Miss Prism

That's quite a tragedy.

Steam Swindon now stating availability "from mid November".

Good choice of wagons.

Presumably that's a 1500V d.c. pantograph rather than a 25kV a.c. one?

I don't have contact details for Peter Squibb - he might be contactable via the Great Western Study Group website.

The bizarre logic of railway modellers' frothing knows few limits!

The person who would know about the nature of the rod linkage between the arms is Peter Squibb.

The co-acting junction arms near West Drayton (c 1920s, I don't think they lasted much beyond that) look to be taller than 30'? (There are a couple of pics somewhere in the books, but I can't remember which.)

I agree, but there is the possibility that Hornby can't get their mits on their previous tooling, which might be stashed away in the old Sanda Kan plant, or they can't run their previous tooling without Sanda Kan's bolsters, with the result that Hornby has no option but to start all over again. Which would be very expensive for all concerned.

Mike - the K14 and K15 did not have gangways fitted, although the K15 had 'psuedo' corridor panelling on the ends, so in theory could have been fitted with gangways at a later date. The K16s were fitted with gangways from new. Ah ha! You may have stumbled on the key to the OP's question, namely that, in later years, brake vehicles without a lockable guards compartment would qualify only as a 'Van'.

The end of the gutter should stick out, but it didn't drop downward (the wind drove the drainage).

I trust the rear driver brakes aren't outside the rods...

The K16s were 40' brakes and I believe they retained their corridor fittings after removal of guard's duckets, so would not be classified as 'non-corridor'. Whilst the K14/15/16 PBVs were still technically 'brakes', there wasn't much point in inhabiting them for that purpose, because there wasn't much point in trying to look out of an 8'-wide vehicle if everything else was 9'. I think 'Van' would therefore encompass the 40' PBVs, and there were certainly enough of them around until the mid-1930s. The OP's question does seem dependent on era though, and thus Chris F's 'could be just about anything' (as long as it was vac-fitted and passenger-rated) is very plausible.

Wot, no palatial Wild Swan special Didcot van?

Door latches seem to have started appearing on Iron Minks in the early '30s.

Suggest a thin light grey poster/acrylic wash over a trial area of your ballast and see how it looks after drying. Don't try to be consistent in coverage or colour tone.

I see you have deleted the pictured post. What site was advertising that as 00, btw?

That is Lionheart's 7mm version. A misleading post, methinks.

That's me sorted for a new chapter of GWW, err, I mean a coupla new pics for GWR Modelling...

Suggest lighten up your ash ballast colour.

Even with 9mm tops, I'm surprised you haven't put in a mid-frame support for that kind of board length. On baseboard height, I'm all in favour of high layouts, so applaud your 57". There's only one problem with that kind of height though, and that's working on it, especially for a layout that deep.

http://www.shapeways.com/shops/hazelwoodmodelshop

I kinda like the places where there was the least variety of traffic - some of those huge junctions in the middle of Wales with hundreds of signals, hundreds of coal wagons, a posse of Panniers, and nothing else. Sounds good to me.

The late and great Mel Hodges (his 4mm riveting was to die for) used a much-modified watchmaker's mainspring punch, but a good one will probably cost you an arm and a leg. Also in the arm and a leg league is the Tony Reynalds riveter set (special order only, and I'm not sure he even does them now), but it's probably the best in the biz.

Agreed about the insanity aspect, but the bits of wire method is probably best confined to loco headstock and smokebox saddle boltheads (which were not 'rivets' of course). But then it's only mad people like 7mm modellers who need to worry about that sort of thing...