Inching its way towards completion is this Dragon Models kit for a tiny Rhymney Railways brake van. I purchased the kit a good few years ago, at what I think was the last Rhondda model show - 2008 or 2009? I fancied adding a bit of variety to my GWR trains and this vehicle and a slightly larger Taff Vale brake van from the same supplier looked like they'd fit the bill nicely. As it happened, every time I went near either kit I got a cold shiver of terror, for on closer examination they looked to be a bit challenging, to say the least!

Suitably embolded after building a couple of Comet coaches, though, I thought I'd tackle the Rhymney vehicle (it looked like the simpler of the two) and here's the state of progress so far. There's still a fair bit to do but the basic outline of the van is there and I'm pleased with the overall shape. It really is shockingly small! The chassis assembly is quite straightforward but the body sides pose a few difficulties. The first is that beading has to be soldered on to all four outer sides, which went slowly but steadily until I got to the windows and found that they really tested my skills - or lack thereof! I also made a boo-boo in that, well into the soldering, I realised I'd been using 0.7mm wire instead of the 0.5mm intended. Rather than risk messing things up by unsoldering the existing work, i decided to press on, while acknowledging that the beading will be somewhat overscale. Hey ho. The second difficulty is that there's no really positive system for getting the sides square and aligned in all relevant axes, and it took me a few goes to get everything straight, with tack soldering being the approach before going in with the full finishing job.

Next up will be duckets, brake gear, footboards and so on. Wish me luck! Hopefully the end result will be quite a characterful little vehicle.

Edit - I didn't think it was worth a second blog post just for the duckets and a bit of brake gear, so here's tonight's progress. I was fearful of forming the duckets but they went very straightforwardly: