Kent industrial open wagon

I have been attending my local Model Engineers Club for a while now with Banana Castle and decided that I wanted to try my hand at building something of my own, I am not quite ready for diving in at the deep end and building a steam locomotive and to be honest I don’t really have the space or tools to do so but I do have the ability to create a wagon, and that is what I set out to do.

Maxitrak, the same lovely people who created my loco have an affordable set of wagon kits that you can buy, assemble and paint, after a little bit of back and forth, I settled upon the Kent Industrial Wagon from their range and set about building it.

This post is a journal of that process, really, I wish I had filmed it but I didn’t so words and photos will have to do.

The very first job, was to paint all of the parts that required painting, I selected to do this before assembly for ease, I went for Nitro Mors Rust Control paint and applied it with a brush, if I do this again, I will certainly use a rattle can.

The axel boxes were disassembled removing the bearing and rubber blocker before painting anything that was going to be visible, it was advised to not paint the inside for reasons of sticking and preventing easy movement, so these were left unpainted.

All of the parts were put into food bags because it is important that they are all kept with the correct axel housing (they are made to measure) some more painting was required, this time on the angles which would go on the corners of the wagon when complete.

Lucky the free drying machine was available whilst painting, so the angles went outside to make use of its superior drying properties.

The chassis base had a couple of coats of paint too, this if any of the parts is the one I wish I had done with a spray can.

The wheels were masked and the insides painted black.

The outer rims were then painted white after the rest of the wheels were masked to prevent them getting white.

Spacers that were sent in a whole length were cut to size.

Here the axel boxes were fitted onto the wheels for the first time.

During dry assembly, disaster, the paint on the wheel rims caught on the spacers and made one hell of a mess, so it was sanded off using wet and dry.

Here is the chassis put together for the first time, you can see the spacers are not yet painted in this picture.

Safety chain hooks went onto the washing line to get a protective coating of silver paint.

The main wagon body was then constructed, if I had to do this again I would recruit more hands, it was tricky and I didn’t get it 100% square.

Here you can see the lack of squareness.

The first picture of the wagon completely constructed, it is sat ontop of the wagon chassis at this point that is why there are no bolts.

The corner angles were fitted.

Then it was time for painting, I went with a distinctive red, I like it, it matches the accent colour on the loco.

The wagon was then re-assembled after painting, you can see here the spacers have now been painted black.

The coupling and safety chain hooks were added to the chassis

We needed to get some decals ordered to go on the side, this is the design we came up with, at the time of writing this we are still waiting for these to come in.

To make the wagon look more realistic, I decided to put in a hidden shelf, using some 1×1 baton as a ledge to sit the shelf on which was sunk about 2″ deep into the body, I then got some ply wood and cut it to size.

Bit of sanding was required to make it fit.

Then the shelf was added to the wagon.

A small corner was cut so that I could get my finger under the false shelf to remove it should I require.

A coat of grey paint was then applied so that the wood didn’t show up as much.

Once dry the Welsh garden slate which was procured from a garden centre was washed of dust and prepared to be laid onto the board.

It needed a bit of drying, so the sky dryer was used again.

Starting with larger chunks I laid them out onto the board to make sure they fit.

Once I was happy I used a combination of wood glue and Gorilla all purpose glue to secure them in place.

Adding more layer by layer until I was happy with how it looked.

When I was happy with how it all looked it was time to add the shelf into the wagon to see what it looked like all put together.

The glue had dried a funny colour so I painted it grey using a small modellers brush.

You can’t see the glue anymore.

That is how I put together my Kent Industrial Wagon, I think it looks really good behind my locomotive, especially given that it was my first attempt at anything like this.

Thanks for reading, until next time!