I have started working on my AOOX, AKJY and ABFX wagons and realised what a huge project it will be. I have been going over them and see what I can improve and modify to make them my own.
Firstly the ABFX Vans. I have sat them on AR Kits bogies as I do with most of my rollingstock and come to the conclusion that they sit too low. So the best fix I have found is to sit washers in the raise the height. I found that Kadee Red Washers give about the best height. I had to ream out the centre of the washers a little to make them fit. Also the couplers are a little bit too far in. This is not a problem that you would usually have. It become evident when you sit two ABFX's together and study photographs of them for real. I drilled new holes for the Coupler Box screws too move the box out by 1mm. The holes are very close together and nearly overlap. I also lowered the coupler box by 15 thou. using styrene.
I have also fitted the maximum amount of plates to this Van. These are plates that were used in previous paint jobs and not removed when it received AN Paint. All the others that I do will have various panels or prehaps none. But this one will have them all. Now for the Masking?
The AOOX wagons are going to present a challenge of their own. I have redone the Exchange plates because after studying photographs, I think they are too big. I will need to paint these yellow as the decals that I have are not large enough to cover the boards. I have placed most of the original boards on this wagon as well but the old Commonwealth Railways plate will be missing on the other side. I am going to paint the inside of this wagon in the old red as many of these open wagons never had there insides repainted. When I do this, I will paint where the missing plate is and then mask up over this for the AN Green paint job. Hopefully this will get the effect that I am after?
The other modification that I have carried out on this open wagon was to add some bolster detail. I think Auscision have omitted this detail to help the 75 footer get around tight curves. This is a detail that you can see from track level so I have placed them back on. I have used 3/16 Styrene Channel
(266) for this job. BTW I use 15 Thou styrene sheet for the panels.
Anyway I hope you guy's are having as much fun as me?
Cheers Justin Moy
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