Garden Railway Forum

I've manged to acquire a Swanswood kit of the E wagon and made it this weekend, I had the Wrightscale bogies already and produced my own decals using three different fonts in Coreldraw to create an accurate text. It's a very good kit but has a couple of odd features i.e the whole lower and end sections are all white metal and the straps which are beautifully cast have every single bolt cast in as a pin which goes through the upper timber sections and slots into holes in the opposing strap to create a bolt head. I would have just had two locating lugs on all the straps.
One can see a lot of care has gone into the design and instructions and like a lot of people who have had a go at producing kits for this scale he did too good a job compared to the likely sales and money to be [usually lost]. I actually need some D wagons and note that there are none available as a kit in timber and white metal so will end up doing my own body kit for myself as I would like a train of about 5 wagons to go behind my Accucraft baldwin 4-6-0.

John

WDLR 16mm Scale E Wagon 002 by uniquenarrowgauge, on Flickr

WDLR 16mm Scale E Wagon 003 by uniquenarrowgauge, on Flickr

WDLR 16mm Scale E Wagon by uniquenarrowgauge, on Flickr

WDLR 16mm Scale E Wagon 004 by uniquenarrowgauge, on Flickr

Nice model, well detailed and finished. The decals look great.

That's a nice build, got a soft spot for D's and E's.

Very nice kit with some great detailing..

As others said, a very detailed kit with a great assembly job too. Topped off with nice paint and decals.
Grant.

Hi, nice job you made of the wagon and bogie kit. It is a pity that Swanswood seems to have vanished. I have build quite a lot of WD stuff over the years. Mostly DJB's kits. Over the years the weakness in those kits, thin wooden sides, cast door bangers and door hinges breaking lead to the wagons looking rather run down. So I have just built 4 replacement WD D wagons. They are, in my opinion, the best yet. I combined the bodies in resin, available from Swift Sixteen. These are superb- well detailed with scale thickness planking. Additionally they have etched door bangers and lost wax door locks. These run on my WD bogies (Wrightscale) which give them some weight where one wants it. The bogies have all the internal detailing lacking on Swift Sixteen's.
Super transfers, do you make them yourself or do you have them printed from your art work?

Hi thanks, yes I print the decals myself, I use an alps printer that will print white,silver,gold and all the normal colours.
John

Hi John, my name is Naomi and I am Felton Vowler's daughter who used to run Swanswood Garden Railways. Firstly can I say what a beautiful job you have done with the kit, it's very heartwarming to see how much effort people put into making them. My father passed away on the 8th November last year (2017) and had been ill for several years meaning that his passion for garden railways had to take a back seat, but he never lost his keen eye for detail and his enthusiasm for the wagons and locomotives. I hope this explains why he was sometimes difficult to get hold of and why Swanswood Garden Railways may have seemed to disappear. Sadly, it is only since his passing, that I have come to discover the scale of his business and his hobby. I'm pleased to say that whilst dealing with the garden railway community I have only encountered people who are a pleasure to deal with and shared my fathers interests.

Kind regards,

Naomi.

Naomi, sorry to hear of your father's passing.

It's especially sad when we all lose a keen and enthusiastic modeller and contributor to the world of model railways, whatever scale or gauge. However our loss will never be as great as that of you and your family's..

Ian