Turning CBs into coal wagons

DB says:

So excited was I at the rapid progress made in coaling up the CWs that a return visit was made to the dungeon to do the same with the CBs. 

All the CBs had thin card false floors fitted a dozen years or more ago, which were of various degrees of coal-tightness, but the gaps were easily plugged with dollops of PVA. One had been topped with an experimental application of builders expanding insulation foam, but that was a bit of a disaster as it takes some practice to tell how much - or more correctly, how little - needs to be added as it keeps growing for some time after you squirt it into place. This was largely cut away with minimal damage to the wagon.

Those cross braces between the hungry boards were an inspired decision many years ago, as they look pretty neat with coal across them.

While on a roll, I painted the CE, CW and CB Microtrains copper-coloured brakehoses, touched up any chips and scratches accumulated in the last decade, greyed up the CW bogies to match the other wagons, put an additional bit of panel wash weathering onto the CWs and considered a few other improvements. 

So that's 17 wagons for a decent coal train from 2005-2013, which covers the Tranz Rail blue through black, through Toll through KiwiRail period - dated from when the CWs got hungry boards until their demise. I think the red non-chuted DXs were probably gone off the coal trains by 2005 unless in use as an uphill leader through the tunnel as non chuted leaders on the eastbounds were still allowed then? A few more CEs and CBs instead of the CWs and the train would work up to the present time. 

Turning CWs into coal wagons

 DB says:

Ah returning from the madness, I decide to give myself a day off. And as I haven't done any modeling for a while I decided to treat myself to a visit to the dungeon and tackle a quick and easy win if I could find one on the to-do pile.

Since I'd had some fun with CE coal hopper recently, I thought I might put some coal in my CWs, which are stil unfinished 15 years later...

Out they came. These are fairly light, but are weighted at the bottom, and as they are multi-piece castings, they have a nice smooth rectangular hole inside that would suit the false coal-floor which I'd never gotten around to doing..

A few strips of styrene were cut and contact glued inside.

Then 6 false floors were cut to approx the right size and fettled as necessary. Only one of these wagons has any bowing in the sides which is pretty good after all this time. Coal was then sprinkled on and stuck in place (the same overchunky Peco stuff used in the CEs as I haven't gotten around to crushing any of it up into a finer grade). 

Not bad for an hour's work. One of these days they'll get some better numbers and their Microtrains orange brake hoses painted black. I think the bowed one is bottom-left in the pic above, but accentuated by the phone's wide angle lens.

By the way, I still have a bunch of spare CW parts (15 sides and 13 ends) that I'm unlikely to ever use, so if anyone wanted to donate a tenner for postage you could make up six or seven of these unfine wagons for yourself.