Being a student, funds are tight. Small bits can be acquired here and there but complete locomotive kits are out of the question. So when Empire Mills received a donation of a Hornby GWR 1400 I took the opportunity to do something with it. After letting it mature for about 18 months I decided the best thing to do was cut it up and make a 517 instead. This fits well with the Edwardian era china clay layout that will be Empire Mills' next incarnation.

After studying a number of pictures and drawings it appears that the cab and bunker must go for any 517 conversion. To make an earlier 517 the Belpaire firebox must go as well. The piercing was was located, blade inserted and cab and bunker separated from boiler and tanks. The firebox next met with the same fate and everything was cleaned up with a couple of files. Most of the top feed was removed with the saw with the remainder and piping falling victim of a file.

The state of things:

More parts to be removed include the two boxes on the splashers, most of the detail on the smokebox door, and the buffers which will be replaced with Alan Gibson early GWR sprung buffers.

As I mentioned in my last post I also have Duncan's 517 kit to build. This is an Alan Gibson kit in whitemetal and etchings. I will primarily use photographs as a guide but some parts, such as the cab, will be copied from the etched components. From now on I will refer to mine as 517[1] and Duncan's as 517[2]. With 517[1] in its current condition I compared what I had to the whitemetal tank castings from 517[2]. There was a quite noticable difference in height between the two tanks. Back to the drawings, it turns out that 517s have tanks which are 6" shorter than 1400 tanks. I also discovered that the boiler is mounted 6" lower as well. Now that would be a sizable amount of cutting and reattaching, something that I am invariably not going to get square. If I were just building one model I probably wouldn't bother. I certainly wouldn't have noticed. But since I have the two, and they could conceivably run together, they should both be as accurate as possible.

So that's where things stand now. Trying to find the courage to cut things up again.

For the mechanism I have decided to use Alan Gibson milled frames, a High Level gearbox, High Level CSBs, and split chassis pickups. I thought about using either the High Level or Comet chassis kits but I decided that by the time I had built it the way I wanted I would have thrown out too much of the kit to make it worthwhile.