Langley OO9 skip wagon.

One of the lesser known OO9 kits, I picked this up from Langley's stand at recent exhibition. It appears to be a Hudson Rugga skip wagon, cast in whitemetal, complete with a miner figure;

Judging by the cast curly spoke wheels it looks to be a purely static kit. We'll see about that...

After a bit of fettling I decided to have a look at fitting wheels. Holes are cast in the back of the axleboxes for the pin-point axles supplied, but there's no obvious way of fitting those axles. Now the beauty of whitemetal is that its pliable, within reason, so I decided to simply bend out the frames to allow the axles to fit. So I didn't have to bend too far I filed away part of the inner face of the axlebox, so that the holes are shallower. I also found that the holes weren't quite deep enough anyway, so I drilled them a touch deeper. To do this I made a simple 'D' drill (so called because of the shape of the business end when seen end on) by taking a spare pin-point axle and filing away half of the end, whitemetal is soft so the drill doesn't have to be hardened. Cast un-insulated wheels and two-rail pick up simple won't get along together, so Parkside Dundas 5.1mm disc wheels are used in their place, which set the coupling height at the standard 6mm. Interestingly the supplied axles are 15.2mm long and 1.6mm dia. as opposed to the more usual 15mm long and 1.5mm dia. An old standard? Wheels are simply fitted by pushing the frame sides back together!

Here's my crude 'D' drill;

Unsuprisingly couplings are not supplied, so I drilled pivot holes through the stanchions (.5mm) and made loops from .45mm brass wire. The outer part of the holes are disguised with Squadron Green putty. Hooks (not fitted in the photo below) are simple .45 brass wire;

I applied a couple of coats of Hycote acrylic car primer (red oxide), straight from the can, followed by Revel Aqua Color (sic) 378 Dark Grey brushed on. For some odd reason this is 'silk matt' (who needs silk matt grey?) so a coat of matt varnish will be applied next time the airbrush is set up. The interior is just my usual mix of Humbrol 'Leather' and Citadel 'Rhinox Hide'. Here it is next to a Parkside Rugga skip;

I'm sure that this kit is of a 27 cu.ft. Rugga skip judging by the shape of the skip body, but there are a couple of oddities about the design. The axleboxes look like they're sprung (the detail looks to be an etched overlay added to the pattern) and there are crude rivetted strips around the ends of the skip body, neither of which match Hudson's standard design. It does look like a horizontal strengthening strip has been removed from the master, leaving witness marks. Take away those axle boxes and rivet strips and it bears a striking resemblance to the old Saltford Models kit. Its also overscale, the frame scales at 7'9" long and 4'1" wide, meaning that its a scale 1'6" too long and 1'3" too wide. By my reckoning its about 5mm/foot scale.

Unusually for me I've built this kit as it comes, with no added detail. I bought it out of curiosity rather than as a serious addition to my (rather eclectic) wagon fleet. It does sit well with my Saltford Models Simplex though...

...but I don't fancy Miner Willy's chances of pushing the thing...

...as it weighs a hefty 19 grams! (Parkside skips weigh about 2 grams!).

Paul.