Train spotting at Finsbury Square

[Chas Levin]

Ahhh... the rooftops of Paris! 😍

[31A]

As a change from the excitement of international travel, back to the mundane and on a recent visit to Monk Bar Models I picked up one of the EFE GW Bloater Fish Vans.  A lovely model and good value, but with scope for some improvement.

 

 

Following the information in the relevant thread on here and also in A Nod to Brent, and in "Historic Carriage Drawings Vol 3", I added ventilators and gas lamp top to the roof.

 

 

Ventilators were found after a rummage in the stores, I think they're probably Comet ones, and the lamp tops are from MJT.  The gas pipe runs are made from 0.33mm brass wire, held down with twists of 5 amp fuse wire representing the clamps.  They ended up straighter than the picture shows!  Adding the connections to the middle lamp was incredibly fiddly; short bits of wire glued flat onto the roof.  Breaking the gas pipes at the point where they go over the end of the roof meant the roof could remain separate, which made painting it easier.

 

On the van itself, I added a gas cylinder underneath, made from a piece of round sprue, and upright vacuum pipes on the van ends.  These were the type from the 51L range which incorporate a 'peg' which was inserted into holes drilled in the ends.  This picture also shows the continuation of the gas pipes down the ends.

 

As an aside, it's interesting that these models appear 'different' from Bachmann in various ways; the wheels have plastic spoked centres whereas Bachmann wheels usually have metal centres with insulating hub bushes, and the couplings are also different.  I shortened the couplings by a few mms.

 

 

 

I thought about changing the lettering to make it a Parcels Van as per the picture in Historic Carriage Drawings, but couldn't find any 'PARCELS' lettering transfers small enough to fit the space so I've left it as a Fish Van.

 

 

After some weathering, and added chalk marks on the sides, it seems to have found another Fish Van to buddy up with.

 

 

 

[gingerangles]

Nice work!  

[mullie]

How do you write your chalk marks?

[31A]

3 hours ago, mullie said:

How do you write your chalk marks?

 

Hi, thank you for asking.

 

I've had these two Karismacolor pencils for ages, bought from an Art Shop in York that isn't there any longer.

 

 

Actually I only use the 'Cool Grey" one, not the white as you can see as the grey one has been sharpened many more times!  They're quite soft and it's difficult to make a fine enough line (despite starting out with the sharpest possible point on the pencil) so the chalk marks on wagons usually end up as illegible squiggles, but hopefully don't look too bad.  If trying to actually write something, short place names such as ELY, YORK and HULL are quite popular!  The pencil marks don't seem to need fixing with varnish or anything, but can be smudged (deliberately or inadvertently) with a wet finger, which doesn't always look too bad either.