I'm about half-way through painting the loco so before I go any further I think a bit of an update is in order.

I began by giving the model a coat of humbrol dark grey as a base and then lightly sanding down and filling in any gaps or marks.

The first part of the model to see any colour were the frames, and following the colour plates in John Quick's excellent book on Robinson loco liveries I started with a coat of humbrol #73, matt wine. This however looked too bright so the following evening I washed over it with revell #85 matt chocolate brown. Of course this then made it too flat and dark again, so I today gave it a final coat of humbrol #73. This time I think I achieved a shade pretty close to what I'm aiming for.

I gave the boiler, cab sheets and tender a coat of humbrol #105, olive green, to start. Then I worked over this with a coat of humbrol's 'Railway Range' brunswick green (#35, I think?). It needs a second coat yet.

The black is simply humbrol #33 matt.

There's still a mass of work to do on the finish of course but I think it looks encouraging at the moment.