Available from: PH Designs www.phd-design-etchings.co.uk

Purchased, built and reviewed by Peter Warren

Is this the ultimate wagon kit? Readers may remember I enjoyed building the previous model from PH Designs (Gazette Vol19 No12 August 2016, page 40), and when Peter Harvey casually mentioned that a Ferry Van was about to be produced it was not long before a parcel arrived. He sent it with a warning – ‘the kit is a very complex and time consuming model and with nearly 700 parts, you will need to take your time’. This turned out to be very true!

The 700 or so parts come with a warning

What arrived was a number of sealed polybags containing no less than 12 sheets of superbly etched brass, some resin castings and several sprues of lostwax brass castings. The quality of all this is excellent but you need to be careful in removing parts – some of the castings are very delicate and some of the etched parts were not tagged properly (such as the 22 door support brackets), requiring some time-consuming filing. Very few of the tiny parts have any spares included so I had to spend a lot of time looking for them when they inevitably pinged off into hyperspace. Wheels, some lengths of wire and some small springs for the buffers need to be purchased separately to complete the kit.

No information is supplied about the prototype. I discovered that it is a 20T ferry van, of which 400 were built by British Railways primarily for the Harwich- Zeebrugge train ferry services. One van, built at Ashford works in 1963, is preserved at the Buckinghamshire Railway Centre at Quainton and the kit includes neat etched plates for this vehicle. These vans looked like continental stock, with side ventilators, air and vacuum brake gear as well as separate brackets for British and European lamps. Also they were very large, with a 26ft 3in wheelbase – is this the longest in the UK?

The kit comes with 13 A3 sheets of assembly drawings, including useful plans and elevations and a sheet illustrating the etches. The latter was less useful; there is no numbering or identification of the parts in this kit. This means you need to be prepared to spend some time searching for the correct part shown in the assembly drawings and checking if it is handed the right way. The drawings include dimensions for cutting and bending various parts from brass wire (to 0.01mm!). Peter says he tried to keep the instructions as simple as possible and the exploded drawings are very professional, produced from a 3D CAD model; I found that in several instances I needed to check with prototype photos to work out exactly how the parts fitted together. Fortunately, Brian Daniels has recorded the Quainton van in great detail in a photo album on his Flickr site, including views from underneath. The photos show only one significant omission in the kit – there is no representation of the prominent nuts and bolts used to hold the plywood sides to the steel angle framing.

Ventilator detail

There is no guidance on tools or assembly techniques. I used a resistance soldering unit and small amounts of Carrs 179 solder cream for almost everything. An 18W Antex iron fitted with a very fine bit was useful for getting into tight corners with small components. I found a hold and fold tool was essential for bending long, narrow components. Tiny parallel folds required the use of a ruler as packing. Curving the long brass roof to shape required much annealing and rolling.

The instructions follow the principle of building up a series of detailed subassemblies which are then fitted together. This generally worked well although fitting the thin brass tracks for the sliding ventilator covers proved difficult to achieve neatly. All the components are provided with tiny tabs and slots and the kit has obviously been engineered to tight tolerances. The way the sides and ends slot together with the floor is masterly and shows how much design effort has been put into this kit. Of course the sliding doors actually work, although they are quite delicate.

The underfame

The underframe is exceptionally fully detailed and the complex angled channel sections slot together with satisfying precision. It is essential to assemble and fit the sprung buffers to the buffer beams before adding them to the underframe, you will not be able to add them after painting. I assembled the brake gear around each axle so that it was fully operational; once the wheels were fitted I used superglue to lock it into the correct position.

Assembling the body

Underframe detail

With such a long wheelbase some form of suspension is required and the kit provides for a neat piano wire spring behind each axleguard; this was easy to fit and works very well. I used the excellent recommended wheels and bearings from www.modelrailwayparts.com and these match perfectly to the chassis. The various brake cylinders, levers and rods are tricky to assemble but all fitted accurately. Brian Daniels’ photos were very useful here. I was slightly disappointed when the instructions suggested that, in order to obtain the correct length, it might be necessary to cut the cast brake rods (it was); I added short lengths of fine brass tube as brake adjusters. Having spent so much time on all this detail, which cannot of course be seen from normal viewing angles, I went further and added in some pipework from brass rod to connect up the air and vacuum brake hoses with the various cylinders.

The completed kit awaiting paint.

The climax of the whole assembly is to unite the body and underframe, fully illustrated in the instructions, when 24 tabs and slots need to come precisely together and 20 side supports folded in without knocking off any of the previously added detail. This is where you find out if your assembly work was accurate enough to match the tight tolerances in the kit; needless to say I had to spend some time filing and fiddling but it all worked out in the end. Since taking the photos I have added those missing nuts and bolts using the plastic moulded details obtainable from EDM Models. Painting in the attractive Railfreight grey and scarlet livery had been postponed awaiting suitable transfers but these have just been released by Railtec; no excuse now!

Sliding door Door detail

So is this the ultimate wagon kit? As model makers we all make judgements on how much detail is appropriate – should you include every detail on the underframe or interior if it is never seen, should the brakes actually work? This kit tends towards the fully detailed approach. It is an accurate representation of the real thing; it may only be a 4-wheel ventilated van but it is certainly the largest and most complex I have tackled. With hundreds of high-quality components, it has been very well engineered to tight tolerances and will test your modelmaking skills. Assembling it provided many hours of enjoyment over several months and as such I regard it as good value for money. I should add that I have no relationship to any of the traders mentioned in this review. A copy of this review was sent to PH Designs who thanked Peter for his positive review.