Making more rollingstock for my Heeresfeldbahn and WDLR Garden Trains

Too long ago I bought these two very colorful LGB starter set wagons second hand cheaply at a model railway exhibition in Germany:

They were so dirty at the time that I had to give them a quick wash at the hotel before I could bring them home:

They have been laying around in my hobby-room too long so I decided to finally just paint them up to fit my large scale Heeresfeldbahn and War Department Light Railway (WDLR) trains.
I noticed that one of the wagons had to large and unsightly holes in the floor

The holes was simply filled with Miliput:

It was also missing a buffer...

...which I 3D-printed and replaced both sides (so they'll look the same):

Since this is a very common LGB wagon and I have so many other identical wagons of the same type already, I painted them slightly differently than the others. This one was simply spray painted grey and drybrushed:

With the second wagon  I decided to make even greater variations by removing the axles and replace them with bogies in stead, suggesting a wagon for heavier loads. I got a couple of leftover bogies from my previous project:

On Cults3d I found a free stl-file for a truck mount I 3D-printed to fit my chassis. Then the Accucraft trucks were fitted to the new truck mounts:

I guess this is a wagon that can handle heavier loads than the first one. -Like vehicles for instance:

Painting these wagons has been like:

I think these 2 wagons are about ready for deployment now, and that they won't look out of place running in either a German or a British rake.

Extra! Extra! Read all about it!

Last December I posted a blogpost about of an article about a friend and fellow MRC member Heine's Garden Railway which was published in Allt om Hobby, the biggest hobby magazine in the Nordic countries. It also covered some photos and information about my military garden trains. Allt om Hobby is a Swedish magazine and published in Swedish which is not a problem to read within the Nordic countries. But I didn't expect the majority of the readers to this blog to run to their local newsagents to buy a copy though.

But now recently Allt om Hobby published the whole article for free on their website. This gives you all an opportunity whereever you live and whatever language you speak to visit and read the article if you'd like to. Depending on your browser, the website for the article can easily be translated from Swedish into whatever language you prefer. I've translated it into English in my 'Google browser', which worked great! So here is the link to the:

Link: Free article in Allt om Hobby about Heine's Garden Railway

Photo by Joakim Sannagård/ Allt om Hobby

Enjoy!

More Flat-Car conversions

Last year I bought a lot of 2 used flat-cars. I actually bought it the just to get one of the flat-cars, the upper one in the following photo looking like a heavy duty one. The lower one just came with the deal and I have several similar of this type in my collection already:

Heavy Duty Flat-Car

In my fleet of Flat-Cars I wanted some of them to stand out, and this one looked like a larger 'heavy duty' Flat-Car for heavier loads. It also looked almost ready as is and would need minimal efforts and changes to be ready for military service in a rake in some of my G-scale military trains:

This is actually an American Standard Gauge Flat-Car by Accucraft, which also runs on 45mm gauge. I wanted to make it look more like a narrow gauge car so I 3D printed and added buffers to the buffer beams. To the buffers I added hooks for the 3 link couplings for my WDLR train:

The bogies were of an American type and had American knuckle-couplers attached to them. As I don't use this type of couplings on my rolling stock I just tried to replace them with LGB ones, but they didn't fit very well on these bogies. So I replaced the American bogies with LGB ones which had original LGB couplings attached. The LGB bogie (lightly weathered) to the left, and the original American one I replaced to the right:

The floor was given a blackwash followed by a drybrush, and I washed the wagon sides to make the rivets looks rusty:

The other Flat-Car in the job lot

I have several similar Flat-Cars of this type already, but it followed the purchase. This was brown and had American lettering:

It didn't have any buffers usually found on narrow gauge rolling stock, so I 3D-printed some from a free stl-file found on Thingeverse:

To make it fit my other military rolling stock I just spray-painted it grey in a slightly other shade than the similar Flat-Cars and painted the floor:

Salvaged from spare box

This is strictly not a pure 'Flat-Car' as it has more similarities to stake-wagons. It was included in a job lot I bought a couple of years ago. I couldn't use it as it was so heavily used that it's axle-slots had become oval and the wheels didn't spin properly and the wagon wouldn't roll anymore. I didn't buy the job lot for this wagon in the first place, so it was sent to my spare box for future projects. 

While working on some of my other military 'wagon projects' I got some Miliput left over and I decided to stuff it into the oval axle-slots to see if I could repair them. When it was completely cured and hard I drilled new holes for the axles. This seemed to work, as the wagon and wheels were running freely again now. Then it was given a coat of grey paint, had the floor painted and finally given a blackwash and drybrushed:

I didn't make any loads which I fixed to these cars as I want to be able to swap out different loads on them.

A simple conversion gone complicated

Last year I bought dozens of used and cheap LGB-wagons on online auctions in Norway. They were starting to pile up in my hobby room, so I decided to start converting them so they eventually would look like something that could belong to and be hauled behind my large scale Heeresfeldbahn and War Department Light Railway (WDLR) locomotives.

I decided to start with an already grey low board wagon with nice German markings and lettering on it (which I wanted to keep). It would probably just need a blackwash to be ready for service:

I immediately noticed that this car had several unsightly holes in it's floor:

Off course I could just cover them by making another false floor like I've done on similar wagons, but then they would still be visible if the loads or floor was removed. -So I decided to fill them with Miliput:

When turning this wagon around it was just like turning to the dark side of the moon. I've only seen one side of it on the online auction, but when I turned it and saw the backside, it was literally a 'backside' (!) I dont know what the previous owner had done to this wagon, but along the 'backside' both the buffer beams were cut off, and so was the bars on the side holding the planks together and the shunter's steps were missing. I got it really cheap though and I guess you get what you pay for:

This was not going to be the very simple conversion as I thought as this was going to need a little more than a simple blackwash. Firstly I needed to make new buffer beams for both ends. I found a free STL-file for a similar chassis on Thingiverse which I converted and 3D-printed 2 new buffer beams:

-And 2 more steps:

Then I decided to trim off the bars on the intact side, to match the cut-offs on the 'backside'. I have so many identical wagons of this type so it will simply just add some slight variation among them:

Then I painted the floor, weathered the chassis, reassembled the whole ting and finally gave it that coat of blackwash:

I think it's ready for service now:

I guess the next pull from the 'pile of project wagons' will need less remodelling than this one.