Nineteen

Our new model of bowsider 19 is ready to join the fleet.

The carriage has been given a coat of varnish - which has come out a little on the matt side, but never mind - and put together with its glazing and the final details added like the door handles, which Himself made from scratch from very fine brass wire.

I think the lining looks absolutely stunning, especially the stuff along the frame at the bottom.

It's going to look great running in a small Victorian set along with the curly roof van, 15 (which is coming along nicely - more on that soon) and the first class Ashbury 4-wheeler.

I Love It When A Van Comes Together

I was able to enjoy the best bit of a model build last night when I glued all the basic parts together and you get your first impression of how the finished thing's going to look.

The plan to graft a new body on top of the 'frames' of the Dundas kit for the VoR brake van seems to have worked out well, and I've clearly been able to accurately replicate the dimensions of the original kit because the roof still fits on perfectly and when you offer up the redundant sections of body side (which I sliced off) they match the new ones.

I've made a couple of adaptations to improve it's longevity and performance.

Just as with my scratch built carriages I've installed a flat false roof at the top of the body shell to try to ensure that they don't bow inwards over time.

On the chassis, before I glued the parts together, I drilled out the axle boxes and fitted brass bearing cups.

Experience teaches us that pin point axles running in plastic axle boxes is a recipe for wheelsets working loose, and eventually dropping out.

Plastic Surgery

I had a couple of hours free last night to do a little bit more work on the WHHR brake van.

First, I cut out the windows and then added the panel detail - such as it is - onto the two end pieces.

Then it was onto the make or break bit which was slicing the frame and footsteps off the Dundas kit mouldings and grafting them onto the bottom of the new body sides I'd scratch built.

It seems to have gone quite well but I need to add the window drop lights to the back of the doors on each side and fix some blocks on the back to set the height the floor sits at before I glue it together into a box, but I'm very satisfied with how it's progressed so far.

Gold Blend

After many long sessions of painstaking work, one side - just one side - of our carriage 15 has its ornate gold lining applied.

Looks amazing, doesn't it!

Himself tells me that it took the best part of a whole day's work to complete the last half of this side, and he felt quite cross-eyed at the end of it.

He's got to do exactly the same on the other side and then there's a lot of white lining to put on each end of the carriage plus more gold leaf around the panelling on along the frame, which you cannot see in this picture.

So it's going to be quite a while before this carriage joins the fleet.

Name Board

Himself is slowly working through the list of things to make Bron Hebog look more like it's 'finished' for taking it to Bressingham.

Something that we'd never got around to until now was making up a proper name board and some lighting.

It's not an optimum solution, because what we'd really like is a pelmet that goes all the way around the front of the layout, but the difficulty we have with Bron Hebog is it's unusual depth on the main S bend section.

It's not realistic to have it supported from the rear without some advanced, lightweight engineering and we really don't want to break up the views by having posts along the front or at the corners.

(Another curiosity about the layout is that you can view it on three sides.

We've mounted as many LED spots as we can on the brackets and they'll hopefully improve the illumination a little but it is a big area to flood with light.

The big test will come at Narrow Gauge East next month.

Side By Side

With anything in life once you've got the first one out of the way it's always easier to do a second, so it only took me around an hour to panel up the other side of WHHR brake van 2.

I've been pleased with the positive response I've received to my plan to finish it in the BR blue livery it's wearing in 2018, complete with the 'arrows of indecision'.

I suppose this might be because narrow gauge modellers are by definition rather deviant from the mainstream, and perhaps a lot of you share my affection for quirky items.

However I'd also like to think that perhaps my generation - the children of the '70s - are beginning to reclaim their own heritage which has decried and denied for too long in my humble opinion.

On the big railway diesel preservation came of age a long time ago and so many of them are now being proudly displayed in rail blue livery.

In fact, nostalgia for the '80s is creeping in with more of the machines sporting the large logo livery again.

I'd like to think that one day the Vale of Rheidol might be brave enough to explore its own unique heritage as the last outpost of BR steam, but sadly, for me, they seem determined to present it as a 1930's 'chocolate box' GWR branchline.

It's perhaps not the most original offering in UK railway preservation, but they have a business to run and they must do what they feel they need to do.

They're not the only ones apparently determined to forget the '70s, alas....

Side 1 Of 2

I found time for a little bit of modelling over the weekend and began adding the panelling to one of the sides of WHHR van 2.

I haven't cut the windows out of the end pieces yet, and nor have I been brave enough to take a scalpel to the sides in the Dundas kit to sever the frame and the footboards from the rest of the bodyside.

The downside of the plan is one false move with the blade and I could end up having to buy another kit, or rethinking my plans.