Narrow Planet/6point5 R.A.R. gunpowder van

Here's an odd but interesting little kit.
Its of a Royal Arsenal Railway gunpowder van, which were used on the 18" gauge railway at Woolwich. This kit, designed by Mark, comes from Narrow Planet, and is part of their 6point5 Minimum Gauge range. Two versions are available, one to 009 and the other closer to scale utilising 6.5mm gauge wheels. Both share the same body, but each version has a different chassis, something made easier by the use of 3D printing. Here's a poor photo of the prototype, which is sat the the Conwy Valley Railway Museum at Betwys-y-Coed;

Mine's an early version of the kit, and includes a nickel silver etch, a printed body shell, wheels, and, a printed 009 chassis. The current version has a body cast from resin.

The etched sides slot nicely into the body shell and are held in place with a spot of cyano, all clever stuff, but care is needed as the body shell is quite fragile until the sides are in place. There's a floor to be added as well, I epoxied some lead onto it before glueing it in place with the weight inside the van;

Then the chassis was cyano'd in place;

I like the way it fits together, viewed side on you can see daylight between the body and chassis as per the prototype.

I decided to finish mine in red, like the one preserved at Betwys-y-Coed. As red can be a pig to paint I first gave the body a coat of white Hycote primer;

The next step was to apply an undercoat of Tamiya X-6 orange using my airbrush, thinned with Tamiya thinners;

The top coat is Humbrol 174 Signal Red acrylic, thinned with Tesco ready mixed screenwash, and again applied with the trusty Badger 150. The result is a nice vibrant red, which is handy to know should I ever want to model a fire engine...

The instructions suggest gluing a single layer of toilet tissue to the roof, to suggest felt. I experimented using a spare bodyshell, however the tissue we use is embossed, which showed up after the glue had dried. I decided to just paint the roof as is, leaving the printed surface alone rather than trying to smooth it which left a slightly rough texture which looks a bit like felt. The kit includes thin etched lips to fit around the edges of the roof, I left them off. Sorry.

The roof and frames were painted by hand using Phoenix Precision Dirty Black acrylic;

A squirt of Dullcoat finishes it off nicely.

Curly spoked 5.5mm Dundas wheels are supplied, I've swapped these for 5.6mm Greenwich wheels. These have a finer profile which suit the tiny proportions of the van better, and being disc are closer to the prototype, also I wanted to have a closer look at these new wheelsets.

Here it is, sitting on a penny to give an idea of size;

There are slots in the frames to fit Greenwich couplings, so that's what I've used. Its quite a rare thing for a 009 kit to be designed with couplings in mind, most just leave the builder to sort out fitting which usually means cutting a slot in the buffer plank.

I've enjoyed this little kit, its quite unusual as most kits that use a mix of etched parts and prints have the etched panels fitting to the outside the print whereas this one has the panels fitted inside. The frame detail is good, but being an 18" gauge prototype running on scale 2'3" gauge track means that the wheelbase is less than the gauge, which should make running interesting!

A nice kit of a tiny and interesting little van.

Paul.