LNER 'TOAD B'

Parkside kit under construction.

With the nights beginning to draw in, I've been working on a few plastic rolling stock kits in the evenings, trying to clear some of the mountain of un-built wagons that are clogging up the attic. This particular OO gauge Parkside kit is an interesting one, offering plenty of potential for super-detailing and installing some important missing features. The kit (PC14) dates back a fair few years and portrays an LNER 'Toad B' goods brake van. Indeed, I must have had it in stock for at least a decade and I believe that it was discontinued a few years back, probably due to the age of the tooling. 

Anyway, I built one of these in my early twenties and wasn't totally satisfied with the outcome, so resolved to do a better job this time around. Therefore, the sand hoppers on the verandah bulkheads have been detailed and lots of the vague or missing moulded surface relief replaced with brass strip and wire. I've also crafted some tiny, hinged safety bars for the verandah sides, plus a stout set of whitemetal heavy duty buffers, to match a prototype image I found online. 

Next jobs include adding a set of roof vents, building the chassis frames, wheeling-up and adding extra brake gear.