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Evening Robert, Ah yes, I have a big print on the wall of 46137 on a Liverpool express equipped as you describe, DRRRR. I have a couple of photographs of rather mixed 1949 formations of the Royal Scot before it eventually went ex LMS formatted Crimson and cream, then it all changed again. Having looked at the rather splendid appearance of the LNWR plum and spilt milk livery in the NRM, I cant say the BR experimental livery looked anything like it. Certainly surviving colour photographs look as repulsive as contemporary reports made out. Provided there was no later modifications, I suppose it would be straight forwards to repaint one of the Hornby models into such a livery, or any other livery for that matter. My own LM expresses don't use Kitchen Cars, The combined Liverpool Manchester to Glasgow express for example, uses a 'period one' but LNWR styled dining car, the livery is rebranded later period LMS.

Thanks Robert, I don't read the mags I'm afraid. I don't think they are really aimed at me. I've packed away a lot of my railway stuff but I seem to recall that one of the Royal Scot sets was in a sudo LNWR style, though I've heard it described as purple and white, soon to be bruised knee and dirty white. I'm not sure what train is represented in the photo, was the cornice 'purple' or black?

I forgot to ask Peter, did you change the smokebox door?

Good morning Peter, like everything model railways, the repainting of RTR carriages sounds harder in the thinking of, rather than the doing. I repainted eight Hornby Mansell's into Malachite green to compliment two dining conversions and another eight into BR green for a mate. I batch painted, if I could not extract the glazing, I got it down to about twenty minutes to mask the windows on each carriage and then respray. I've also done GWR carriages in the same fashion, not malachite obviously. I wouldn't worry unduly about making, mistakes, it is part of learning to model. Usually they are fixable, it is very rare that something is a write off, if ever! P.S. I also did the interior panels at the same time.

Good morning Robert, I notice a BR MK1 RU in the 1951 formation. I'm not an expert on MK1's but isn't that BS?

Evening Tony, that would be appalling.

Good afternoon Denbridge, I don't buy the abolition of practical workshop lessons myself. Back in the day, when workshop lessons were a thing, many a hobbyist just collected kits, now they collect RTR instead. I cant say woodwork, metalwork or any other form of school work had much effect on my own railway modeling.

Inspiring stuff, the creative future of the hobby, outside scenery and infrastructure, may lie with the humble goods wagon.

Good afternoon Tony, there are worst things than death apparently, even for a hobby?

Good afternoon Tony, The situation with regards to roof mounted destination board brackets is rather complicated. There are some photographs of the the West ridding Ltd with mountings for a single board, this may have been prior to the public introduction of the set. BR fitted roof board brackets from 1957 as required, this coincided with the new Maroon livery and the introduction of the 'Talisman'. There may be some complication with the spare set but I would have to refer to my notes, I haven't looked at them in at least 15 years and I'm not sure were they currently reside.

It's a good job I only told you? I only have one GWR locomotive, it's usually spare for the York Bristol or the Bournemouth York. It leaks steam everywhere in my imagination, cunningly obscuring the coal space.

My bag comes from the Selby coal field, not a million miles or years apart from yours. They were probably once part of the same prehistoric forest. Not suitable for models of GWR locomotives and wagons though.

Afternoon Tony, I grind up a fine dust and spoon it on to whatever is sticky. Sieving loses the dust.

Good afternoon Steve B, I've painted coal on occasion, or at least bits of coal, to get a more realistic effect. However, I have never found anything that fractures, crumbles and produces the shapes and dust of real coal as well as real coal. I tend not to sieve to much as I find this looks highly unrealistic.

Afternoon, evening Jesse, the Bachmann container can be converted into something more pre BR with a bit of work but some excellent container modelling has been done by the Grantham posse, you might as well take advantage of it. Fixing the brake handle is only a ten minute job but nothing that really shouts out at you like a dodgy livery would.

Good morning Jesse, it is probably something that won't bother you but that particular design of container branding was not blue, rather red oxide or bauxite.

