More progress on the LTF-25 bogie and the JHA this month.

Back in August, I was offered the chance to acquire 5 scratch-built JHA bodies. This seemed like a good solution in order to get a mini rake of 5 wagons up and running quickly. Colin Craig kindly supplied me with a few more wheelsets at Scaleforum so I've now been able to put the first wagon together with the better pair of my test print bogies.

Although the wagon bodies could do with a bit more detailing, rather than go to town on them, I've decided to simply paint, transfer and weather them until I finish my own bodies. The following shots are of the first wagon sprayed with Phoenix paint (ARC mustard & grey). I've assembled and painted enough of Colin's 4mm diameter etched handwheels to do the mini rake of 5 but I want to make sure that the paint job is correct before fitting these. I'm planning to fit Kadees to all vehicles and buffers to the outer vehicles.

Finally, I tested fitting in brass bushes as bearings into one of the test printed bogies. I had to drill out the axle holes to 3mm and then inserted the bushes from the front of the bogie. They are a snug fit and the front of the wheel stops them from coming out. They are also fairly free running too. The main faff is fitting the wheels as they both need to come off the axle in order to get them in place. This is a delicate operation but by following a few basic "rules" and the aid of a back to back gauge it can be accomplished quite easily without breaking any of the fine detail.

I'm not really happy with the colour of the Phoenix paints: they seem a little bit dark compared to prototype photos. I've linked to a couple of prototype photos below that I've found on the web. Gareth Bayer's shots were taken in the late 90s and the wagons have had a chance to fade and weather down a bit. However, even in the second shot (taken early 90s) the grey looks quite a bit lighter.

If anyone has good side-on colour shots of these wagons from the period when they were new then I'd love to see them for a comparison.