GWR Minks in Hornby Magazine

August's Hornby Magazine features my article on building Minks (the Great Western van, not a furry animal) from Cooper Craft plastic kits. To add a bit of variety I made use of the manufacturers extra end packs to produce three identical but different items of rolling stock.

With a bit of imagination you can build the four ages of Mink: unventilated, single vent, shutter vent and finally double vent. Add to this the vans and ends being available in three different heights. That should result in a nice train of wagons that while all looking the same are in fact all slightly different. Not something the average person would notice but the cognoscenti would spot this and nod approvingly.

In the Staff Projects page I've been building, or rather painting, Corgi road vehicles. Specifically a Ford Escort from the 1970s. The idea of supplying diecast models in primer rather than fully finished seems like a really smart move to me. The biggest cost to the manufacturer is replacing the rivets that normally hold body and chassis together with a screw, although I'd be inclined to skip this and just tell the modeller to glue the bits together once he or she has finished painting. In the USA you can buy undecorated rolling stock so it's hardly a big step to do the same for road vehicles.

Elsewhere in the mag there is a free card kit for a narrowboat. I quite fancy having a crack at this although I think it's going to be one of the more challenging prototypes to build. Mind you, for various reasons I'm going to end up with three copies of this issue so maybe I can get at least one of them right !

Finally, I got a surprise when perusing the adverts at the back to find myself staring back from the page. ModelRailway.TV have stuck me at the top of the page in their advert showing off Melbridge Dock. Ironically, this film isn't actually on the site at the time of writing although the Melbridge Box Company is there for your enjoyment.