DERBY TAIL-ENDER

In the latest issue of Model Rail I recount how I recreated a very short 'Jinty'-hauled freight working,  as captured in a photograph taken at Derby in the 1960s. A number of readers have been in touch asking about the modifications to the Bachmann brake van. They are as follows:

• The running boards were trimmed back to stop at the upright just outboard of the axleboxes and the remaining holes in the solebars filled.
• Extra lamp brackets were fabricated from etched brass strip, as sold by Shawplan for creating locomotive lamp irons. Three are fixed in a triangular formation on the ends of each veranda. 
• The inner veranda partitions had the half-glazed entrance door removed and replaced with a piece of plastic card, scribed with vertical planking and fitted with strap hinges from 10x10thou Evergreen plastic strip.
• The factory fitted handrails were removed and replaced with finer wire (0.3mm brass wire from Alan Gibson), with the main access handrails modified to be split into two sections (see image).
• The roof ventilators were cut away and replaced with castings from Comet Models.
• The existing brake gear was enhanced with cross shafts and safety loops (0.7 and 0.3mm wire respectively).
• The body was repainted with Railmatch freight bauxite and re-numbered as E246700, part of a batch of LNER vans built in 1940/1 (or thereabouts).

The van was based on the preserved E246710, owned by the NRM but on long term loan to the North York Moors Railway. In the early 2000s, I was a volunteer with the p'way gang on the NYMR and travelled on the van a few times and took many photos of it. Therefore, the model was based primarily on these images, plus extra info from the excellent book A Pictorial Review of LNER wagons, Volume 2 by Peter Tatlow - now sadly out of print but probably available via your local library. 

A similar conversion was covered briefly way back in December 2005's Model Rail (issue MR86), although the text includes a few errors due to a draft being published rather than the final text - I was ill at the time, as I recall, and there was a mix up in my absence.