt to add the interior details that Slaters don’t include in the the kits. There is only one photo of these wagons in the Essery’s LMS Wagons volume 1 which is photographed at the end of it’s life when condemned. That said the text does refer the reader to wagons of similar diagrams which looked the same externally. One of these is a photo of a wagon involved in an accident which by good fortune gives a view of the strapping inside.

I started by using an Olfa compass cutter to measure and mark out where the planking lines were on the inside. Once marked these were deepened using an Olfa cutter to cut the grooves proper.

Then a few happy hours were spent cutting and drilling various strips of plastikard and gluing them to the wagon sides and ends before assembly. Once they were glued to the insides I drilled through into the wagon side and then inserted short lengths of plastic rod and allowed them to dry thoroughly before sanding them back to stubs.

Flushed with the success of this I then decided to add the steel strip around the top of the wagon using a similar technique but on the top I cut the plastic rod of flush to give the impression of a countersunk screw. To this I then added the capping retaining clips seen on wagons – I again once glued in place I drilled the wagon sides and inserted short lengths of plastic rod before finally assembling the sides and ends.