One project which has sat in the to do pile for a long time has been my castle

The intention is to take what was Tintagnal Castle and renumber to 4085 Berkeley Castle which will be partnered with the Hawksworth tender from this yeas GW castle release. The tender from Tintagnal will then be used with the later loco from Wellington to produce Nunny Castle.

Both locos have been picked for the names rather than the use (so I hope they will fit prototypically with a future layout with red coded track.)

Berkeley Castle given that the real castle is in the next village over (complete with 4085's name plates on the wall), while Nunny Castle is where I proposed.

Renaming was a fairly straight forward process, cutting the green splasher off the plate and only fitting the name part (wish they would do just the name!) the buffer beam numbers came off easily and will be replaced with HMRS transfers (although I need to get a new pack after failing to find any at Scaleforum.) Still need to strip the Great Western logo off the tender and re brand with the post war G crest W

Will still be a while until I get it converted, need to get a couple of the current in progress locos finished first (which means cracking the outside cylinder problem...)

I also picked up the crankpin washers for 3863, although after fitting and assembling the wheels I have found more material needs to be removed from the crank pins to clear the slide bars (I wish someone would make a lower profile crankpin nut) I was having bit of a clumsy evening so decided to stop at that point! I will have another go soon.

Scaleforum also resulted in a bunch of other useful bits

Including another coopercraft GW Van, Ian Kirk GW 4 plank and ballast open, Parkside GW van and Gunpowder Van, Ultrascales for a tender and a 14xx, along with some books (the Ian Rice book on chassis should prove useful with the current problems!)