Rolling Stock
SPV Parcel van (ex BR Standard Insul-fish)
Prompted by the recent purchase of a new airbrushing spray booth, in the past couple of weeks I have been rummaging through my ‘kits to build’ drawer. Fitting in with the parcels theme of South Oak Road and ideally suited to a micro shunting layout, the first kit out of the drawer are a couple of Parkside (PC53) LNER/BR Insulated Fish Vans. During the 1970’s, as the fish traffic declined a large number of these wagons were converted to ‘Special Parcel Vans’. For more information on parcel traffic I’d recommend David Larkin’s book ‘BR General Parcels Rolling Stock’ (well out of print now) or Paul Bartlett’s great website British Rail Wagons website.
Like most Parkside kits, the detail on these vans is superb but there are a couple of simple additions that I wanted to add to correctly represent the BR standard design that generally ran in rail blue livery. Firstly the BR versions have additional vertical bracing on the sides and diagonal bracing on the ends.
This new bracing was created with flat styrene strip, the tricky part being where the new vertical bracing on the side intersects with the existing diagonal bracing, filling the resulting small gap falls into the ‘too hard basket’.
I also scratch-built the small load or destination card holders…
and added ribbing to the roof (at 10.6mm intervals).
A quick coat of grey primer and a bit of surface touch up here and there and they are ready for painting.