Wagons Roll!

My Stock

Over the past few years, I have slowly accumulated enough stock to run a small shunting layout, and over those same years I have been just as slowly trying to build them. During Covid my wife and I started building a pair of Slater’s pre-printed open wagon kits. But my wife got frustrated with the assembly of them. Tiny, hair thin springs and 12BA nuts of the sprung buffers were a bit much (let's face it they’re a bit much for a lot of people). So we shelved that idea. Once in a while, I’d look at the kits and clean up a few parts ready for the day when I’d assemble them. There alway seemed to be something else that I was working on though.

Well, the day came on Monday, and Tuesday. Wednesday and Thursday too, and by the time I sat down for a cuppa tea on Thursday afternoon. I had a complete, short, light railway-esque goods train.

This fills me with joy.

Some wagons need a trip to the paint shop of course, followed by a dash of weathering for all. But right now I am very happy. Very happy indeed.

I first thought about working on an O scale layout in my twenties. Long before the world of micro layouts, I had picked up a couple of wagons, including the Midland Railway brake van at a model railway exhibition. I adore that style of brake van. It absolutely screams “light railway” at me. 

The Mid-Suffolk Light Railway had something that was very similar. It may even have been an ex-Midland Railway one. I think I may even have had the Slater’s kit in 4mm scale/EM gauge too.

I bought many of the Oakwood Press and Wild Swan Books about several of England’s unique and obscure light railways, figuring that a model of such a light railway was the way into the “king of scales”. But ultimately back then, O scale was still too expensive for my wallet, and my flat was pretty small. But I’ve always wanted to work in O. 

As you probably know, I have other blogs out there where I’ve explored American O scale schemes. Here and Here.  But they haven’t got off the ground fully yet, and may never. 

But this. Just looking at this short train, all those memories come flooding back to me. I love it when the hobby awakens memories like this. Oh how I wish that I hadn’t got rid of all those books when I emigrated to the USA a quarter of a century ago. (I shudder to think how much it would cost to replace them now). There was so much inspiration in those.

This picture of that “goods train” just feels so good to me. It’s a culmination of years of dreams. Now I definitely need to build that layout.