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.