Review: Ravensburger The Brighton Belle 1000 piece jigsaw

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Once again I was pleased to be offered the chance to review a Ravensburger puzzle. This time it was a 1000 piece jigsaw called The Brighton Belle. This was the perfect puzzle for a soggy few days in the summer holidays:

Here is the official blurb on the jigsaw:

This wonderfully bright and vibrant jigsaw imagines a scene from the fascinating history of this very special train. If you weren’t lucky enough to have travelled on the Brighton Belle, or you haven’t yet booked your tickets for a trip on the rebuilt train, enjoy this puzzle instead and discover days of opulence and glamour on British tracks. The Brighton Belle ran daily between London Victoria and Brighton from 1 January 1932 until 30 April 1972. The all-Pullman Belle was unique, its sumptuous Art Deco décor comprising exquisite marquetry panels and furnishings and managed by white-jacketed Pullman stewards. The entire Royal Family was carried on it to observe the Spithead Review of 1953 and the Queen used it as a Royal Train on a number of occasions. In 2009 a charity, the 5BEL Trust, was formed to return the train to the mainline, thus filling an important gap in Britain’s railway heritage. The engineering challenge to meet modern safety standards and faster mainline speeds was so daunting that many thought it was an impossible dream, But after six years of work by professional rail engineers and craftsmen - and an expenditure of some £6 million - the public can once again experience authentic 1930’s rail travel. Includes in-box A4 colour leaflet showing puzzle image for reference, information about the image and the charity responsible for the train's restoration. Sales of this puzzle support the work of the 5BEL Trust.

This is traditional jigsaw to complete so I started with the edges and the obvious lines around the inset picture:

The yellow lines and lacquer on the picture made it not too hard to do some bits of the puzzle but then I moved on to the carpet:

The repeating pattern with a slight shift in size and colour took me a while to build up:

Next set to work out was the wood work. This proved a challenge as the carriage had similar patterns in lots of places:

I was then able to spot some key features in the rest of the puzzle but there were very few colour variations across the jigsaw:

The final challenge was the material in the seats as everyone was incredibly similar:

I resorted to sorting the pieces by shape to help me:

This proved to be a really successful way to get the hardest part of the puzzle:

A very satisfying job done:

Another great challenge but not as difficult as the What If puzzle I had earlier this year.