O Gauge GWR Toad Brake Van

Over the last few weeks I have managed to finish off the build on a GWR Toad brake van. This brake van is destined for the engineers fleet at Kimington Quay and will be finished in the drab olive green engineers livery. There has been a lot of work pressure recently that have left precious little time for modelling, so this build seems to have taken an age. The model is constructed from the Parkside kit and whilst I am a big fan of the Parkside range, this was one of the trickier wagons to get square when building.

Finished Toad brake van. Note the shortened handrails on this side.

Other side of the toad, with the standard handrails.

The kit went together reasonably well, after a bit of trial and error to get the body to sit squarely on the chassis. The handrails were a bit of a fiddle and the close up photographs show the handrails to be somewhat uneven across the body. I am not too worried about this, as this model will show the brake van at the ends of its working life, after taking a fair few knocks and scrapes, etc. One of the sides has the hand rails modified and shortened, which was inspired some photographs of toad vans found on the web in the 1970s and 1980s. There is also one join on the handrails that the close up photographs highlight as not great - so I will attempt to reset this later on this afternoon. The wagon will then get a wash and head into the boxes for painting. At this stage, the roof is not fixed, as I like to paint the body / interior and roof separately, before glazing and final assembly.

I am looking forward to getting some paint on this model in the coming weeks.

So another wagon, heading for the growing engineers fleet. This is one of several engineers wagons that I am planning for the layout. I also have a Heljan PMV van in olive green to dismantle and head into the paint boxes at the same time as the GWR toad and the Slaters BY van that is currently being constructed will also end up in olive green, although this van has a way to go on the build. Hopefully more to follow soon, as I am planning a few more weekends where I can focus on modelling and even get the layout set up!