The first part of this project was written up here PART 1 but it's now more or less finished.

And there's a picture to prove it. 

As it was finished a while ago some of the details are now a bit hazy but here goes... One of the centre (first class!) compartments has been retained for staff riding and this gives a long and a short tool compartment in the rest of the vehicle. Kadees have been fitted (I think they were long) and a lot of time spent touching up, lettering and weathering. 

I can't remember all the details of weathering. The basic black is Citadel Chaos black, from a can, touch up was Chaos black with a brush - the difference between the two is minimal. (I know they should be absolutely the same, but there's a very slight difference) . Weathering on both vehicles involved AK Interactive enamel weathering washes - Light Dust Deposit was just too light and white and I think I used Shaft and Bearing Grease over the top to knock it back to something acceptable. Other ad hoc enamel washes may have been used along the way , and I think I just mixed up a suitable grey for the roof

The Starfish is an old Cambrian kit someone gave me a while back, which seemed suitable for a vintage engineers' train and for which I had no other obvious use. It has been built essentially as it comes , and though I think a little care and possibly the odd scrap of microstrip packing in the joins were needed in assembly, there is nothing much to remark on in its construction. This is a very small wagon (which is ideal in the context of a small layout) and even with lead sheet araldited underneath it was little more than 25 g - about half the target weight. It therefore has a load - ballast glued onto a rectangle of 40'thou  styrene sheet with artist's matt medium (to avoid discolouration). There is lead sheet under the styrene , to give the additional weight.

Lettering both was a pig. I didn't have suitable Departmental transfer sheets , and couldn't find anything obviously suitable and modestly priced. A large sheet that only does part of the job at £10 was not a sensible approach. So transfers are made up of bits and pieces found on various transfer sheets I have , words had to be made out of several donor bits, and the whole thing took about 4 evenings , with lots of care , and application of microsol in stages to bond the bits in place. They were then given weathering washes to tone them down . I hoped to suggest patch repair of panels . There is at least one lettering element missing on the Starfish, but I'm prepared to live with it for the moment. These wagons survived in this condition into the 1980s so I have a bit of flexibility of use on this. The wagon number is correct - the coach number is a wild guess conditioned by transfer bits as I have no relevant GW reference and online reference here was limited. I have a nasty suspicion I've numbered it as a diesel railcar or an autotrailer.

The intention is to "borrow" the black Grampus and the olive Shark to make up an engineer's train (politely ignoring the TOPS boxes on the borrowed vehicles) . This leaves me one wagon short - the half-built ex LNER Toad B from an old Parkside kit has been mentally allocated as the second brake van . That finds a sensible use for another model, so I have an incentive to finish it. The stumbling block on that project has been the need to contrive wire handrails on the sides

And now  for a 21st century variation on the same theme......

I don't know the provenance of this kit. It is a resin-cast body with integral solebars, which was on the second-hand stall at the Stevenage exhibition this January for £4. Included in the polybag were some Cambrian pedestal suspension units. I assume it was being disposed of because there were some small air bubbles in a couple of places and because the solebars were so thin they'd broken away in one place along the edge. That was repaired with a little superglue - I'm not convinced the solebar is 100% parallel on close inspection but it's not noticeable. Wheels are Hornby discs , fitted with disc-brake inserts. These seem to catch slightly underneath  - they are slightly bigger than the 12mm Romfords that may have been intended. I've gouged away at the underside of the mounting (remove the pedestal unit then work on the fixing) and they are a lot freer-running than at first but may still need a little more work

The Bachmann PNA is 5 rib , this is the 7 rib version. Base coat is BR loco green, weathered with various rust potions /browns, and a wash of green let down with off-white. Transfers were again "interesting" and had to be made up with bits and pieces from various sheets - the green and blue patches were done by brush-painting onto some Fox blank transfer paper, then applying transfer lettering from other sheets (sometimes in bits) on top . The patches were then cut out and applied as transfers to the wagon. This has all been another slow lettering job, and I still have to source the Caib transfers and apply a sealing coat of matt varnish. There may be some more weathering too - the originals were pretty beat up vehicles (see below)

The resin used is a soft white substance, not the hard resin more commonly seen in kits.  This vehicle may actually be a purely amateur exercise - I think Jon Hall may have done a few wagons a bit like this as resin casting demos over the years. It has been weighted with lead sheet underneath, but Kadees are still to add. I bought two commercial resin wagon loads at Shenfield , intended for the Bachmann PNA : unfortunately they are fractionally too wide, and more seriously about 3mm too short for this wagon, so a suitable load will have to be made up. . (I have a Bachmann PNA that can use one of the commercial loads and at £2.65 primed it's hardly a great expenditure)