Tarp 'er up.

Now don't go getting too excited that I have done 2 posts in as many days. This is not a sign of things to come, just catching up on the past 3 months of not putting up any posts at all.

This is my first ever attempt at Tarping up wagons, so I'm not going to tell you the best way to achieve tarped wagons, but show you my success with the method I chose.

I was gifted 4 I wagons from a friend that were constructed but unpainted so with nothing to loose what better item for me to make my first attempt.

I used the standard Dilmah tea bag. I removed the staple, string and under running water the tea leaves. Whilst still wet I was able to tear along the seam which opened out the tea bag flat, then left hanging to dry.

Once dry I cut to my desired shape, I can't remember the dimension I measured the wagon to get an estimate. Then with a white glue water mixture, the same as ballasting, I applied it to one side of the wagon.

Then folded the tarp over and did the same to the other side.

Then using the paint brush and glue mix, I folded the end of the tarp over until I came up with what looked good to me.

The end result. I found that the paint brush gave excellent control in creating the folded ends.


Then after some research through many colour photos I tried some paint samples on the scraps. Some people say that the stain of the tea is good enough but I disagree. It's too slow and you need something to fill up the gaps in the tea bag.

With a steady hand the paint was brushed on.

The tarp are now painted. The two wagons on the left are the same colour while the 3rd is a shade lighter.

The wagons now decalled and weathered. They have been weathered to represent use on phosphate traffic.

After this trial I am happy with the out come but have already thought of improvements. Next time I will unravel the string and try to use it for the tie downs. Another thought was to add some poly styrene underneath for bulky covered loads.

Not much getting done.

It's been a very busy time for me over the last few months hence the lack of updates. Time has been very limited for me to try and get any modelling done. So here is an update of a couple of things I've been able to complete in the small amount of time I have had .

I was able to purchase a few of the missing volumes of the Brief History books late last year. So I have used them to do a lot of research into departmental traffic. I enjoy these vehicles as they are a little bit away from the normal. Above is one such wagon I9008, a friend did up the decals for me and I think they look quite alright.
I loaded the wagon with shot gun pellets to get better running. To try and disguise the weight I have thrown in a few couplers, shunters steps, battery boxes and odds and ends. Just need some more junk to hide the rest.

Simply a SEM B van with the correct numver and decals added. Again inspired from the Brief History series.

I purchased some undecorated Auscision ballast hoppers. This enabled me to have my own series of numbers away from the production run.

The graffiti was copied from some wagons I photographed in Werris creek some years ago. It was hand written using a fine point paint pen.

I was trying to model the wagons as if they had been in traffic only a couple of months if not a year. That's why the weathering is quite light.

They may have only been in traffic for a short period of time, but it would appear it's long enough for the vandals to do their work.

I'm pretty happy with how these wagons turned out as I haven't done a lot of spraying using masking tape to achieve two tone paint or lines.

Last one of the set.