What can we convert to make Department Wagons? Or Something different...

[Jollybob]

I had a little white metal kit of a cement mixer wagon. It was the first N gauge kit I built. I found it at the bottom of a box in pieces so I found some pictures of a prototype and made something similar.
And so it's got me thinking, what other things can I use to make little quirky, different pieces of rolling stock?

Rob.

[koyli55002]

Would love to incorporate this beast - seeing as the layout is ECML in the late 80's !

[RailGooner]

  I'm crazy about all things yellow! If you suffer the same affliction you'll find some respite from the following sites:

http://www.departmentals.com/

http://www.ontrackplant.com/

http://www.webring.org/l/rd?ring=mopacwebring;id=42;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Eyellow%2Dthings%2Eco%2Euk%2F

[xm607]

08 snowplough?

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/N-Gauge-Converted-08-shunter-Snowplough-body-shell-/173157794246?hash=item28510241c6

Steve.

[Jollybob]

It does make you wonder what is out there and how could you do it?

Any way this was my contribution, I just liked the splash of colour from the Greys, browns and blacks.


Apologies for the bad picture, with this winter light I find it difficult to get a decent picture. None the less, it is a peco conflat painted matt black, varnished in gloss and again in matt.

And here is a link on Paul Bartlett's site that started it all...
http://paulbartlett.zenfolio.com/brconflata/h1EECD56C

[The Q]

I like the model, you'll have to build a box at the back of the drum for the engine to power it, if you've got the model it came off of you could chop the engine compartment off and install that...

[NeMo]

What a great idea for a thread! Anything that requires a bit of imagination and modelling, but not too much rivet counting or lining transfers definitely gets my vote!
 
Anyway, if you look in Colin Marsden's book "Rolling Stock Recognition 3: Departmental Stock" you'll find all sorts of fun things that BR knocked up from otherwise obsolete coaches and wagons.

Below is a 'Palbrick' match wagon used, I believe, to connect container wagons with their own type of coupling to shunters that didn't have that type of coupler. I photographed one at some point in the mid 1980s at Old Oak Common, and a couple of years back ran one up using a whitemetal bolster wagon and a few offcuts of plastic strip.

Cheers, NeMo

[middlefour]

I'm having a crack at the North Eastern Region Viaduct Inspection Unit. There is a nice film of it in action in the old Railway Roundabout series so got a lot of detail information but the trouble is it's all black and white so no idea what the actual colour was, probably mostly black!! I have taken pictures off the screen so have got most of the dimensions worked out roughly.

[NeMo]

I have taken pictures off the screen so have got most of the dimensions worked out roughly.

Which is fine! A lot of the departmental stuff was knocked up at depots from whatever was handy. So if yours isn't quite right for a particular piece of rolling stock, you can justifiably argue that yours was made by a different depot to a similar but slightly different pattern.

Look forward to seeing your project in due course.

Cheers, NeMo