KT Timber Wagons

L-R Original test, Rob's weathered, John's first scratch built wagon

In between several other projects Johna and I have being building some KT wagons. This was Johns first go at scratch building and he has done an excellent job!

Forty five KT wagons were built in 1956/57 using late model IY under frames to carry pulp wood, from g Bairnsdale to Maryvale paper mill. This traffic lasted until the late 1960's/early 1970's.

The wagons were then modified for "scantling timber" (sawn timber) with the two centre partitions removed and the stanchions re-arranged, however they kept the KT classification. In 1972-73 22 wagons were used to make the IS class where the wagons were lengthened by about 2 feet. See photos at Mark Bau's excellent site:
http://www.victorianrailways.net/freight/freight%20pages/kt/kt.html

I drew the wagon up in Corel Draw with the intention of etching it at some stage. I decided to "test" the drawing by making out of 10 thou styrene. That became the original. Here it is almost finished.

First attempt

I found a few things to improve, in particular how the stanchions are attached, which I dutifully changed on the drawing. These also needed to be tested and as we both had a free night John came around for some modelling. We set to work on the second version, and this became John's first scratch built wagon.

Today I painted them both and weathered mine a bit. A timber load was made up from scrap styrene and painted. 

I've found a few things to change again before I do the etched version. I plan to make the drawing and a blow by blow scratch build of these in a future blog/article.

So now the layout has the first of a series of different timber wagons it needs... only about four more versions to go!

L-R first attempt, Rob's, John's