I have a liking for Ratio's pre-printed vans, especially those in fictional liveries. These are at least 20 years old, but unbuilt examples can sometimes be found on Ebay. They did a range based on their 12T vans, three of which I've built and are shown below.
The first is a Harvey's Bristol Cream van, based on Ratio's LMS ventilated van;
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| Harvey's Bristol Cream van |
The next two are based on a GWR van, the first being in Huntsman's Ales livery;
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| Huntsman's Ales van |
And the one that started me collecting these, a Badger Beer van;
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| Badger Beer van |
Badger make some fine beers, Fursty Ferret being a favourite of mine, which is the reason that I wanted to build the Badger van. After building it I thought that it would be nice to track down the Huntsman's Ales van, and when I found one of those the Harvey's van came along. All were bought unbuilt. There is one more pre-decorated Ratio 12T van to be built, which again is in a fictional livery, this time BOCM. Ratio also did a range of printed iron minks, this time in prototypical (I think) liveries, GN, Ferrocrete and GWR improvised gunpowder van. There may be others as well.
I like building these, they really are a joy to put together and its nice to build something without worrying about prototypical accuracy. They are built purely for my diplay cabinet, however I have fitted Gibson EM wheelsets, Smiths couplings and MJT buffers so they could see layout use if I really wanted to irk the purists.
Paul.
