pete_mcfarlane

I've used ordinary kitchen tinfoil in the past for wagon tarpaulins and it worked fairly well. Halfords red oxide primer sticks to it as an undercoat.

That's looking pretty good! Shock wagons seem to be rarely modelled but there are all sorts of interesting prototypes to model.

Hi Pete,

 

You mention a 2 BIL. I'd like to see a photo of that! I have just finished mine, although not completely satisfied yet with the running on the Black Beetle motor bogie.

Have you considered making a pre-war 2HAL? Branchlines have all the bits (apart from the Kirk 2 BIL kit!). I think it could be done without the Kirk plastic kit parts and scratchbuilding those 'missing parts' instead. 2BILs and 2HALs commonly ran together.

 

Colin Parks

Colin,

The Bil is in some of the earlier posts - blogs are latest post first, ordinary topics are latest post last for some obscure reason.........

I've been toying with the idea of a pre-war HAL, but haven't done anything yet. There seem to be 3 options - the hard to get hold of and slightly crude Phoenix kit, the Branchlines conversion for the also hard to get hold of Kirk 2-Bil, and the massively expensive and slightly wonky looking Ajay resin kit.

And I could always start a wish list

Using the Branchlines bits without the Kirk kit sounds interesting though. I'm guessing it's a set of brass body overlays and detailing parts?

Hi Pete, Just come across your blog.

 

I'm very interested to know which manufacturer's kit you made this EPB from. Old Lugger and myself have been pondering on EPBs this week. He is making a No Nonsense kit. Is yours the DC Kits BR design? What will be the final livery/period for your model?

 

Colin Parks

Colin,

Mine is indeed the DC Kits Mk1 version. It will be in c1970 condition - blue with full yellow ends as I have very early memories of SUB and EPB units in this condition. The Bil will be in early 1960s green.

Brilliant stuff Pete, I've only just come across this. You've captured the essence of the 2BIL very well indeed. Most of the Kirk offerings that I've seen all seem to be a little wrong/heavy around the roof area. Could never really decide what was wrong!

 

What parts have you used from NNK? I was lucky to get the very last kit from Branchlines, so I'll be following this with great interest.

I've used their bogies (except for the motor bogie castings which are Branchlines), step boards and underframe trusses. I suspect that an easier route would be to use the complete underframe kits they now sell, but I'd already got a lot of the components from other sources.

All of the Kirk Southern coaches seem to suffer from dodgy roofs - the cantrail is always way too heavy and thick and this definitely spoils the overall look.

Hopefully photos should b working again! They were there when I did the original post. Honest!

I'll check out the Cambrian kit when I see one. There are vast numbers of conversion possibilities

A1 should do some suitable turned brass horns for the 73 - I've used their horns on my SR EMUs.

I'm surprised that nobody does a set of cast replacement underframe gear for the Lima/Hornby 73. It does make a massive difference.

That does look good!

 

The sheeting looks good too, is that from the Smiths range I wonder?

Yes - it's one of the Smiths wagon sheets. It was given a light dusting of Carr's grey weathering powders to tone it down a little bit.

My Bachmann model came numbered as 178705. There's a photo of this van in the 1950s in several books (including the Peter Tatlow Pictorial record of LNER wagons) that shows it as having a plain door with no windows. This seems to have been the case with most of the LNER vans.

The model comes with a 2 pane window in the door, which appears to be correct for some of the later LNER vans with concrete end weights and underframe trussing. These still have fixed side lamps and different handrails and axleboxes from the model.

I suspect the model as it comes is a classic case of combining details from different prototype batches to produce a model that is wrong for all of them.:icon_frustrated:

Looks good! I've got some of the Replica glazing to try out in my DC Kits EPB unit.

A very nice looking 4-REP! Please carry on posting - I must get round to building the SP Mk1s I've got in the cupboard.....

That's a good looking EPB :icon_thumbsup2: