The Printed Cards

 

Construction of the OO version

 

I used a surplus Lima 7 plank wagon, 'Evans and Bevan', a good choice as the body is moulded in black, thus not requiring painting on the top edges to match the paper colour. A previous owner had attempted to weather the sides with bright green blobs, so nothing was lost.

Cutting out the paper sides was easy using a straight edge and a sharp blade. The cut edges were then coloured in with a permanent marker ( as PH instructions ). Comparing the paper sides to the wagon's taller moulded sides, the top plank has to be removed. I used a fine saw to remove most of the plastic, then squared up with a file. To achieve a uniform finish, the wagon was inverted and rubbed on a sheet of sandpaper until the height was correct. The side and end detail also has to be removed, again by use of the file and sandpaper. The paper sides were exactly the right length for the wagon body, I used a spray picture mounting adhesive. The ends were slightly too long for the Lima moulding, one side has the corner bracing overlapping the sides in prototypical fashion, the other side has a butt joint which looks neater.

 

I was surprised how quickly I finished the wagon, perhaps  to complete the wagon a thin coat of matt varnish is required to tone down the sides, and a load of coal.

One suggestion for future releases is that there might be space on the quality paper sheet for 2 wagons if the instructions were printed separately on lower quality paper.

Overall an excellent way to cheaply bring back to service an otherwise redundant wagon, let's hope this series continues.
 

 
 

Malcolm Pugh

Malcolm,

Well you were quick off the mark. Super job. I scanned mine, reduced it to TT size, printed it out again on photo quality inkjet paper and it changed colour!! (see picture).

So I found a rough TT open wagon, just the right size, and following your example sanded down the sides to remove all the raised detail, sprayed with spray mount and the photo shows the results. I will have to put it onto a better chassis sometime.

Eric Large