Fairly recently, I bought three pre-grouping vans from the local swap meet, all Roxey etched brass kits and well made, although a little battered from unsympathetic handling. Each cost me $20, (compared to the £27 each, or approximately $AUS55, for the flat kits, still currently available) and was fitted with EM gauge axles and wheels. I have slowly regauged or replaced the wheels and axles, with two of the vans retaining their compensation at one end, while the S&DJR van had to lose its compensation unit as it was too wide to fit within the OO gauge wheelset.

I fitted NEM pockets from Parkside, with a 60 thou packing piece to negate the Parkside requirement for cranked couplings, and plugged in some tension lock couplings.

The S&D milk van is in a blue colour, which I may retain, while the other two LCDR/SECR luggage vans were in a rather insipid green colour. One, the SECR Grande Vitesse luggage van, is now in EWS red (a reasonably close match to what I can ascertain is SECR red/maroon), while the other, an LCDR luggage van, is in Humbrol leather colour to represent a teak finish, as used by the LCDR. All require further work before I can add transfers, and two of them were rather stiff runners, so more work was required there too.

Making up a rather unlikely combination, I have posed my two LSWR M7 tanks with the three vans plus the previously worked on SECR (ex-LCDR) brake van. It does make for a colourful combination, although the purists are probably screaming in the background!

Looking at Roxey Mouldings' website, I cannot decide whether the LCDR van is an 1878 or 1880 design; Roxey offer both but they look the same to me! Neither of the built up examples on the Roxey website has the torpedo vents, so mine is either wrong or represents a later modification. Either way, they will have to go!

As per the above photo, I started by painting the whole body in Humbrol leather colour.

I have now dry-brushed some Revell dark brown on all panels, vertically streaked on the main panels and horizontally streaked for the waist and cant level panels.

This was followed by a coat of gloss varnish. The first photo shows it before varnishing, the second, after varnishing.

I think it's not too bad for a first attempt at a wood grain finish.