When coal really was king!

One of those days which flew by! I had plans to do many things but only achieved some! My plan just to hoover the car out following several months of hard use take rubbish to the tip and auction probably scuppered my other plans as once I had cleaned the carpets the seats needed doing then the door trims and before I knew it I was on a full-scale valet including putting that tyre dressing on to make the tyres look shiny! Anyway my four hours of work concluded just in time for the rain which started and will now no doubt make the paintwork look streaky!

I did have time to take five in the Man Cave where I sprayed the mirrors and windscreen wipers for the Italeri DAF 95 Canvas Truck black. 

Not being in a mood to do much else on this model today I ran some trains including digging my Bachmann Class 20 in Railfreight livery out. Not run for some time it was good to see and hear it on the track. They were known as 'Choppers' by those who used to follow them. They certainly had a distinctive engine sound in real life and this model goes some way to replicating that. They were used a lot on coal trains were they were lashed up in pairs to haul the hopper wagons that were used on the 'Merry Go Round' workings at the coal powered power stations. It all sounds so old and almost unbelievable now but it was only 40 years ago that coal dominated electric power production when coal really was king!

As well as the loco I have some of the coal wagons in the form of these Bachmann HAA hoppers in Railfreight livery. I should have about 10 of them but just took these two out at the moment.

As you can see one of them is pristine and the other weathered which is how these wagons used to look as they were never cleaned.

I think I have three or four of the weathered wagons which I bought second hand from TMC ( The Model Center) who ironically originally did the weathering on them. They certainly look good and fit for King Coal but I will need to weather the others to match - when I get the time!