The recent Christmas and New Year break has enabled me to get my finger out and finish off a few outstanding projects, most notably some 12t van kits.

Roof issues aside (I've left these alone as I'm game for an easy life!), the Parkside Dundas PC42 BR fruit van kit is a most useful one indeed and can produce 3 main variants of ordinary 12t van aside from the kit as intended.

Below are sides in various states of modification.

Starting with the raw bodyside - note the shelf brackets and vent scoop plates - these all get removed to do the following: LMS Dias 2097 and 2108, BR D1/200. The latter are virtually the same, save for roof vents on the LMS diagram.

With everything removed, this is how the side now looks.

The D2097 van goes a stage further and has the pair of diagonal straps removed, leaving just the verticals. These had a different underframe from the rest - standard Morton 4 shoe push brakegear instead of the 8 shoe clasp as fitted to the rest. More on those anon!

Finally (for now) a pic of a completed van to D2108 awaiting the paintshop - roof vents are the usual MJT torpedoes. The underframe spare from a D2097 conversion goes nicely under an Airfix/Dapol LMS planked body, which does a few diagrams in its own right.

As stated at the start, I'm fully aware of the wrong roof profile of the Parkside kit, but when you're building the quantity I need (I have a good couple of dozen of these), life is very much too short.

Underframe detail is confined to adding brake shoe actuation rods, main cross-shaft and pull rods. A combination of 0.4 and 0.7mm diameter brass rod/wire does the trick neatly. Buffers are 13" heads from the 51L range using the original shanks. Further detail can be given over to replacement axleboxes for those that had them replaced with the BR pattern (or in the case of D1/200, built with them).

All in all, a nice kit to work with and produce a goodly variety to a fitted van train.