BR 1/109 Rivetted 16 ton mineral wagon

The smaller, 16T counterpart to the 21T diagramme 1/110 model, supplied as a pair, one with each type of end door. They should fit the Peco 9' wb steel solebar chassis kit if you shorten the solebars by about 0.5mm at each end, reducing the chassis from 34 mm to 33 mm (2mm:1ft scale length 16ft 6ins). Diagramme 1/109's were built with a few different brake arrangements which you can represent by low-effort modification of the brake parts in the chassis kit. The only difference from diagramme 1/105 (as far as I can tell) was that the latter also had bottom discharge doors (and hence would always have the dual side independent brake arrangement) so the model covers that diagramme pretty well too. To complete the model, the top and bottom solebars should be shortened by about 0.5 mm at each end, and remove the centre 1cm or so of the top solebar flange on both sides to accept the bottoms of the side doors. The side stanchions also need small gaps cut out of the upper and lower flanges of the solebars. The bufferbeam at the non-opening end will need filing out in places to accept the bottoms of the rivetted end stanchions. When this has been done the chassis should assemble to a sliding (interference) fit on the tracing on the underside of the floor, without stressing the stanchions when they are brought together (be careful, a little more filing may be needed in places, including the backs of the coupling pockets to fit the tracing). Do it nicely and you won't need to glue them together, which is handy for painting and maintenance. The cross-members inside the wagon body are to keep the walls straight during processing, and can be removed by careful scraping in the corners with the point of a sharp scalpel until they break out. To get the centreline of the side doors directly above the brake vee hangers on the chassis, as it should be, you have to file fairly deeply (up to 1mm) into the bufferbeam at the non-opening end. UPDATE 20th June 2015 made the body height 0.5 mm less as it was that bit too tall. Oddly, I have just come across 2 photographs of the real thing with the end tipping indicator stripe painted at the wrong end of the wagon!