The D&S etched Chatham six wheel coach featured a few blogs earlier is now finished. The lining isn't the greatest, but it's all my own work. The yellow is Valejo acrylic applied with a cheap ruling pen, the black is a 0.1mm fibre tipped drawing pen. Lettering by HMRS pressfix and the Smoking signs in the windows are from a Fox sheet of SECR coach lettering.

I could do with another of these, and a SER birdcage brake van to replicate a typical branchline train of the late 1920s and early 1930s.

Some more wagons have been finished. Firstly a Slater's Midland cattle wagon, and a 51L Midland long low.

The cattle wagon was a straightforward built, with only the buffers needing replacing (with MJT cast ones). The 51L long low has been covered in a previous post, and turned out quite well when painted. I think I'll do a few more 51L wagons in future, although they tend to be of fairly obscure pre-grouping types unlikely to be found on the Southern.

I've also finished this trio of ABS unfitted LMS vans. These were built from the kit with only minor alterations - etched v hangers, MJT inside bearing compensation units (as I can never build the chassis quite straight) and a metal roof.

And on to some works in progress. These two brake vans only need a few lamp irons and handrails before they are finished.

The left hand one is by Cambrian and is the 15 ton version of the standard Southern van. I've tried to build the 25 ton version of this kit twice in the past, and could never get the chassis straight and level. This kit has the advantage of separate axleboxes, so you can remove the bearings and file the holes slightly to adjust things until it sits level. Once that was done, the rest of the kit was easy,

The LBSC Billington six wheel van is from Fincecast and has been a long time lurker on my work bench, mainly because it's a truly awful kit. It took a lot of work to get the body square, and a new chassis using MJT compoents (and 51L LMS axleboxes, which are nearly right). Even now it's not quite accurate.

And finally a glimpse of the David Geen toplight. The sides have been folded to shape, and the bollections (which are separate etches) soldered in place around the windows. Luckily I've not had the time to do anything on it for the last week, so looking at it afresh there are a few mouldings not quite soldered in place correctly. A bit of cleaning up is needed before I continue. So far I'm impressed with the quality of the etches.