It's been a month since I last posted in my blog..... things have been getting done but nothing really worth talking about.

I've built the third of a set of four cardboard kits for Metropolitan Ashbury carriages. This one is the all-first. Truth be told it fought me all the way and I'm not entirely satisfied with it. It looks okay from a distance of about 3', which is the baseline test for my models, so it won't be destined for the Shelf of Appalling Mistakes or the dustbin.

I then moved on and repainted a pair of LNER vans from Bachmann. This now gives me a rake of five GCR-ish vans. I was going to buy some more but at nearly £20 a throw versus £10 for the Parkside kit well.... I ended up with a pair of Parkside kits instead. These I am altering slightly by leaving the vacuum cylinders off- for some reason the kits have vacuum cylinders but not the pipes- with the eventualy intention of having two rakes of vans, one vac-fitted and one unfitted. I have been reading my book of ex-GCR wagons and the general gist seems to be that only stock for perishables traffic such as fish would have been vac-fitted. So, for the present I am working toward a 1:3 ratio in my goods stock of fitted to unfitted stock.