Some projects are a little difficult to ‘get started’ – I knew that this series of wagons (the ‘universal’ J hoppers of the former Victorian Railways) would require modular construction due to the difficult shape of the hopper and frame, however finding the right place and method of assembling the items and making the difficult decision to go ‘overscale’ on the thickness of various components was quite hard. I hope that I’ve found a happy medium between cast-ability and scale appearance though.
VR 'JQF' Hopper in N-scale (1:160), in progress
So far, about 15 hours have gone into this, with a lot still to go. Missing is the braking gear and a heap of etched brass.
Edit:
The three main variations of hopper...
Victory! Two of the three “lids” and two of the three dump-doors, complete…
