GRS Wisbech and Upwell coach

[MuzTrem]

I've just completed the overhaul of the MVR's flagship coach, our GRS W&U vehicle (No. B1 in the MVR sequence). I didn't do a very good job of painting her first time around, and I never managed to assemble the whitemetal balcony railings successfully - I eventually melted them when I attempted to solder them!

Here's her original "works portrait", from 2005:


Over the winter I painstakingly stripped her back to bare resin, and have now resprayed her in cherry red livery, which will now become the MVR's standard scheme. Having had much more practice at spray-painting in the last six years, I got a much better finish this time.

Having seen the beautiful the balcony railings Mr. Bond had laser-cut for his own coaches, I asked him if he might possibly be prepared to make a new set for B1? Fortunately he was! Here they are, being given the once-over by MVR staff on delivery. Unlike the whitemetal GRS railings, these wooden-railings are one-piece, and therefore much easier to assemble.



Thus, yesterday I was finally able to roll-out our new-look coach. A great improvement, I'm sure you'll agree!


Thanks once again to Mr. Bond for helping me to recreate a little bit of Great Eastern heritage!

[Narrow Minded]

Very nice, a marked improvement!

Did you build it from the kit? Any probs? - I keep looking at the GRS W&L coach kits but have always been a bit put off by the "modular side panels".

[MuzTrem]

Yes, I built her myself - and yes, I had problems!

The biggest problem, as with all GRS kits I've ever purchased, is the instructions, which are not very clear at all. They included only two poorly-photocopied photos of the completed vehicle and one not-very-clear handrawn diagram. The text assumed a lot of prior knowledge - for example, we had never assembled bogies before and were left to work out for ourselves how they were supposed to fit together.

The bodysides are, in fact, one piece, but gluing them to the ends is tricky. That was my first experience of using Araldite, and I made a bit of a mess of it!

The balconies are definately the worst bit though. I've seen three other examples of this kit and none of them had perfectly-assembled balconies.

I think the best conclusion is: not a kit for the beginner! But, if you're experienced and patient, you can get a pleasing result from it.