After a little painting, the conversion of a Bachmann 00 scale tanker into an O scale narrow gauge tank wagon is complete.

As a kind of ‘step by step’ guide, here are some pictures of each stage of the painting process.

It was given a coat of Humbrol mid-grey primer and a couple of washes with diluted Humbrol ‘Dirty Black’ paint. This created quite a nice ‘worn’ black effect.

The first stage of weathering was to dry brush with a very light grey, Citadel Ulthuan Grey.

Then the model was dry brushed with a rust colour, a mixture of Citadel XV-88 and Doombull Brown.

I thought the wagon looked a little too heavily weathered so I dry brushed a little ‘Dirty Black’ on to the tanker. To complete the weathering the chassis was painted a muddy brown using Citadel Stirland Mud. The wagon was given a coat of matt varnish.

Up to this point I had used only acrylic paint, but to create some oil streaks down the sides of the tanker I carefully brushed on some lines of Humbrol Matt Black Enamel paint. The enamel is less matt and looks like partly dried oil.

This has been a very enjoyable conversion. I’m surprised and pleased that the 1:76 scale standard gauge tanker looks so good as a 1:43 scale narrow gauge wagon.

You can read all of the steps to make this model here.