A few years ago I acquired several Ratio GWR 4-wheeler kits, along with the Mainly Trains package for an etched chassis. The original plan had been to build a short train of 4-wheelers for use on Paynestown, perhaps representing a miner's train in the early nationalisation era, but I never quite got around to making the coaches and eventually the layout was sold on. Nonetheless I always meant to have a go at the coaches and this week I finally found the mojo to tackle the etched chassis.

The Mainly Trains product appears to be an Iain Rice design and it goes together very well. I encountered a couple of small errors during the build, then discovered - to my chagrin - that these had been highlighted in the instructions, along with remedial tips. The moral is to read the instructions, rather than jusy relying on the exploded diagram!

The main etches. There are also some etched ends, and a number of white metal castings. The fit of the parts was very good, requiring only very minor fettling.

The chassis as assembled. This is built straight from the etch as a 30 foot vehicle, but with some simple modification the kit enables the shorter variants to be modelled. The 19 foot wheelbase is common to both types, so it's only a question of shortening the chassis ends and footboards.

The underside, which features a compensated design. There's no provision to build it in rigid form, but the compensation was simple to achieve and seems to function well. I wasn't happy with the Ratio wheels as supplied, so substituted Bachmann coach wheels which are heavy and in my experience run very reliably. Heretical, perhaps, but I don't think you can really tell the difference once they're painted black and hidden behind the axleboxes and footsteps. I've omitted some of the finer details, as I don't think the effort is worth it for a "layout" vehicle. It's all very sturdy, though.

Finally, I turned my attention to the Ratio parts. This chassis is for the brake third, and the sides are shown being painted and lined.

A while ago I covered my experiences of painting and lining the shorter of these sets of sides:

http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/blog/257/entry-14478-gwr-4-wheel-coaches/

To be honest, the ones I've done for the brake are slightly neater and more consistent, so I don't think I'll be able to resist stripping and redoing the shorter sides (again!), and to be fair the work goes pretty quickly once you're in the zone. In the meantime, though, I've got two more sets to do so I'll leave repainting the others until last. I've also ordered another set of etches from Mainly Trains so potentially I can do a 4-vehicle train.

There's a very good write-up of these vehicles by Mikkel, here:

http://www.gwr.org.uk/proratio.html