A merry xmas to everyone and best wishes for the new year! Following on from my post several months ago about painting a series of vans for parcels traffic on Pottington Quay, I have finally managed to finish the first one. It is a 12t fish van that has been converted to an SPV van for parcels traffic. This wagon was built about a year ago, so it is brilliant to finally see it finished.
Overall I am reasonably happy with this one, but again the transfer application was not perfect - despite being applied to a super gloss surface, however, at normal viewing distance I don't think it will be noticeable. I made a real effort with the livery application on this wagon, with something in the region of 20 different coats applied via air brush and also using paintbrush washes.
On top of a black pre-shading a faded livery was applied before weathering. It is difficult to now see the tonal variation in the original livery application, although the light where this was photographed was not brilliant. After this various coats of (all railmatch paints) sleeper grime, frame dirt and weathered black were applied, before a final satin varnish finish.
As well as this wagon I have been working on two CCTs, both in BR blue. The first of these is is already finished with the final varnish currently drying. The second CCT has had the decals applied and is waiting for the roof and windows to be added before further weathering.
I have got another 2 of these 12t parcels wagons already built waiting for the paintshop in 00 gauge, as well as 1 in 0 gauge. Using the lessons learnt from this wagon, I intend to upscale and finish the 0 gauge wagon using pretty much the same techniques, and when I have finished the current batch of wagons this will be the next project.
Another project which has been going on for way too long is the sturgeon wagon in 00 gauge. This is now 95% finished, except I cannot find any 10.5mm disc wheels anywhere, and I only had two spare buffer heads to hand, so I need to order some more. Both of these items (the buffers and the wheels) are made by Romford and both seem difficult to come by at the moment. Anyhow, as soon as I track some down, I can get some primer on this one too. Although it took ages to finish this wagon, it is a pretty simple construction and builds into a really good wagon.
The christmas break has afford some modelling time and there are also two 0 gauge wagons and an 00 gauge starfish wagon in the paintshop, as well as 00 gauge and 0 gauge brake vans under construction. All in all it has been a productive few weeks and I hope to finish off at least two more wagons (and perhaps the Western) before returning to work.
