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Review - Hornby Shark Brake Van Review - Bachmann LoadHaul BDA Model Railway Layout - Muirness Desired Models - Models we'd like to see produced |
Silver Surfer  The long, long wait is over the Dapol silver bullets ICA china clay tanks have finally arrived. These wagons really look the part the silver shine is perfect and the angle of the tank barrell is correct. The ECC and NACCO livery is neatly applied on the side of the tanks as well as smaller details.   These wagons are good quality and they are my first purchase from Dapol but based on these fantastic wagons I will be buying more modern wagons from them in the future.   This wagon has been long awaited by people who model Scotland in the 1990's until the present day. The author can remember these wagons being tripped to the pulp mill at Corpach from Fort William yard usually by the class 37/4 that had worked the Caledonian Sleeper from Edinburgh in the morning, what a glorious sight and sound this was. Ideal for the modeller as this trip was often just a ahndfull of tanks.   The silver bullets sadly no longer run as the pulp mill is closed but the silver bullets still can be seen in Scotland on there way to the paper mill at Irvine from the continent carrying china clay and from Aberdeen carrying chalk slurry.   Here are some modellng ideas: If you are lucky enough to have the room for a very large layout then you will have the luxury of modelling the trunk service which brings the ICA tanks into Scotland via the West Coast Mainline a DBS class 92 or class 66 would be suitable traction and the train would be formed of mixed wagons including container flats or engineers wagons such as the MBA moster box both are available from Bachmann and Dapol.   Secondly, if you have a medium sized layout you may wish to model a medium sized station and yard such as the one at Fort William where the ICA tanks are joined and split to be tripped to the papermill again if you have the room you can have a mixed train examples which ICA's could be seen with include BP oil tanks, Alcan Aluminium hoppers/tanks or BDA bolsters. This would allow for shunting operations a class 66 or 37 would be suitable traction for this type of train. A further option which is what Muirness and the pics you see here are based on especially if you dont have much room is to model a small intermediate station where the ICA wagons pass by maybe stopping so they can be looped on a single track line. This would happen at places such as Rannoch, Arrocher, Spean Bridge. Again just a few tanks would be needed I only have 3 again sometimes a single tank was added to different trains and an option which I will be modelling is one ICA tank and a few Tiphook rail covered bogie wagons for conveying the finished rolls of paper these were a Lima model but some be available second hand or cargowaggons available from Heljan would also be suitable. In addition if you only have the room for a micro-layout then there are still options to use the ICA tank wagon a prototypical example is the papermill at Auchmuty in Fife. Until the demise of speedlink in the early 1990's there was a trip working of china clay from Thornton yard using a class 08 shunter and Tiger Rail PBA wagons (which are also due to be relaeased by Dapol and Kernow model rail cente) these were used to transport china clay in powder form. You can however use the famous modellers licence and use ICA china clay slurry tanks instead and model the short branch line and maybe a small part of the paper mill a class 08 and a single tank would all that would be needed for this operation. As stated these models present a useful addition to modelling current operations and most class of diesel locos have been used on trains which have had ICA silver bullets it is indeed not only Scottish modellers that have benefited many pepole who model the the West Country have waited for these models longer than I have well done to all at dapol for producing a much needed moder wagon. |