Brake van done!

Job done. 

A little brake van with loads of character. The wasp stripes give it a modern look I think, and I liked them from the original model. Painting these things is easy when there aren't many and the scale is large. Somehow I managed to wipe a couple of bits of black paint off, but I like the effect so will leave well alone.  

The guard is held in place by a magnet and couple of plastic poles sticking up into his feet. He still wobbles a bit but I think will stay put. 

One fun job was attaching the Meng bolt heads on the lamp bracket and handrails. Lovely little bits of detail and so easy to use. 

The last job was to weather the model and to be honest, I couldn't be bothered to airbrush so settled for a bit of dry-brush dirt and a wash of Agrax Earth shade. I think it's enough - less is more in this case. 

I've enjoyed this project a lot. Not serious, not finecale, just a bit of fun. That's what it's supposed to be about.

Terminator tail lamp

One of the features of Mark's brake van that appealed to me was the working tail lamp. Maybe I'm just a big kid, but working lights always appeal - I used to devour the opelectric section of the Maplin catalogue...

The LED for my lamp comes from the first issue of the Hachette "Build the Terminator" partwork. I've always been a bit of a sucker for picking up the cheap issue no.1 just to find out what's inside. Attached to the front were the "eyes", a pair of ultra-bright LEDs, and the mask face. The issue was almost worth it for the lights.

One oddity, when I attached a ready-built battery box, the colours of the wires are opposite to those on the LED. Fortunately, it seems to be able to cope with a bit of reversed polarity.

The lamp housing is made from bits of plastic tube chopped up and glued together. Dimensions are loosely based on a real BR tail lamp on my shelf, but also with a bit of "it looks right"ness thrown in.

The handle is a spare bit of etch. A coat of white primer covers everything, but not enough to stop the light shining through the sides. Painting the sides of the LED black cures most of this. 

Now, what to do with the mask. Demonic Thomas maybe?

Brake body

The body for my brake van owes something to Mark's model, but also a lot to a Model Earth 7/8th scale design we featured in Garden Rail a few months ago. 

I've decided the ends will be "metal" and main body "wood". In reality, it's all various bit of plastic I've got kicking around. 

There are no drawings, I just cut stuff to fit the guard figure who has been sitting on my shelf for a couple of years. The curved top owes it's design to a tin of varnish that was handy for drawing around. 

Inside, the main beams are from some sawn strip I bought from a model boat show thinking it would come in useful. It has, but I've got loads more, well, it was cheap and I'm sure we all have materials like this...

Brake!

At the National Garden Railway show a couple of weeks ago, and item of rolling stock caught my eye. It wasn't a kit or ready to run model, but Mark Thatcher's little brake van. The model did many circuits of the track, its squeaky wheels annoying people, and by the end of the day, I wanted one of my own. 

The model is a nice mix of cartoony and "home brewed" rolling stock. It runs on a skip chassis, which I'm told would make it a nightmare for any occupant in real life. 

Skip chassis equals Binnie Engineering and 9 quid later, I had a couple. The most expensive purchase of the day...

Assembly is a few moments work. A little superglue holds the axleboxes in place and that's the job done. Cheap and easy to assemble, no wonder these things are everywhere in 16mm scale.