First off I must say that GRS instructions seem a little on the thin side. Infact it recommends in the instructions for the brakevan that it would be helpful if you built one of there normal vans first.. Don't know how old these kits I picked up are so that might have changed now. The kit comes with the general van bit & whitemetal axleboxes & detail bits, although no where near the amount that it should have. I ditched the whitemetal axleboxes anyway as I wanted to use accucraft wheelsets & had some accy axleboxes already to hand. These require removel of the top "L" section so the spring hanger can be glued to the solebar which is thinner than the accy version.
I must stress that I'm not that good at kits these days, havent really made many for years.
First off I just hacked the top section off the internal divider (where the door would be to go into the van from the veranda). This was then glued to the exisiting end piece which is open on the early vans.
After that the rest was built up to a general box as per instructions/guesswork. Some extra bracing around the new end was needed to fill a gap or two.
Then with the vertical external bracing fitted in rough guesstimate from a few pics it was ready for the diagonal bracing. On the GWR vans it consited of "X" bracing rather than just one diagonal brace. So there should be 3 "X" sections plus the door "X" per side. There was not enough material in the kit to do this of course but luckily some discarded bits from an IP brakevan were the correct size. There was only just enough & that was with a little cheating. As the sliding doors are now on the endsides of the vehcile & every pic I have seen shows them open I thought I would do the same as the door now covers most of one of the "X" sections each side.
Finally an attempt at making the "W" ironwork for the bracing was attempted out of brass & cabrian boltheads. Nothing that accurate & a bit overscale but hey, i'm not good at detail's.
The next phase was to start painting everything up. As it is the CVLR's van not the W&L/GWR then I could use some artistic license. Light grey as per W&L with black ironwork & a more GWR style roof. Obviously as the real vans were converted by the GWR I would presume they never ran in W&L grey with the black ironwork.
A start was made on the interior by painting it white & then scribing the inner planks on with a knife. Some of it looks ok & should be ok for what you can actually see when the roof is fitted.
Struggling now to figure out what the interior looked like?
Still loads to do & will update as it's done.
For comparison here it is with an Accy W&L era brakevan.
By the way before anyone else notices it I have actually messed up at the non modified end. I glued the vertical middle beams on where the guide scribes are on the kit. Should of double checked that as later I noticed that the beams should be up to the edge of the windows...Too late now so nevermind.
I've also got drawings showing the interior (of the early) brakevans - I'll get 'em copied and sent via PM asap.
