A selection of Heywood wagons all made around the Bachamnn "troublesome truck" chassis
Spurred on by the success of the construction of “Effie” I decided to make a train for her to haul. The Mark Smithers book comes with a full selection of drawings for pretty much all of Sir Arthurs’ stock. So reserach was not a problem. Plenty of plans, plenty of photographs. Easy, peasy lemon squeezy…
The donor chassis for these wagons was the “Troublesome truck” from the Bachmann “Thomas the Tank Engine” range Basically its a standard RCH (Railway Clearing House) design coal wagon. Whose wheelbase when scaled up to 1/2″ scale is so close to the wheelbase of the later Heywood design it’s scary. I’ve bought a good half dozen of these wagons and converted them all to Gn15 Heywood wagons.
Construction of these held no real problems. The Bachmann truck body was thrown away. Meeting a not dissimilar fate to the troublesome trucks in the Thomas the tank engine story. Then a new floor and underframe was added out of styrene. The wagon bodies, (that were removable on the prototype and also my models,) were made from styrene with handles from bent up from paperclips. Surprisingly my construction methods were so accurate that each body will fit on any chassis.
The end vehicle in the photo, the Duffield Bank Brake, is pretty much the same as the other wagons. The body is just a bit more complex but it’s still just sections of styrene sheet and strip cut to size and stuck together. To be honest I’m surprised how easy it was.
There we are a complete train for Effie to haul.
