Nile

If this fruit van didn't qualify for passenger livery that's all the better for me.

It's in Railway Liveries - LMSR by Brian Haresnape , IA 1983. There is photo of a fish van in passenger livery on P.33 .

Using the airbrush to paint things can be a bit of a faff as I have to lug the compressor in from another room. So I like to maximise its usage when I get it out. I've had some other models that I've wanted to paint SR brown for some time, so I did these at the same time as the one above. I have a couple of bogie cattle vans I bought secondhand some time ago. I think they were made form Triang TT models. This is one sitting on a pair of my bogies, they came with N gauge bogies. And this is them after painting and lettering. I remarked earlier that I was having trouble with Methfix transfers. After finding this post by Izzy I used his method successfully on these models. I think I was using too much meths and not enough water before.

Now I'm back home I can show you the other side. This may be completely bogus, as being both fitted and passenger rated it would have eventually ended up something like this one, which wasn't built by me. My reasoning is that it's an early grouping repaint. If it's completely wrong I can just ignore this side.

I'm sure the same trick could be applied to many vans, this one would make an interesting looking one.

The later, they are the standard kit parts.

I haven't abandoned standard gauge modelling, but it's at a lower priority right now. To keep things ticking along I thought I'd tackle one of the re-issued Slater's kits, if only because they come in quite big boxes. Should be a simple enough build. Well not quite. I think they've included the wrong floor in this kit as it needed some bits removed to get the brake gear to fit. My older kits have a different floor in them. Eventually it all came together ok, and the new waterslide transfers work well.

The tank framing was made up from L section Plastruct around the edges, the T section in the middle of each side was made from pieces of microstrip. Apart from the base colour of stone all the paint used was acrylic, which speeded things up a lot. The tank plumbing is next.

Some more photos, with other stock. One day I'll build a railway to run this lot on.

While I had the material out for the water tank I also made a base for the yard crane. Three discs of plastikard made with a compass cutter: They were glued together, them a strip of stone plastikard was glued around the edge. The centre hole was enlarged to match the pin under the crane. I managed to get a nice tight fit, no glue needed yet.

The body isn't designed to come off, at least not easily. The easiest way to add some weight is to put some lead inside the smokebox, being careful not to short circuit the DCC socket in there. There may not be room if you've fitted a chip in there.

A coat of SR goods brown was then followed by a load of agro with methfix transfers. I gave up after the "SR" as I couldn't get any of the numbers to release, maybe these sheets go bad with age. I switched to pressfix which gave no trouble. This was taken after weathering. To operate the brakes I've fitted one hand-wheel per side on the right. It controls the brakes on the adjacent bogie. Finally for now two photos of the finished model showing its two identities.

Yes, they look very smart.

It perhaps shows the different approach of Bachmann UK and Bachmann USA to the problem. The 009 model was a completely new model with a blank slate, hence an accurate model. And the valve gear is no more complicated than that on N gauge models. The On30 model was based on an existing chassis that lacked valve gear, so the final model is a compromise. Perhaps they didn't think the market would be big enough to justify developing an all new model.

Yes conical recesses. Nylon is tough enough not to need bearings. Some American kits come with Nylon bearings.