I've finished off some of the LNER wagons. I'm impressed with how well the 3H LNER opens have turned out, despite the many problems getting them square

The LSWR stone block wagon is also finally painted, after months lurking in my shoebox of stuff to be painted!

I've also been working on an Airfix meat van. Not the most common prototype - only 100 of these were built, but for some reason they chose this over the more common 12t van.

As with the cattle wagons this went together very well, but needed some work to eliminate the toy like opening doors. I also had problems getting 26mm axles to fit, and ended up having to massively recess the bearings (using a soldering iron to melt them in!). Perhaps it was designed for shorter HO axles? I didn't measure the horrible plastic Airfix wheels before binning them.

Usual ABS brake gear and add ons.

One of the longest lurkers in my backlog of unfinished stuff is a Maunsell R4 first. I started this in 2000 using an Ian Kirk coach and Bill Bedford etched sides. This was before the Roxey kit and Hornby RTR versions.

It's now been dragged out again and worked on. An interior has been knocked up out of plasticard, Southern Pride seats and Preiser figures.

I hate doing corridor handrails (one of the reasons this had stalled) so as an experiment tried using black cotton. This was stuck on to a scrap of plasticard at one end, stretched and stuck to another scrap at the other end to give a nice taught handrail.

Small blocks of plasticard were superglued in place as strategic points, and then the sections of thread across the doors removed to give the effect of a handrail. This seems to have worked quite well.

Of course the inevitable happened and I got superglue on the windows, but a coat of Johnson's Klear got rid of the white mark that this leaves.