I bought a rather dilapidated castle arts/ Gaiety GWR 57xx pannier tank model for about £4. It was in quite a sad state, the drive gear on the axle had come loose so although I got the motor to turn it couldn't transmit any power to the wheels.

The body for this model was sold at one time on its own so that it could be matched up with a RTR [Triang/Hornby chassis. After a lot of faffing around I eventually acquired a suitable chassis for it and I modified it to accept the same method for fixing the body to it. The existing paintwork was then stripped, all molded detailing removed, the unrealistic safety valve removed, handrail holes drilled and the re-sprayed in Railmatch GWR green.

So here's what I started with:-

And after the paint was removed the areas where a Patina had formed due to to chips out of the paintwork were clearly visible these were removed after rubbing down the body with 400 grade wet and dry paper:-

The original motor assembly shown below had some remarkably fine wheels fitted in contrast to the crude connecting rods which were just brass strips held in place by small sections of wire insulation pushed over the crank pins:-

I filed out the cast-in detailing and marked out and drilled the 20 odd holes for the handrail knobs etc which was a pain in the backside with a pin vice drill in the Zamac metal body :-

I removed the ugly cast safety valve and gave it a preliminary coat of Humbrol No1 matt primer to see where the bad bits were. I then filled the stamped in GWR seen here :-

I decided for some reason to fix the handrails prior to painting, largely due to avoiding getting superglue all over the new paint I think. I cut slots from the footplate to accept the machined brass steps and these were fixed in place with 2 part epoxy :-

After filling and sanding the final coat of primer went on :-

I then turned my attention to modifying the standard Triang 0-6-0 chassis, using parts cut from a picture hanger,bent to shape and fixed to the chassis with 2 part epoxy again, seen here :-

The whole chassis was cleaned with acetone and painted with Humbrol 27003 bare metal I think it's called, the motor had new brushes and new feed wiring connected, the original buffers were retained, they were cleaned and repainted seen here :-

After re-spraying the body with several coats of Railmatch GWR Green with the handrails picked out in a brass colour, I made up the colour for the buffer beams with a mix of Humbrol rust, red/brown, yellow and crimson, fixed a plastic brass coated safety valve, Jackson Evans etched number plates, Pressfix transfers and this is the end result.

Good for a few more years.