VANilla - 7mm - ready for painting

Oh dear, O dear, dear O dear. Yep, bad puns aside, I've finally cracked and have made a start on my haphazard O gauge wagon fleet.

I've been collecting new kits and old bangers alike for a few years, and would like to make some stock to either put on a display shelf or maybe a layout for them. I seem to have 15 wagons plus a brake van from an audit of my O gauge box. Three are minerals, twelve are vans, I like vans.

I'm sticking with Finescale, hence the VANilla thread title. All will be painted in late 50's BR colours.

Tony

 

So first up, an old banger, bought somewhere secondhand, probably quite cheaply. It's the Parkside D1828, lot 486 Charles Roberts LMS van. It's got issues. Too much brakegear, wrong wheel type, poorly fitting roof, badly glued corners. So all this will be remedied, along with new sprung buffers and hopefully a removable, but tightly fitting roof. I don't like vans without access to the space inside for some reason. Respray into BR grey.

Tony

 

Hi ????????? , is that black overspray dotted on the sides of the van ? The corners don't look to bad in the photo but you can see it up close .
Cheers Paul

 

Hi Paul, sorry, I should have signed off with my name, now corrected.

Yes, it is overspray, I think an attempt at weathering possibly. The corners aren't too bad, but the vertical alignment is off slightly, having a knock on to the squareness of the van and roof line. So it's now reduced to a kit again.



Tony

 

I couldn't resist this old ABS kit from my local model shop, bought for £40. It was sealed new until today and had a page inside from the Daily Express as packing.

Dated 1988.

Lovely castings, nice plastic parts, very different from the Slater's/Parkside approach.

Will look forward to building it, but as the fitted LNER version. Not quite VANilla, but nearly.

Tony

 

I do like a good ABS kit. Are you going to solder the body together ?

Ian

 

Well, I need to practice my white metal soldering first, but yes that would be my aim. However, this kit has injection moulded floor and sides, with white metal ends and a flat piece of styrene for a roof. All I can solder is the underframe parts I think, which I would prefer to do.
Tony

 

The work on the LMS van continues, the paint has all been stripped off. I started on removing all the flash on the kit generally and shaping the brake levers into something more realistic.

The two centre items have been fettled.

The van will only have one set of brakes, so the right hand set goes into the spares bin.

Tony

 

I have this wrecked Slaters VanWide kit bought for £13.45 all in from eBay. I then bought a spare Standard van body.



The plan is to make it into a Standard van with a ply door and BR clasp brakes using the Slaters 71548 BR 8 Shoe Shock Absorbing Wagon kit.

Before I call them next week, anyone any idea what's in the kit? I'm hoping all the sprues and etches from the Palvan brake gear. I'll order a new solebar sprue too.

Cheers
Tony

 

Next up, Peco GWR V14 van, again bought on eBay for £24 as an old banger. Missing one buffer and compensation never put in. So new buffers and the DC3 vacuum conversion kit bought over the years, now time to start work.



Will hopefully be based on this van at the K&ESR I photographed earlier this year.



It was reduced back to a kit of parts.



Then paint stripped using my go to Tesco kitchen cleaner spray.

Tony

 

As the subject is VANs, may I comment about the fact that very few Gauge O vans have doors that open. I have some inexpensive HO North American box cars that have sliding doors. With a goods station "diorama" as part of Moor Street it would be good to have some doors open while being loaded and unloaded! Dapol have managed it with some open wagons.

Paul

 

Well, the Webster/Peco GWR V14 van has opening doors and I plan to keep them that way as it's pretty unobtrusive. All others, no chance.

I'm also intrigued by the fact that the wheelsets and roofs are all permanently fixed on O gauge kits, seems a bit odd as this is a bigger scale and this is more easily rectified at this size. Doesn't help with painting either, so I'm going to look at that.

Tony

 

Now some real old bangers, two BR standard minerals, not vans, but you have to have a couple of 'em surely!?



This is actually supposed to be two minerals, the oxide one, is outwardly in better shape. The other one was quite unbelievable, the brake gear used drop link parts from another Parkside kit and Slater's 8 shoe brakes, trying it's best to be Heath Robinson's brake gear of the year. The buffers must have been lost and were substituted with some kind of white metal round thing on a stick, see the foreground. The w-irons were put on back to front. Anyway, both were picked up for pennies.

Today four sets of solebars and w-irons were ordered from those friendly chaps in Devon, so all should be looking good eventually.

Why do people glue lovely sprung buffers solid?

Tony

 

My attempt at a PECO van:

 

That's way more than an attempt, looks just superb to me! I'll be very happy if mine turn out that good.

Have you modelled a roof repair at each end? I'd be interested to know more.

Tony

 

Very nice Tony , proper job .
Cheers Paul

 

Hi Tony,

As someone teetering on the brink of the 7mm abyss, I shall be following your adventures with interest.

Rob.

 

Hi Paul,
Sadly, it's not my wagon, Davey4270's. My mink is still very much in pieces as per the earlier shot.

 

In theory my next show with Dublingham is Luton in March, so I should be cracking on trying to complete Dublingham's buildings. Unfortunately I have fallen into the said abyss, not helped by yesterday's GOG show...
Tony

 

I thought I may as well introduce the last two old bangers. The BR ply van on the left was bought for £30 and is actually pretty well put together, but does need some remedial work. The LMS banana van on the right was £20 and does need a complete rebuild. It's a Freightman body on a Parkside 10' chassis, which makes it the BR version of the LMS banana van. As I have some 9' Parkside sprues coming from PECO, I might well turn it back into the LMS version.

The rest of my O gauge booty is unmade kits, all bought off eBay or WT at cheaper than retail prices over the last few years. Seems like I have 19 wagons in total, which with my 08 would be a nice shunting plank.

Tony