I bought 3 damaged body shells on Ebay one was a dock authority shunter, one a Hornby detailed Castle [Neath Abbey] which I repaired and fitted with minimal alteration on to a 4-6-0 Hornby chassis. The third one was a cheapo Lima 0-4-0 'international' loco, they come in a train set. So this is how it started out :-

This is what I was aiming to represent :-

These USA class engines were ordered through the US Army Transport Corps during the 2nd World War from the Vulcan Ironworks in the USA . Amazingly over a hundred made it across the Atlantic despite the best efforts of the German U-boats. After the war most were shipped to the continent to replace loco's destroyed by allied bombing.

The stock of aging steam locos in Southampton Docks was in need of replacing and the USA class was found to be ideal to cope with the very tight radii of the lines within the dock area, so 14 were obtained by the Dock Authorities and saw several years of service there. When they were eventually replaced by diesels they were transferred to departmental duties on the SR,none of them did much mileage due to a tendency for the axle boxes to overheat after a short distance, some have been preserved.

I needed to fit this to an 0-6-0 chassis rather than the incorrect 0-4-0 used by Lima. The short 4-6-0 chassis stripped of it's front bogie bracket proved ideal as the wheel spacing is somewhat closer than the 0-6-0, of course the driving wheels were much too large and were substituted by those from a triang 0-6-0, the 4-6-0 coupling rods were re-utilized.

I made up a bracket from plasticard and attached inside the rear of the body, the front fixing was made into the plastic post coming from under the boiler. I set about cutting the steps and skirt from the rear of the cab, the bell, head light and the overhang of the roof was removed too. I then blanked out the forward windows, raised the height of the tanks, and fabricated two cylinders from plasticard. I attached the latter to the underside of the boiler along with a buffer beam. I made up the rear dome from plastic and attached it where the bell once was.

I then did a base coat of primer to see where the bad spots were, these were corrected and another coat of Railmatch acrylic primer applied, it all started to come together at this stage, seen here.

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I followed this with two coats of Humbrol coal black No 85 acrylic satin finish and then started the detailing work, handrails, buffers, etc. The prototype has a steam pipe that runs back from the boiler to ?, at that time I knew not where, so I made it simply disappear back into the body, I now know it goes into the cab.

Finally I applied the HMRS pressfix transfers which, weren't entirely successful due to me following their instructions for the height above the running plate and failing to spot it was too high thereby clashing with the bottom of the cab windows, hence the difference in height between the 'southern' and 65

And there you have it, my first project, when I have time I'll post some more.

see ya later.