In addition to the comments about the gangways, I looked at the photos in Model Rail and Hornby Magazine and thought the yellow front ends of the VEP looked chunky compared to the Bachman CEP. I couldn't quite put my finger on it until I looked at the pictures of prototypical VEPs on daily service in both mags and I realised it's the cleanliness of the pipe recesses on the model that are perhaps deceiving the eye. I know the pictures posted earlier in this thread show units with very clean recesses but my memories are of grubby units. Those modelers confident enough to weather (ie most of you guys on here, but not myself) will probably end up with a product that very much resembles what so many of us saw in daily service, where the dark cab windows are almost reflected in the darkness of the recesses below them. Saying, that many of the units on Wikipedia also look very clean, so I'm happy to see my theory shot down! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_423