A Two Year Brake...
There has been some, as yet unpublished, progress but whilst soldering the footboards I managed to melt my RSU. This somewhat dampened my mojo for this project so it was relegated to become a shelf queen.
A Two Decade Brake...
However, whilst trying to find space on the shelf I found another partly completed brake van. This time in plastic so no chance of damaging my newly-repaired soldering iron! This one is an LMS D1657 20t brake van based on the Parkside kit which I started a decade or so before the GER brake which forms the main subject of this thread.
A bit of recent dining-room table modelling has got us this far. It was meant to be M328337 (
LMS Wagons Vol 1 p5) but when I sent the number to
@Oz7mm for the very nicely etched plates I sent the wrong one
so the vehicle is now M295657 (same book, same page) with a few errors. The rainstrips are wrong as well because I went by the drawings in
Official Drawings of LMS Wagons rather than the photos.
Excuse the fit of the roof; the tissue-paper "canvas" is causing a little distortion which, I hope, will be resolved when the roof and body are finally united. Still needs label clips, seat backs inside the duckets, boltheads inside the ends to hold the lamp brackets in place and a few spots of filler.
So, to the real purpose of this post. A couple of questions for the WT team:
1. What colour would the interior be painted? Assuming the last visit to a paintshop was early-1950s at the latest, the grey exterior will be showing distinct signs of wear. Essery states (
Official Drawings of LMS Wagons Vol 2 p4) that the LMS 1936 paint scheme was green with a white ceiling; would this have lasted until the mid/late 1950s or was there an official BR paint scheme for brake van interiors at this time?
2. Presumably the desk was for the guard to complete his paperwork; but what did this paperwork look like? Was it a large ledger (as used in signal boxes); a pocket-sized notebook; foolscap sheets of paper; or smaller cards? How was the paper work completed (e.g. pen and ink; fountain pen; biro (too early?); stub of a pencil)?