Andel Brake Van

[philipy]

I've just spent a pleasant few days, on and off, building the Andel Standard Range brake van.
This is my first Andel kit and it went together as easily as everyone says of their products.
I made a few customisation mods along the way :
Scribed planking on to the basic body shell prior to fitting the external bracing overlays.
Infilled the centre of the big window in the non-veranda end.
Covered the roof with a piece of old shirt to represent canvas.
Fitted a working tail light.
Fitted handrails.
Applied lettering.
Added a guard.

[MDLR]

.................. and very nice it looks, too!

[Soar Valley Light]

That's a lovely job Philipy.

Nicely individualised job. That's quite an inspiration for kit bashing rather than scratch building. I may attempt a copy in due course.

Keep us posted of any more projects like this won't you?

Andrew

[bazzer42]

Thanks for posting this, the van looks lovely. I didn't realise that Andel did this range. I'm now looking forward to picking up some of the flat wagons at Exeter to have a bash at some bulkhead wagons.

[philipy]

Thanks for the nice comments, guys.

[kandnwlr]

There´s something "just right" about that brake van.

What´s the origin of the light at the back, if I may ask?

[williamfj]

I can only agree with what everyone else has said, also the lettering is superb.

[philipy]

The light is DIY - a red LED poking forward from inside a piece of 6mm square styrene tube ( part of a mixed job lot from China via fleabay). Packed with Milliput and then a piece of smaller diam tube poked in the top and rounded off with more Milliput. The handle is just a piece of brass wire epoxied on, then all painted white.
The LED leads run down to the bottom and then are bent straight back and drilled through the veranda wall, and painted to form the 'bracket'.

The lettering I can only claim credit for applying. It is 'Pressfix' type lettering acquired 20-odd years ago in my 4mm days ( I was surprised it would still stick after all this time!). It's unbranded and I can't remember where it came from for sure, although it might have been Fox Transfers.

[daveyrd11]

That's looking really nice, I like the hand rails, it's amazing how much a few changes improves these simple models.

This is mine coming together, I also fancied the idea of planking but being a cheapskate I just drew the planks on with a black pen! The color is just a thin wash of fence paint.

[philipy]

Looking good. The drawn lines do look very effective, but it's as easy to draw with a blunt compass point as a black pen and it gives a surface texture.
I like your brown colour though.

[daveyrd11]

Hi,

I never thought of using a compass point, I was going to use a knife to score the lines but thought that it might be difficult.

Here is a newer pic, of the brake getting near to finished along with an andel van I constructed.