New van time

Will the horror never end?.....

Well, maybe the end will arrive quicker if I build vans in bigger batches.
following on from the 47' van, I decided that I wanted 2 30' wooden vans, one with a trust rod underframe, and one with a steel underframe with no trusses. A 3rd 30' van with a plough was added just for something different so that I could add a ballast train to the roster at a later date.

I started with scribed plasticard sheet in 2 different spacings, as the first vans had 4" and the later vans 2" cladding. The size of the sides is 17.5mm by 70mm. I glued the door runner in place, measured straight from the plan, and also glued the guards lookouts in place as well.


I then made up some tiny triangular doorstops and glued them into position. the doors were cut to size from a pieces of grooved plasticard 16mm high with the doors cut to the closest plank width wise. The windows were likewise marked out using this method with the top and bottom lines measured off the plan. the windows were cut out using my homicidal Spanish hand drill with a 1mm blunt drill used as a cutting tool as it just melts the plastic through as it goes. The windows were then cleaned up with a knife and files. Not shown here is the slightly larger hole I cut in the side behind the doors so that I could fit the windows with the white stripes. After the doors were attached I cut out and glued on the number plates and the mail slots. The guards lookouts were tidied up by the addition of microstrip for the window edging. The final step was to cut out the dog box doors and other plating and glue them into position.

'3 for the price of 1'