Remodelling a Permanent Way Department wagon

Last year I  bought a couple of really cheap wagons during a combined garden railway running session and swap meet. One of them was this closed gondola made by LGB. I liked it's design as it would stand out in my rakes and I thought it looked really nice with it's (working) hatches to keep it's cargo dry. I've seen wagons like these described as permanent way department tool wagons, sand wagons or salt wagons. In Norway a similar design was used as poudrette wagons. LGB also makes one of these models labeled for carrying soap. I'm not sure what it's made specific for except to carry bulk goods that needed to be protected from rain and bad weather somehow. I decided to use mine as maintenance of way wagon loaded with both sand and some few tools for emergency repairs, which seems plausible for railways operating under combat conditions. 

At first glance it looked grey and nice and something that would fit my grey-ish military G-scale rakes. At closer inspection it was clearly that the grey paint was applied poorly, too thick, built up in thick layers and was starting to flaking and the orange original color underneath was starting to show through several places. The wagon numbers was made with a vintage Dymo label maker.

Besides, despite all the hatches could open the wagon was not painted inside (where it was still all orange):

The inside of the wagon revealed that the previous owner probably had used this car for real sand loads:

This is how the wagon looked originally by LGB before being painted by the previous owner:

Some remodelling seemed necessary to bring this back to a what it was obviously intended to be; a grey 'Maintenance of Way' wagon. First I stripped as much of the old paint I could by soaking it in rubbing alcohol for a couple of days. The thick paint was really stubborn and it didn't have the effect I wanted:

Something more powerful was needed, so I soaked it in braking fluid:

It was so effective that it even removed the factory paintings and lettering underneath that thick coat of paint. Braking fluid seems to react with plastic and heavily stains it:

Then it was given a new coat of grey:

Since wagons like this has been used for tools and sand loads, I also 3D-printed some small details like different tools and 'sand inlays' I sourced from different free stl-files found online:

Some of the tools are from an old game my wife had as I kid, which I managed to salvage before it ended in the bin:

Then it was finally time to reassemble the wagon and paint it along with all the details: 

Still with a hint of 'orange'

Then it was time to bring everything together:

The sand inlays had a really thigh fit and I experienced some paint chippings when pushing them in. I usually do my painting this size with rattle cans and didn't have any matching colors to touch up the chippings. Then I remembered I'd read a tip by Mike at his Bunkermeister blog, which I decided to try out myself. -And viola; paint chippings fixed!

Taking a grey wagon and repaint it to grey and hide all the detailing inside doesn't call for the most spectacular before and after photo:

My wife was really thrilled when she saw how I'd used her old childhood game in this project. 

This weekend I'm up for a wargame, so next blogpost will probably be a battle report or a wargame review. Perhaps trying out the 'advanced Call of Plastic' by Adam L Dobbyn? Please follow this blog and get notification when there are updates. 

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Blog PostScript

Maudlin Jack Tar mentioned in the comment-section that the 'picking up tools'-game I've used also had a British equivalent. I found that there was a game named Jack Straws, which you still can buy replacement tools for. It looks like this old British version has the exactly same box-photo as the Norwegian one: