It’s always good to see new, independent manufacturers of model railway kits. One new supplier is 422 Model Making who supply a range of 7mm (1:43) kits, including buildings and rolling stock in standard and narrow gauge.
I like their parts for a covered goods van in 0-16.5 and I wondered if it was possible to convert this kit into an O9 (On18) van.
The van is 42mm (1.7 inch) wide and my O9 loading gauge is 28mm (1.1 inch), meaning around 14mm (0.55 inch) would have to be removed from the ends. By a happy coincidence this is the width of one of the end panels plus one stanchion. I carefully cut the ends with a razor saw. In the photo below the left hand one has been cut, the right hand one is the original.
After this it was quite simple to glue the ends together and assemble the kit. Instead of cutting the roof they provided, I made a new one from 0.5mm (20 thou) plasticard. Everything was stuck together with my new found friend, high viscocity superglue.
The result is the rather nice box van body you see at the top of the blog.
Steve's Narrow Gauge Adventure 
Dear Steve
Please can you help, I had in mind to message you earlier but with the pressure of clearing up B4 christmas interrogated by my wife, I noticed you chose a loading gauge of 28mm this is the same as some of the Shapeways wagons, just wondered where you got the dimension from, is there some set of dimensions for O9 I am missing or is it scaling down from rolling stock drawings in the miniature railway books. Some of the locomotives work out wider than this.
Roger
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Hi Roger
Christmas starts early in your house 🙂 My loading gauge is a bit of a compromise based on the other commercially available stock I have. Avalon lines coaches are (roughly) 27mm wide, wagons from the old Black Dog range are around 29mm and the Unit Models van I have is approx 29mm wide. So my loading gauge is based on those, rounded to be an easy number to measure (!) I totally agree that some stock and locos could be wider. The great thing about minimum gauge stock is there’s quite a bit of variation, some of the Duffield bank wagons were 27 to 33 inches wide – which is really narrow.
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