Rough diamonds…

Railway modelling seems to be more railway collecting these days. Why build a wagon or coach when you can just wait for one of the RTR manufacturers to make it for you? 

I accept that a lot of these new, super detailed models are fantastic, and light years ahead of the Lima and Hornby models of old, but they're also very expensive. As I've touched on before, most of my modelling revolves around scratchbuilding, kitbuilding and modifying.

There's nothing I like more than taking an old model, and giving it a new lease of life - a bit like the Queen Mary brakevan.

I've always had an interest in parcel vans and, luckily for me, my future layout will allow me to run some parcels stock - both the BR Mk1 and plywood sided varieties.

Now, Bachmann produce the Mk1 version, and I'm sure it's very nice [although the handrails are rather overscale] but there's actually nothing wrong with the far older Lima version - especially if you're prepared to do some work to it.

The underframe is very much of its time [Google tells me it was released in 1979] and pretty coarse by today's standards. I initially tried to improve on this by removing the very poor w-irons and various lumps between the wheels. Needless to say, this is difficult and, as expected, I ended up with solebars that were far too thin to be of any use.

So I did what any self-respecting modeller would do and scratchbuilt my own chassis using plastic sheet. I did recycle the battery boxes and components box so the original chassis lives on in spirit. Everything else came from the spares box, or was fabricated from yet more plastic - including more tiny triangles than I care to remember!

The original has very poor glazing - obviously not flush and moulded as part of the roof - which explains why it's transparent. The windows were discarded and then the prominent roof ribs sanded off.

I started version 1 of this project almost 9 years ago, and that only involved some basic cosmetic changes. I then came back to it some 8 years later and this is the version you see here. Still not finished, and another project that required a lot of work to bring it up to scratch, but totally worthwhile and it's still a lot cheaper than a "new" model!