Silly of me to have posted some pictures without information yesterday, so here’s the words to explain the pictures.

The top two show the beginnings of one of the LNER PMVs, based on a Parkside kit. As is my wont, they were not built as the designer of the kit intended. Almost all my more recent rolling stock builds ride on Bill Bedford sprung ‘W’ irons, have a removable underframe built onto a new floor and underframe and body have a single, central screw fixing using a ballast weight as the fixing ‘nut’. Much of this is shown in these two photos.

The third pic shows the LMS vehicle just about completed and ready for the paint-shop and glazing dept. Spring clips epoxied to the roof hold it on.

Finally, we have the three parts of the LMS vehicle; body, roof and underframe but here the araldite on the roof springs is curing under clamp pressure. Note the silicone baking film being used to ensure that the epoxy only cures onto the roof and the spring!

Also of note in this last picture:-

colour coding; the white blobs on body and underframe help to ensure good fitting assembly; there’s a white blob on one of the spring clips too but the clamp and/or silicone film obscure this.

ballast weight; seen araldited to the body shell; the fixing screw hole (8BA) shows clearly.

anti-side-bow; strips of plasticard welded across the inside of body shell at middle-top

floor ‘washer’ ; a strip of glassfibre copper laminate adds fixing support over the floor length and carries soldered on tiny brackets (ex BB’s etch) that will eventually be the Alex Jackson coupling’s fixing points.

brake hangers; raised to match wheel centres by strips of white plasticard.

Careful viewing will also show pieces of cigarette paper cyano’ed to the ‘W’ iron etch, then coated with fairly thick acrylic paint thus avoiding possible short-circuit of wheel tyre to metal ‘W’ iron. Necessary because I used wagon ‘W’ irons and carriage wheels (naughty!)