M Livestock Wagon (Early wood/steel)

(Picture above courtesy Public Record Office of Victoria)

 For my first M wagon I tackled one of the mysterious open topped M's. The picture at the top is the only one I have ever seen of these (please let me know if you have seen another!), and Peter J Vincent's site shows them as running largely unmodified until their demise in the late 1920s/early 1930s. Perhaps as they were a small class, they missed the photo limelight. As such I have had to build the ends and top speculatively, and based on the other wooden M's, which may be close. Similarly the roof walks are speculation as they appear to be there, however there is no sign visible of how one would get to the roof! Also, I have left her unroofed, though it is hard to believe they were'nt modified in this way at some stage in their relatively long life. I built the model from wood as it was all I had to hand, wood is great to work with, however, I will be usuing styrene for my next "wooden" M to get the detail crisper. I added representative bolts rather than every one, a close look will show the prototype is prickling with bolts! She is mounted on Steam Era's great new short chassis. My thanks to Philip Dunn for helping with rare details of these wagons.