Well it's been a while again now since I posted anything, due in part to awaiting a coach kit to arrive from Comet Models and a very smart kit it is indeed, I hope I can do it justice when I come to assemble it as it will be my first brass kit build.

Two other reasons for my absence, one I've started work on the house renovation again after some considerable time so I now have less time and even less energy for the models.

The other reason is because of a spate of electrical breakdowns, in a five week period my computer, printer, hair clippers, freezer, and internet modem all packed up one after the other. The modem was rented from the ISP and they only ever supplied cheap rubbish makes, this was the 4th one I'd had, and the last I've gone back to France Telecom now, whome I hope will do better. So I haven't been online for a while.

Anyway, back to the Metro-Vick, 20 of these were built in the early 1920s by Metropolitan Vickers of Barrow in Furness for the Metropolitan railway. They replaced an earlier design which had a central cab and were called 'camel-backs' the new design being more powerful. They were withdrawn from service in the early 60s. Only two have been preserved, one is in the London Transport Museum in Covent Garden and the other, Sarah Siddons is in private ownership.

Some time ago I entered a competition in which one had to make a Diorama replicating a painting or photograph, so I chose to reproduce a photo of a working MV taken at Rickmansworth station some time in the 50s. This is the story of the build.

I did some drawings to work to and the photo I worked from just happened to be nearly to scale.I first made a master template drawing and made two copies so both sides would be identical

I cut out the window openings and round the complete sides and then mounted them on card of the right colour

I marked a sticky label into 2mm strips, cut them out and overlapped them by 1mm and cut them into 9mm square panels, I painted them to match the card and fixed them in place.

the grill panels cut to size and painted to match

I cut some strips 2mm wide for the side mouldings, around doors and windows etc, marked out the panels and glued them in place.

When I'd finished it looked like this, these strips were later sanded down to soften the edges and reduce the thickness slightly

continued in part 2