Spodgrim

 I'll see your 3 Terriers and a shunting layout you're building because you've got bored and raise you 3 Midland Railway vans!   I don't even model the Midland!

Good luck with the layout and hope it gives you pleasure.

I've had an enjoyable weekend building the sides of a Midland Van

But somewhere along the way I've lost the rivet detail overlays to the door corner and the end stanchion.

Short of etching my own kits what's the best way of fabricating new ones. I know in larger scales you can get etches of wagon "strapping" is such a thing avaliable in 2mm?

Neil

UPDATE I found the corner plate for the door among the detritus on my desk☺ Only one to make.

That's fine if you're modelling LSWR and Southern! Doesn't work as well for us LBSCR types, bruv ...

Well there's an easy answer to that problem...

For me, the article that most impressed - and influenced - me was by John Allison in an early 1970s Railway Modeller. It was only one page with a couple of small black-and-white photos, I think the article was called something like "Watching the Trains" and the layout was simply a small double line of N gauge track running between tunnel mouths through well-modelled, interesting scenery: no station, no visible pointwork, just trains appearing and disappearing as they would in real life, then looping around under the hills and coming back on the other track. At a time when most layouts were either intensively-worked branch terminii or large multi-station systems, I was fascinated by the simplicity of the concept and found it really refreshing.

The line that has always stuck in my memory was when John explained why his coaches had different liveries on each side: the different paint jobs allowed him to have more variety of trains on show on what we would now call a micro-layout and "after all you can only see one side of a coach at a time".

Reading that article taught me that accuracy (which I found much too daunting when I read articles by expert builders like England, Jenkinson and Sharman) wasn't the only way into modelling: painting a believable picture was at least as important. And that's been my excuse for being all fingers and thumbs at the workbench ever since!   

BTW I know they were before our time, but the Walkley brothers are big heroes of mine as well. I am still amazed by A.R.'s 1926 Layout in a Suitcase: amazingly ahead of its time!

That is probably why I'm planning to paint my wagons (if I ever get round to finishing them) pre and post grouping on different sides - I blame your influence :-) 

Neil