Many many years ago, I was taken to the local model shop for my birthday (my poor parents...). The 00 'Queen Mary' brake van had recently been released, and I fell in love with the way it looked. Naturally, I chose the most colourful one.

My parents recently asked me to clean out some of my old railway items from their attic, so I took this one home with me. The rather gaudy colour scheme doesn't really fit in with my steam era layout, so I thought it could become part of the NWR's departmental stock.

The NWR house colour is blue (Vauxhall Regatta Blue to be precise).
Bit o'primer

I was originally going to try and keep a splash of yellow, but realised I'd inadvertently made the Mainline Freight livery of the 1990s, so the yellow ends were to go black.

I kept some of the markings on the side, and cut out some unused transfers from one of my big Fox sheets. D12 denotes Departmental Vehicle number 12. Any relations to hip-hop groups are purely incidental.

Nice smokey weathering wash...

I'm pretty happy with how it looks, I wanted it quite grubby. Some of the matt lacquer bloomed in some of the crevices so I went over again with a bit of blackness to hide it.