Co-opted in

Last weekend, At the invitation of another modeler, I took a bit of a road trip. After passing through 3 of the longest speed bumps in the country (namely Masterton, Carterton and Greytown), I arrived at my destination, Featherston and more accurately the Fell museum. I've been co-opted to help with completing the N gauge model of Summit by B 0-4-4-0 of this parish. He has put quite a bit of effort into the scenery and another local modeler has built some nice houses for the railway settlement. My job is to sort out the rolling stock (apart from the locos). I've been presented with a large amount of old rolling stock that ,while domiciled in a box labeled NZ120, is actually built to a scale of 3mm to the foot. This is the 'British' TT scale. Why, I've got no idea. Unfortunately, so is the model. We 'proved' this by placing some of the 3mm rolling stock on the layout, and then some of my 2.5mm rolling stock. The smaller scale stuff just looked completely wrong, and was lost in the yard.

So, squirreling the boxes of stuff home, and inspecting it in the cold light of day.
First up, Its all made of balsawood and card, and its very well made.


4 Vr refrigerated wagons. Impressively well made ladders and nicely detailed ice hatches.


A collection of Uc wagons. Wood tanks with paper and card details.


4 S sheep wagons. these are very impressive, even down to the wires. The roof walks are a bit bendy, but I'll replace those with strip wood


T callte wagons, a Ua gas holder wagon and Zp vans.


A 47' car-van.The detailing is especially fine around the windows, and its all square as well.


47' van.


This demonstrates how much larger these models are than Nz120 models. End on view of 2 47' vans.

There are also some locos.


Dg's, again all card and balsa wood. The bogies are from old Lima models which are best used for stationary models.



A De sans bogies. I'm torn as to which loco to use as the De gives a 3 year time window, where the Dg's are only really 6 months in 1955.

There are also some Lc-2's, a few 4 wheel vans and some other bogie wagons.

B 0-4-4-0 has also been busy, working on the Fell vans. He has made a master and gone a bit nuts casting them.


I think this is the total number of Fell vans ever built. For a first attempt at casting its very good.

So, what I have to do is tidy the wagons up and sort out the running gear. Fortunately its to be a static display so nothing needs to work.