Today's fun: trying to fit Bill Bedford BR 'modern image' W-irons under a Cambrian SR/BR 25t Toad.

Catch is: the gauge is EM and the van has the narrowest frames. Evah.

I chose the (sprung) W-irons because for some reason I thought the van wouldn't ride nicely (old moulds, my dodgy construction skills, runes consulted etc). I trimmed them to broadly the right shape with a knife (note the ones on this van, at least following the mouldings in the kit, are unusually wide and lack any weight relieving holes). Trouble is that the width of the whole W-iron unit is 26mm, a good 3mm more than the space available between the frames. So the two W-irons have been chopped in half and (carefully, but not skillfully) soldered back together.

The only axle I could find that would go in was an old Märklin one (remember: h0 is like 00, just 0.87 times as much ...) and this axle was 24mm tip to tip. Filing off the tips got it down to 23mm. Off came the old wheels, the ends of the axles were ridged with a file (as in the Gibson instructions for fitting drive gears to proprietary axles) and on went the Gibson wheels. There's not a lot between the front face of the wheel and the rear face of W-iron. I've cut the moulded W-irons on the solebars back to the springs.

We shall see how this turns out; the frame's currently held together with hair clips and the solvent is doing whatever it needs to do.

And here is one of Paul Bartlett's photos of a prototype 25t van. I'm doing this diagram, D1582, there are a few others covered by the kit