Car problems have got in the way of getting to Stafford today so not been able to buy any regional railways blue paint, so wont be able to paint up the etches until I next see Brian to pick some up.

Next job will be working out how I am going to repower it, The choice at the moment being between one of Bill Bedford's underfloor chassis which is due later in the year, or a black beetle.

The black beetle option would be an easier installation, however the lack of etched bogie spacers availability is a problem at the other end (there are 2 options available, the A1 etch is next to useless as most of the brass is visible around the edge of the sideframe where there should be open space however it is a nice thick graded of brass. The Hurst ones are a tad on the thin side, but iirc are shaped to match the sideframe so no brass where there should be air. Unfortunately they are out of stock, and have been for a rather long time. Other sprung/compensated options suffer from the same issue as the A1 etch in having most of the brass visible after fitting the side frames.

This leaves a problem as to how to attach the bogie at the non powered end.

The Bill Bedford option gives a better engineered solution, and negates the problems with the inner bogie given that the chassis covers both. However I am not a big fan of the method of springing used on his other sprung bogies where there is a fold up block that is sprung in a wide slot (I assume that the 150 will be done the same way.) I much prefer the method he uses on the sprung W irons (having a bearing running in a narrow slot). There is also an issue with potentially having to loose underframe detail in order to clear space for the motor.

At the moment its probably a case of wait and see what the Bill Bedford chassis is like when it (hopefully) appears in a couple of months time, otherwise I guess it wouldnt be too much work to draw up an etch for a suitable bogie subframe.

Another consideration is what to do about the interior, here I think I have found a solution. A future project I fancy attempting is a model of the departmental 150 (particularly given that I've heard of a couple of sets of etches in development for them.) My thinking is tending towards buying a cheap Bachmann 150/1 to use as a basis for this conversion. Given that the departmental unit will not require seating, that frees up the interior from this unit which can be transferred into my 150/2. That said I will still have to work out how to do the interior for my Bratchell kit built uni at some point, so maybe some resin casting from the Bachmann interior might be an option.......