Progress (Minor) on Two Bogie Wagons (1/35)

I have been making slow progress on the two Hudson bogie wagons. After having done the four bogies for project from rebuilt Scale Link skips, I started bending some of the etched metal parts while on a small vacation in the summer cottage. Returning from vacation brought a lot of non-modelling demands on my time and other modelling projects even managed to overtake the bogie wagons' place on my worktable. Now it's December and I thought it might be possible to finish the wagons before New Year.



Bending frame/bottom of the wagons. One frame/bottom has been bent up in my little etch bender from Mission Models. A full etch is seen in the top right of the image.

I think I mentioned, that the wagons come without bogies and their associated mountings. After some head scratching I made bogie mountings from scrap brass and nuts to fit my standard M2 bolts. To make life easier I have long time since standardized my use of bolts and nuts for mounting bogies, loco bodies etc. to M2, making sure I'm not in doubt what to do when a nut or bolt is lost. Unfortunately I was one M2 nut short.

My old supplier of small nuts and bolts had closed down so I ordered a nice selection of M2 nuts and bolts from www.modellbauschrauben.de in Germany.


A frame seen from below. Bogie mountings soldered inside the frames. On the other side of the brass piece with a hole in it is a M2 nut to take the bogie mounting bolt.

As a consequence of the missing nut, I decided to concentrate work on one wagon. With the end plates bent up and the associated angles ready to solder in place, it turned out that the angles were too short by several millimetres. Not wanting to worry about who's fault it was (me or the kit designer), I simply soldered the end plates in place. I will fit strengthening angles from brass or plastic profile later.

Being slightly put off by a missing bolt and short angle irons, I put both wagons back into their card board box. I will spend the coming Christmas Holidays doing some preparatory work on my gas generator Schöma and building a Danish army lorry. The wagons will have to wait...