Good morning bbishop, to elaborate on my previous post, SR PMV, LMS Van, LNER BG, ECJS or GNR BG, 2X LNER vans, possible Conflat S, 3X LMS vans, SR NPC, then it gets hazy.

Morning John, agreed, it's very obviously a transfer working and a very typical transfer working at that. One of my own trains built for LSGC, has a sealed LNER BG working from Nottingham, loaded with tobacco products and parcels for the Southern region.

Good evening bbishop, great picture. Don't you mean how many LMS vans? I can see four and four LNER vans, including an ECJS or GNR full brake and in addition a possible Conflat S. Coming to the Southern NPC's, the leading van is a PMV, these were the only SR NPC's built in serious quantities, more than 800 by the SE&CR and the SR and about 150 by BR. Not as many as the 20,000 LNER 6 plank wagons, numbers don't count for ubiquitous status, perhaps they should have been painted green? The southern NPC's, that featured in the photographs of LB upthread, van C, bogie van B and gangwayed bogie luggage brake, were not built in anything like the quantities of the PMV. The luggage brakes were particularly jealously guarded by the SR, who were very reluctant to release them abroad.

Evening Mick, there are reams of this stuff in the likes of the NRM. The problem is that most of it is not catalogued and it costs lots of money to pay people to catalogue it. The museum is reliant on volunteers to do the work, they are not numerous and it isn't a full time occupation for them. I would have thought that Covid has stopped all this, I haven't been able to use the reading room since 2019. The material is in the public domain, in the sense that you can join the search engine, request documents that have been catalogued and spend a day in the reading room trawling through the documentation. You are allowed to make notes and photograph documents and drawings. The uncatalogued stuff is not in the public domain, few people, if anybody, knows what it is. The file on the Hush Hush was lost and forgotten for over sixty years, a document that re writes the chapter in the green book.

Good evening Mick, a friend of mine called John Marsh, before the Covid crisis, carried out a reappraisal of the LNER container fleet, mainly because he was dissatisfied with the small range of mainly BR containers available. He gained access to the original traffic committee reports and the big four shin digs, referring to the introduction of the Furniture removal service. He also went through the repainting dates for every LNER diagram of container that also recorded the livery details. Finally, he was able to ascertain that some original information in the public domain was more in the nature of a guesstimate, as the access to all records was not available at the time.

Evening Mick, Tatlow is in black and white and any info referring to blue is incorrect. They were red oxide like most other containers and then a colour called bauxite during the War. The blue was introduced by the LNER in conjunction with a door to door furniture removal service introduced by the big four. LMS containers were painted maroon, GWR brown and SR green. However, only a limited number of containers branded for the new service received the special liveries, many, though rebranded, retained the standard LMS bauxite (brown) LNER red oxide, GWR grey and SR dark brown. All other containers, excepting specials*, were painted in the normal goods liveries of the big four. As a point of interest, you can tell the ones painted blue for the service from those painted red oxide in a B&W image. The Z branding is backwards on the blue containers. * insulated for example.

Evening Mick, what I know about DX containers as pertaining to the general conversation on such matters. I've seen photographs of them with straw laid over something and also others with some sort of aggregate inside. Non of the real things were ever painted blue by the LNER.

Thanks for the info, I find searching the Peco site difficult unless you have the codes to hand. PC61 will make me eternally happy, well, at least until the end of my model railway building career. Out of interest, do you know of a decent 4 mm GWR Y8 fruit van? I was thinking of chopping the sides off the old 'whatever' RTR models and attaching them to the Ratio kit.

I've never bought directly from Peco, there website is not very user friendly. Perhaps they would consider producing the wooden underframe as a separate kit*, I won't be holding my breath. A new kit of an unfitted LNER van would be a great little model. Its a shame that Unfitted vans and opens are not very popular with modelers, even though they should be up the top of the wish lists. *The Parkside LNER vac brake underframe kit is only available as the steel version.