The First of the Firsts...

Although this seems rather hot on the heels of my previous blog showing receipt of the etches for the First class carriages it hasn’t taken me only two days to build this First Class carriage.

In fact it’s taken me a considerable amount of time, but a decent bit of sunshine enabled me to photograph the completed carriage built from the first set of etches which had a few issues, hence the revised set.

The model has been finished in my usual ‘old skool’ Humbrol paints and I’ve somewhat revised my opinion that one should never finish such tiny models in gloss varnish. Have applied a gloss coat to apply the transfers to the lower panels, I felt that this highly polished road carriage finish looked rather smart and in the early days of the London & Birmingham was quite likely to be the finish applied to their first class stock. A proud company setting out to impress their stakeholders might well have encouraged their staff to keep such carriages in tip-top condition.

Worth noting the size of these carriages. They were and are tiny. Now I have to find the time and the courage to tackle the rest of them…