Hi Joe,

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I don’t have a common weight but the attached photo shows what I can typically fit in the floor of all but the skip wagons.? Thin strips of lead cut so they don’t foul the wheels.? This rake of three ammunition wagons weighs 32g so each wagon is about 10g.? Not much weight is needed but I find the wagons shunt better if they do have a little bit in them.? The skip wagons are harder and the tank wagons benefit from a bit of weight inside the oil drums before you glue the lids on, otherwise you have to drill a hole in the bottom and try to pour in some liquid lead.? Don’t ask how I know this!? I have some thin self-adhesive lead strip which is just over the width of a skip body and have added that inside and attempted to dress the edges so that it is not obvious.

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Regarding axles for the Simplex chassis, I would use 2mm diameter ground silver steel rod if you can get it.? I would cut the axles about 19.5mm long which will give a bit sticking out from each wheel. ?It sounds odd but I have found it looks better on the loco body as it looks like the axles go into the axle boxes rather than just stop at the wheels.? The Simplex was designed for 016.5 and supplied with that length of axle.

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I retro-fitted my KB Scale chassis to an already built body and found that I needed to cut away some of the inside of the engine castings.? Trimming the castings would probably have been easier before they were fitted.

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I pretty much made up my coach conversion as I went along but I took inspiration from Paul Lindsey-Scott’s Brookford articles in the Review and also his thread on the Narrow Gauge Railway Modelling Forum ??

Which is free to join and has provided me with lots of help, information and inspiration.

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The one thing I found with my coach was that standard 016.5 bogies were a bit too wide and didn’t have enough swing for my sharp curves.? I ended up using some Sn3 bogies from PBL in the States.

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Cheers, Robin ?