Hurrah.  Some plastic model wagon kits arrived from the Powsides model company. These were expensive but feature the old style 10 ton Tredegar wagons which were still being used right to the end in some cases. They arrive already looking a little battered and worn and feature the distinctive early curved Tredegar lettering. These will be a terrific addition to the layout as there are many pictures of trains being made up of a variety of wagons of differing ages.

They took a while to arrive (6 weeks), but I was warned about that on ordering and despite their relatively high cost I will still need to buy wheels and couplings separately.  This is no real problem in that I will get to choose the most authentic items.

In any case I am thinking of dumping the standard tension lock couplings, as they still give a toy train feel to the models. I am thinking of trying one of the 3-link systems that are around to give the thing a more realistic feel. That does mean I will need to couple and uncouple trains by hand, but, hey, that is what happened in reality!

I am thinking that as I haven’t built any model kits in a while it will be a good idea to build a couple of readily available cheaper ones first. I can always paint the ubiquitous black and paint a big white cross on the sides to indicate internal use only.