VEA Vans: The expected one

When most people think of the VEA Van conversions they remember the Railfreight flame red and grey livery that the vast majority of the fleet carried from conversion.

Even now the vans look very smart in the livery and hide their more traditional history.

To complete the story there's a screenshot doing the rounds internally of the other livery the vans carried. When complete it's sure to feature in another blog post very soon ...

Bullion Carriers: Also in white

With the light application of  grime complete the opportunity has been taken to create alternative versions of the bullion flat with white containers.

The few photographs of the bullion flats in traffic shows them with either blue or white containers in a number of different positions. It's hard to say if this is chance or an era defined choice as there are so few pictures of the flats in service.

Bullion Carriers: Bullion Flat in Need of Grime

The bullion flat is now in the condition where it's really looking the part. The texturing is now complete and all of the lettering has been added.

All that's now left is to add a little bit of grime here and then and get the testers to give the bullion flat and bullion van a once over before the LODs are created.

Once these master shapes are finished there's a little bit of minor tweaking needed to add a little more variation to the pack.

VEA Vans: Sparkling Maroon

So we might have been hanging on to this for a while, but here's the first official works photo of a VEA coded air braked conversion of a 12T Vanwide.

Converted for use in locations where long wheelbase, modern air braked wagons couldn't be used the VEAs became closely linked with MoD traffic between various depots and bases around the country.

Although usually associated with the Railfreight flame red and grey livery the first fifty conversions were turned out in maroon livery.

Bullion Carriers: Old school or TOPS

As the mammoth unwrapping and baking cycle comes to the end for the bullion carriers it's nice to be able to show some progress.

The bullion van is now lettered and numbered complete with the option to take control of the coding.

The picture is still very much work in progress with lots of material and texture tweaks still needed. Looks like the tweaks will include investigating why the end lettering appears to be glowing in the picture!