No not a famous brand of liquid refreshment – a proper Coke challenge. Last time I met my friend Mike he presented me with two Private Owner Coke wagons from the late 1940’s. They were an eight plank SUNCOLE in the black house colours and a seven plank in CRANSLEY COKE in their very vivid reddy-pink livery.

My challenge was to bring them forward in time about twenty years. Mike wanted them in slightly different new liveries – he had already researched the prototype wagons and gave me some sample wagon numbers.

I attacked the eight plank first and started to remove the original SUNCOLE livery. However I wanted to leave enough original paint so that after repainting BR grey, it would show through to show its ancestry and the indifferent BR paint Job! I also chipped some paintwork to make it even more distressed.

I then started the CRANSLEY COKE the same way, only this time the coat on top of the wagon was ‘matting agent’, this gave the original paintwork a very faded look. I then started repainting several planks with Railmatch ‘new wood’ finish, I guess I must have done about 40% of the total planks, this hopefully shows the full twenty years without a repaint.

Well there you are, a challenge complete and although time consuming, I am very pleased with the final result.