Despite building it at the same time I completely forgot to post this, following on from the Road van my second victim is a conversion of a Connoisseur LNER Perishables van from one of these – photo courtesy of Jim McGeown’s website

http://www.jimmcgeown.com/Wagon%20Kit%20Pages/Wagon%20images/LNER%20Perishable%20Van%20Photo.jpg

To a North Eastern Railway version with cupboard type doors instead of the sliding door on the LNER version.  The cupboard doors and their locking mechanism will need to be scratch built. LNER Wagons Volume Two by Peter Tatlow has photos and a drawing which will prove very helpful during this conversion.

We start off by cutting out the parts etched in the door openings

Once they are removed and put to one side for later in the build, the openings need to be trimmed back to the door pillars. I did this with the trusty piercing saw with a no 6 blade.

Once I had my door opening dimensions, I cut a couple of replacement doors and scored the planking on them using an Olfa Cutter (skrawker).

These were soldered in with some strips of scrap etch soldered all the way around to prevent them being dislodged through handling of the finished van.

Once this was done, I started on the hinges. This job was made some much easier by riveting the edge of a piece of 10 thou brass sheet at the appropriate spacing (taken from the drawing) using my GP models rivet press and then cutting the strip from the sheet using my guillotine. I ended up filing a few down to width before I got my eye in despite scribing a cut line…