British Skips for Nystrup Gravel

Nystrup Gravel bought brand new skips a few years after the 2. World War. The old skips had taken a beating during the occupation when traffic on the little gravel line had been very heavy. The new Hudson skips came from Great Britain, in those years the primary supplier of things mechanical to Denmark. After the war it was difficult for Danish businesses to get permission to import goods from abroad. Nystrup Gravel must have been lucky to be allowed to buy new skips.

Two new skips. Here seen in the state they had developed to after a few years of service.

The new skips are to 16 mm scale and quite a bit larger than those I have previously built in 1:35 scale. In an earlier blog post I finished the basic work on the frames. While working on the frames I had decals made that matched those on the 1:35 scale models.

The skips in the garden before I started the painting proces.

The skips from Binnie Engineering are basically sound models with a potential for adding details. The edges of the skip bucket seemed rather wide to me, so I sanded them down a bit and rounded off the corners. I shaved off the rivets on the end edges and added a plastic card reinforcement strip. The rivets were glued back on again with AC glue. It was exiting if I would be able to keep the loose rivets from disappearing and I managed to reuse all but two.

On the frames I added bolts to the brackets holding the axle boxes to the frame and the grease bolt on the front of the axle boxes. I used bolts from TichyTrain. The coupling horns are modified nails bent appropriately and with the heads filed in shape.

I primed the skips with my usual black primer and decided to apply decals and weathering directly on the primer. The weathering was applied in several stages consisting of acryllic and oil paint, pastel chalk and graphite from a soft pencil.

Skips with decals and preliminary weathering applied.

The two Hudson-skips with buckets tipped. The holes drilled in the bottom of the body is barely visible. Any sensible skip owner drilled holes to allow rain water to seep out.

Nystrup Gravel skip 50 in 1:35 and 1:19 scale side by side.