Are tarpaulin ropes worth the effort?

Will adding tarpaulin ropes to my clay wagons be worth the effort? Hmmm...

Last Thursday I entertained the members of the local Scalefour Group who thankfully gave my clay wagons the thumbs up. When I mentioned that I'd been debating whether to add ropes to the tarpaulins there was a couple of playful comments of 'Oh go on, give it a go', 'You've got to finish them'.

Next evening my first thought was where were the ropes tied off on the wagon. After spending a pleasant hour or two browsing though my library of books trying to find decent photos of clay wagons with tarpaulins, I eventually remembered Mr Russell's book on "GWR Freight wagons and loads..." and Bingo...

Many moons ago I'd purchased some scale rope from a wargaming show which I thought would be a good starting point for roping down loads. The question was how to represent the hooks? I thought they're too small to be created with wire especially after the rope is attached. So I've glued the rope to the approximate locations on the wagon and added a small knot of rope to represent some bulk around the hook.

Door End

Fixed End

I thought, 'so far so good' until I added the roped wagon to the rest of the wagons to see what the effect was. It then became a game of spot the wagon with the ropes...

Spot the wagon that has ropes...

So will I be adding rope to the other wagons? When applying the two foot rule, probably not, as it looks like the rope colour is lost against the background colour of these clay wagons. On darker backgrounds of wagon loads/containers or even bauxite coloured clay wagons I think they might look effective so I've not totally given up on the idea.

Getting back into the modelling chair

I've finally been able to spend some time on the toy train set. First task has been getting back to work on the first batch of clay wagons by finishing applying transfers, tentatively using an airbrush to finish dusting them with a thin coating of white, then trying to add a little more detail with a few brush strokes and playing around with creating a few more clay dusted tarpaulins. Results so far are below...

I've purposely left one wagon without a tarpaulin as I was beginning to like the way it looked without one. I'll have to fold one up and install inside the wagon if it's going to be left as an empty wagon.

Hopefully this last lengthy hiatus has passed and my mojo has returned which means I'll be able to make some serious progress over the coming months...