Three New Underground Skips

Another three Hudson underground skips are now in service on my little 1/19 scale industrial narrow gauge railway. They are as dirty as the first three, carry the numbers 31, 34 and 36 and are from the same shipment that arrived in December 2022. I began assembly of the last three skips during summer and continued with final assembly and paint in September.

A full train of underground skips at Nystrup Gravel. The three new wagons in the foreground. The skips were primarily used to transport ash from the company's boiler room.

As the proces of painting and weathering is essential a total repitition of what I did on the first three U-tub skips I will refer to the post on finishing the first three skips. Below are a few images further illustrating the painting and weathering process in addition to the images in the post linked to above. 

Wheels sprayed with 'Chaos Black' from Citadel directly from the rattle can. Axles protected with masking tape and the single wheels double taped to a piece of scrap cardboard.

The first layers of weathering is on. It looks like a total mess at this stage. It will look better once finished... Notice numbering covered with dirty deposits.

With most of the weathering in place I just had to finish the couplings. That was done adding homemade hooks to the single chain links made previously. I only fitted hooks on one end of each wagon.

Home made hooks bent from nickle silver wire.

Last touches of weathering being applied. In reality the process will probably continue until I have found a level of ash deposit and dust I find reasonable.

With black paint on the hooks and a quick wash of heavily diluted rust coloured oil paint the skips received an air brushing of matt varnish with a little pale sand added. Then wheels and frames had track dust added with a thin layer Vallejo 71.142 'Sinai Sand' mixed with a lot of water.