If anyone is contemplating purchasing these vans, I suggest you do so soon. The chief shopkeeper is working on a cull of very slow moving items in the shops, and these are in that category. I have not had to re-order the bodies since they were first produced, which is a long time ago. This has always surprised me, as I spent a load of time getting them made, and as I have said, I reckon they knock spots off anything you can buy, either as RTR or kits. Perhaps its because they have the planking grooves to scale (they were cut with a 1 thou cutter), that they look odd compared to everything else around in 2mm. Take a look at Richard's photos to see what I mean. Farish planking is truly awful and is the main reason their vans still look like toys. I made some etched parts for these to make banana vans but had to discard them as the planking looked so crude on the etch by comparison.

So, use them or lose them.

Chris

I was planning on obtaining a couple more but if he's going to reduce them I'll definitely have extras ;-)

Someone else can use up the ones with 17'6" bodies though - far too modern for me. 

The 2mm Assocciation description of the twin-pack Opens is highly misleading, in particular for the 4-plank Open. The brief history of these beasts is that the GWR introduced a 4-plank Open in the latter part of the 19th century, and they were built with a single sided brake, lever operated, and acting on 2 wheels only. When the GWR was experimenting with a new brake 3 of these were fitted with various  brakes, and eventually ended up with the DC1 brake. The last Lot of 4-plank wagons (of 500) was built with DC1, later mostly converted to DC1x. When the Diagram Register was set up, the wagons with DC1 brakes were allocated Diagram O5, but those with the lever brake were not allocated a diagram (the remaining 2 and 3 plank wagons didn't get a diagram either). As there were 23,000 or so (I'm doing this from memory) of the undiagrammed 4-plank wagons, they outnumbered the O5s by 460 to 1. When the GWR finally decided in c1928 to implement the BoT 1909 (?) directive on either side brake, 18,000 or so of the undiagrammed 4-plank wagons were fitted with an independant brake , lever facing right and acting only on the left-hand wheel on the hitherto unbraked side, thus conforming with the letter if not the spirit of the directive. This was supposed to be completed by 1939, but it is possible that, due to WW2, some of the single-side braked vehicles survived until after the war, but not many, and they went very quickly after that.

You can also model the three plank wagon by removing the top plank and, if desired reinstating the rivet detail. I'm indebted to David Walley for telling me this.

The situation with the 5-plank wagons is also a bit misleading as you can make several diagrams by ringing the changes on brakes and buffers, one more with a bit of work (one diagram, the first 5-plank wagon had five planks of equal height and was 6in narrower), and a whol slew of others if you are prepared to replace the diagonal strapping with a straight section (the kit has the less common variant with a "knee") or, indeed, if you are prepared to ignore a relatively small detail. Finally, you can make the GWR's first China Clay wagon by replacing one end with a tip door and fitting DC2 brakes (and a few more details). This one was pretty the only type of wagon to retain DC2s, as you couldn't have brake gear mechanism at the tipping end, as it would get clogged with slurry.

I would warn people I'm doing this from memory, so I might have got some of the details wrong, and cannot remember the Diagram numbers concerned, but this is the general thrust of it. If anyone wants the diagram numbers, reply to this and I'll repost tonight.

Mark Austin

Bit late to the party Mark but thanks for the history lesson. The 5 plank moulding I think most closely resembles diagram O9 as it comes.

The account I wrote for the magazine is more detailed. Perhaps I should have had you sanity check and proof read it. It is with the editor now, and has been for a while. Last time I spoke with him he was trying to serialize it and keep the text matched up with the 25 or so pictures that I gave him on USB drive.