Good day Adrian, nice new look web site!

I was a regular visitor to the earlier incarnation of your web pages as well as your occasional RM Web (now abandoned?) MOK Standard 4 Tank pages.

I too, have the MOK Standard 4 – not yet started, and the MOK Ivatt 4MT about 75% there. You have kindly shared some helpful tips and tricks for kitbuilding for which I and others no doubt, are grateful.

Adrian, I thought I’d put my tuppenny ‘orth in the paint piece. I went through some protracted investigations trying to establish the right shade of green used by BR for their Standard locos, in particular the Class 7 – I was building 70046 ANZAC at the time. It transpires that BR often mixed paints locally so BS381C 224 Bronze Green could be mixed with other shades – often 227 Brunswick Green. Why they did this is anyone’s guess – probably to use up already opened stock, possibly simply to make paint go further. I did find a colour image of two locos at Crewe ex works next to one another. There is a clear difference in both hue and tone. Most interesting.

For me, I discovered that the paint of choice in terms of maintaining finish consistency and handling resistance is RAL6007 classic ‘Bottle Green’ – it simply looks ‘right’ from a distance; that is what ANZAC is painted in. I guess if you want to capture your model in ex-works condition the BS381C 224 is the right shade, unless the paint department were running low that shift then it’s anyone’s guess!