Progress on my 40cm long, N gauge Victoria Bridge is going well. I hope to finish off tracing the basic shapes in Corel Draw tomorrow, and then to have a cardboard prototype (maybe cardboard will do for the final finished item?)taking shape before the week is out.

In the meantime, I have been looking at populating this single line layout with suitable N gauge stock to represent the SVR in recent years.

I bought a Dapol Ivatt tank engine to provide the chassis, pony trucks removed, for a 15XX class outside cylindered pannier tank. This has left me with the Dapol body to use, and I don't intend to waste any of it!!

Sitting in my parts tray was an old Minitrix Ivatt 2-6-0, which would of course be a useful addition to the operating fleet, as these pictures taken near Bewdley last year show:

One achillies heel of this old model (apart from its catastrophically bad adhesion and lack of pulling power) is its smokebox, which is dramatically oversized, maybe in order to squeeze in a larger weight to try to get the wheels to grip. The smokebox carefully liberated from the Dapol tank engine version, which had the same boiler, is much better:

Adding the narrower smokebox to the Minitrix body will leave a bit of a step as the over thick boiler barrel joins the distinctively dainty smokebox. I reckon this is made up for in the model having a properly proportioned 'face' which gives it its character.

Parts converging on the workshop cheeseboard:

And the results... the glossy glue will be sanded down and carefully painted over. The original version seems to look a little bit too powerful for its modest performance!

..does anybody remember in the mists of time before Harry Hill became the face of ITV, his puppet Stouffer (for the uninitiated, a manic looking blue plastic cat) would exclaim at various celebrities ".....heeeee gottta big face", he could almost have been describing my model before its facelift!!!

Looking the part....!!