New Skips (1/35)

Skips are what makes the little railway at Nystrup Gravel earn its living. After having ordered a batch in the beginning of the year, the railway has now taken delivery of 9 new skips - one of them with brakes. The skips are built from the Hesketh and Snoodyk 1:35 scale etched brass kit launched last year and produced from drawings of a German Dolberg skip.

Nystrup Gravel's newest item - a 1:35 Dolberg skip from Hesketh & Snoodyk.

Yesterday I received a package from Australia with the skips. I was excited as I had not only bought kits of skips. Rather than build them myself I had ordered them in built condition. It is the first time I have paid someone to assemble kits for me and it will most likely not be a thing that will happen often. I love modelling myself, so why pay someone else for the fun? But the bending and soldering of nine skips occured to me as something I might find both somewhat difficult and perhaps a little boring. Consider me spoiled if you like.

I ordered my skips unpainted but they arrived chemically blackened to avoid oxidation. While they don't look too bad unpainted I will eventually paint my skips later. 

I have yet to examine the skips in more detail and test run them on my modules, but from my intial handling of them and pushing them over a test track everything seems to be in perfect order. On some of them I may adjust the fit of the skip bucket in its cradle just a little. Otherwise I can't think of what I could add to these skips except paint, weathering and a tiny drop of oil in the bearings.

The skip with bucket tipped.

Bucket pulled off the skip frame. Even on my hurried snapshots the fine detail can be seen.

I have previously sought different ways to make up realistic trains of skips. I bought my first skip kits in 1999 from Scale Link and added minor details myself to change them a bit. I continued buying Scale Link skips as they were what was available and looked most like the skips most used on Danish industrial railways. In addition to the Scale Link skips I acquired six Hudson skips from Slaters Plastikard. Quite satisfied with both the look and running of the Slaters skips, the type was however, never in widespread use in Denmark. Consequently I couldn't bring myself to buy more of them. Mark Hesketh and Bernard Snoodyk have now provided exactly the skips I wanted and I'm seriously contemplating if I should order more.

I will now have to consult the Nystrup Gravel archive for that missing half page of their inventory of skips. When numbering my new skips I would like them to carry correct numbers according to Nystrup Gravel practice. I have the top half of the document but I suspect the company's Dolberg type skips to be listed on the lower half of the document...