Cable Drums

[Richard08]

I thought a couple of cable drums would be a nice railway sort of thing to have around, wagon loads and so on. I could have just bought some, but making them is something to do while the paint dries (literally). Having enjoyed building his domestic coal bagging thing, I figured I'd give the D. Parkins/MMP cable drums kit a go. Plus I was interested to see how it would work. There's two in the pack - here's the first one. As ever with MMP, the etch is just gorgeous (yes, I need to get out more often). Also as ever, there's useful little extras stashed away - a jig for the rod for the middle and a template for adding the AEI logo and lettering - with a little handle. Nice.

So, very patiently, the halves were extracted from the etch.

The fold the cross pieces, and push the two together. They fitted perfectly. Then go round, as advised using superglue, attaching the free ends of each timber to the other side. This worked.

All done (bar the paint). The only bit I went off piste with is the strap round the whole thing. A strip of brass is provided on the kit, but after looking at photos I decided some microstrip would look better (i.e. thinner). A fun little kit for a dull afternoon

[Phred]

Brings back memories. When first married, I built a flat under my parents' 1970s style 'house on stilts'. I used discarded lagging from Telecom cable drums to make a kitchen counter and cupboards. Very basic but they served the purpose until my wife and I could scrape a house deposit together.

[FatController]

Oh yes! - I worked in a cable factory last century as a summer job - monster cables for power stations. Happy days. So that would be nice to make a few of those and put them on a flat bed. (This factory was on the river so they mainly went by boat, but no matter - the thought was there!)
Cheers
FC

[Richard08]

The naughty drums jumped the queue and got painted. No tea for them. I'm not sure I got the black grey enough if you see what I mean, combination of matt black and Railmatch roof dirt with random dabs of matt white mixed in for variation. Will the stencilling work? I've not tried stencilling for literally decades, and even then it was a roller on packing cases. Luckily I tried it first - using a brush just produced a yellow soggy mess, but the air brush did the job and got the 'imperfect' finish to boot. There's a photo (Paul Bartlett's wagon pages) of six of these in an ex LMS Long Tube (Batten) so maybe I'll do another four if I can find a suitable wagon kit. Or maybe not.

Ta da

Yes, they have same number. No, I have no idea why they are on the platform, but probably involves Hercule getting cross with Guard Kleweless. Or something.

[FatController]

More good - it was AEI I worked at!