Yes - I'm afraid so - but hopefully this one will be different to most - not necessarily better ...just different, so I thought I might as well describe it's progress from time to time here.

Orford (my imaginary extension of the Aldeburgh Branch in Suffolk), NEEDS a B12. After all, they ran on the branch and were one of the few locos which were able to do so, as the branch was rated at just Route Availability 4.

Given that no-one is currently showing even the slightest interest in releasing one ready-to-run and to modern-day standards (despite my constant cajoling of Hornby), I thought that I might as well try.....

Conversions & enhancements of the old Triang-Hornby (and later Horny China B12) are nothing new of course Several have been described on RM Web over the years. But most have been largely 'rebuilds' of what you get from Hornby - which let's face it, in the case of the old B12 is 'not a lot'.

This one is using a lot of non-Hornby B12 parts too, not least in the running department.....Essentially, I decided to build it as much as possible using bits I already had to hand. Of course, as soon as it is finished, Hornby will no doubt re-release the old B12 model to modern standards - but if so, then so be it. This will keep me going in the meantime and I reckon it should not take me more than a few weeks.

First of all, the tender is being completely replaced with a spare tender from a recent-release Hornby B17 'Sandringham' .... The short one paired with 'Sandringham' itself and also 'Thorpe Hall'. This is almost correct for the B12 anyway except for a couple of very minor differences - but more than one prototype B12 has been photographed paired to a B17 tender in BR days, so the much more fine-scale B17 tender, which also rides at the correct height will instantly give the loco a big lift.

So far as the original Hornby loco body is concerned, this is actually much better than the tender - although it rides way too high on the chassis and has some obvious horrors, such as the dreadful excuse for an air pump, equally dreadful washout plugs, incorrect buffers, grotesque chimney - and so on. It is also about 8mm too short overall, but I can live with that, provided the horrid front bogie gets sorted (I will be using a home-fabricated brass one, fitted with scale bogie wheels from Alan Gibson, which are now to hand)..

To improve the body, I will be using various castings bought for the job and also quite a few 'common' parts from the remains of a PDK D16/3 kit - which I have had hanging about for some years and which is never going to get built now that Hornby are releasing one later in the year.

Perhaps the point of most interest at this stage is however the chassis.....................So I will kick off with that:

I happened to have an old Hornby B12 chassis which had already been hacked about a bit and which was minus it's motor. That in itself was no great loss - it was the same motor they use in Scalextrix cars, together with a rather crude plastic worm and an even cruder gear wheel on the leading axle.

I also happened to have a brand new, never used, Portescap motor/gearbox - one of the earlier production ones which were rather sweeter and quieter than some of the later examples. Just how this pristine icon of locomotive power units had remained unused in a drawer for the best part of 25 or so years is another story.

I decided to see if the Portescap unit could be married to the Hornby B12 chassis - and guess what ....it can!

The following pictures show the considerable modification to the Hornby B12 chassis block which was required, involving filing out the original gear wheel slot by a considerable amount to accept the Portescap unit. This was done by hand and was hard work. Very hard work indeed - but was nevertheless entirely successful. It doesn't leave too much metal on either side - but it is perfectly strong enough.

Quite apart from greatly enhancing the performance, fitting this power unit and also cutting & filing down the rear parts of the chassis, will enable me to mount the body at the correct height, unlike the original which sits way too high to clear the old Triang motor fitted to early examples of the model. The wheels will still fit inside the splashers (just).

For the record - the wheels are now back on and the unit performed perfectly on test.

I'll update on this project in due course, but for now, here are some pictures comparing the re-worked chassis with the original.