If you're being pedantic about it then this wagon should probably be referred to in the plural as Tool Vans. The wagon is a three-in-one contraption - something we only found out once we had built it! But more on that later.
The main bits of the Tool Van wagon - the big square bits - are a classic piece of FR recycling. They started life on the roads as the back bit of BT vans and just happened to be just the right size to fit within the FR's loading gauge when mounted on a four wheel chassis.
The two are linked together by a platform with steps in the middle on both sides.
Now, when I first made the wagon, I assumed the boxes and the platform were a fixed structure and the two chassis swiveled underneath like normal bogies, and built it as such.
But how wrong you can be.
I can't remember whether we discovered our error by someone telling us at an exhibition, or whether Himself got down on his hands and knees and looked beneath the real one, but we discovered the wagon is articulated by very different means.
Instead it is the vans at each end which pivot on the centre platform - the chassis are fixed beneath the vans - and not only that but there is also a tiny pair of wheels beneath the centre platform.
The model had already been finished when we found this out, but Himself managed to prise the three sections apart and reverse-engineer the proper articulation.
The wagon was scratchbuilt in styrene and two vans are sitting on chassis from Parkside Dundas V tipper wagons. The wheels beneath the centre platform have had their tyres removed in order both to fit them under there and to aid smooth running.
Some other later additions to the model were the 'X' boards carried at each end, the skylights on the ex-BT vans and the lights on the inside ends.
It is pictured in a typical S&T train formation on Dduallt with 'Harlech Castle'. Van 51 and the Cherry Picker, which will be the subject of a future Model Of The Week.
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