Happy new year everybody!

Here's something a little more up-to-date! I've been trying very hard to keep everything BR blue, stick to the period, keep focussed...but I've wanted one of these for a while. Memories of riding them around the Valleys whilst at uni in South Wales, maybe. I placed an ad on one of the N gauge Facebook groups to see if anyone happened to have one they were looking to move on...and low and behold, it was in my hands the next day

Now it wouldn't be fun if I couldn't do a bit of weathering, even if they are kept relatively clean. So the underframe and snow ploughs got a wash of gunky black brown, mixed up from oil paints. This was also applied thinly around the door frames and other areas dirt tends to collect on these units, using a block of sponge and a cotton bud to try and replicate the cleaning process on a real unit. Powders were then applied where needed, especially on the roof area. I also used some ground up pencil lead applied with a finger to simulate the warn metal you see on one half of the corridor connector on the nose - although this isn't particularity obvious on the photos. I also changed the couplings between the carriages to one short and one long of the Dapol solid buckeyes, which has brought them closer together and caused no issues on my Kato test loop.

The photos show up where I'd gone a bit overboard on one of the doors - now rectified! Overall I'm happy - it was a different challenge to the other stuff I've done recently, and one that I enjoyed.