Happy Hoppers

I've had a rare full day at the modelling desk today and have made some good progress on the geometry puzzle that is otherwise known as the WHR's Romanian ballast wagon.

After much careful studying of the drawings and all the photographs of the wagon kindly passed on to me by my spies in Wales I've been able to establish the general shape of the wagon beneath the jungle of ribs, struts and operating mechanisms. To put it really simply there is a horizontal box in the middle with slanting sections above and below.

I got the box built in the first session, today's task was to try and get the slanty bits in place.

I started with the lower side pieces which only required angles cut at each end and managed to get them to meet up with the angles at each end relatively easily.



The next job was to add a square rib section around the top of the 'square box' - this was a little more time consuming than it should have been because I've run out of 0.40 x 0.40 strips so had to double up with 0.20 x 0.40 to get the correct thickness.



Then it was onto the bit that always has me scratching my head - the sloping lid on the top of the hopper and its four corner angles. It doesn't matter whether I'm making a roof on a building or something like this wagon, I can never get the corners to match up first time despite all my efforts to cut them to an accurate 45 degrees. Does anyone else have this problem or is it just me?



If you look inside the hoppers you'll see evidence of the strengthening pieces that I've put in to try to ensure the styrene sides of the hopper stay as straight as they can over time. Because the wagon will run loaded on the layout these will not show.

I was feeling quite please with myself by this point and turning my thoughts to how the frames should be assembled when I noticed a rather glaring error - I'd forgotten there's daylight between the two halves of the hopper.



It was only a few seconds work with the scalpel to put matters right, but it was fortunate I spotted it when I did before I'd started adding more of the fine detail or glued the hopper onto the frame.



Oh, and I forgot to mention I'm doing all this twice because I'm making a second wagon alongside for a customer.