With the new offerings currently on the market it is easy to forget that with a little work some of that old stock you have in the cupboard can be brought up to scratch.

Paul had two old LIMA GUVs one in a fictitious hideous yellow Theakstons livery sand the other in a BR maroon, looking for a new home. Devonport Road was looking for more parcels stock and so it was decided to upgrade these two.

Looking on the web and in the old ABC books it was decided that an NKX and an NOX would be built. The former a dual braked standard GUV and the latter the standard van fitted in 1990 with commonwealth bogies to allow 100mph running.

So to work……the main areas that needed attention, as well as a repaint into BR blue were new bogies, from Bachmnann to replace the old LIMA ones, and a replacement of the windows. These will either be from South Eastern Finecast flushglaze or I fancy having a go with Shawplan’s laser glaze to see what this is like. A look on Jim Smith-Wright’s P4 New Street site revealed a good “how to” for fitting dual brake gear so this will also be added.

The attached pictures show work to date:

NOX given a coat of grey to prime over the yellow livery and test fitted with commonwealth bogies

NKX underside showing new MKI bogies in place, also given a coat of grey over maroon livery

Devonport Road needs a number of parcels vans but it is all too easy to just have lots of standard GUVs and BGs…..so a trawl of the books, notes, internet etc. revealed 4 very different BGs.

These were TOPS code NBV and were for high security mail. Essentially you need to plate a few windows and put grilling behind the ones that remain……BUT they started life with gangways and  in blue and grey livery (a great model of which is to be seen on Mostyn hidden amongst one of their parcels rakes). Very quickly the gangways came off…they are supposed to be high security!!, then they went all blue; and finally were dual braked and lost their B1 bogies for B4s…..but when???

So for a layout in 1990 what is the correct version? After much further searching and various e-mail communications, it was found that an all blue, non-gangwayed, door window plated, vacuum braked version would fit the bill.

So to work….thanks to Richard of the Mostyn crew for the picture

Job 1 window blanking and gangway removal

Etched window blanks courtesy of Mike Bryant  were added over the plasticard and now it’s off to the paint shop for a coat of blue……

AT LAST......the various parcels coaches that were mentioned in one of our first blog posts are ready to run and will be used in anger on Devonport Road at the forthcoming Wimborne Exhibition.
The coaches are various GUV variants an NJV/NKV, an NJX/NKX and an NOX and the high security version of the BG, the NBV. All the dual braked X coded vehicles have both air and vacuum brake systems. All coaches are weathered in varying degrees of the blue parcels dirty livery!!!!

And the final versions at play:

Customization recently completed the rebuild of an O Gauge Pullman 3rd coach. This included rebuilding the interior and adding passengers, as well as fitting working on boards lights. The following photos show the work.