After the debacle last weekend with 'City of Lincoln', I decided to put that locomotive on the 'shelf of terrible mistakes' for a short while and get on with something else (something more productive than burning down the Humbrol factory in revenge, that is).

So I sorted out my GBL 'Butler Henderson' and set about converting her (him?) into a running model.

The first step obviously is to take the model apart and then consider how to get the running chassis to fit. The GBL model breaks down quite helpfully into three main parts; the cab, the boiler and the running plate. And when we look at the running plate, we see marks where extra material has been added to the original Bachmann model (via CAD, after being scanned perhaps?) which forms the mounting for the cast static chassis. I followed these marks and cut the extra material away, and lo and behold it fit the new chassis. The new chassis is a Triang 2P/ L1 chassis, Bachmann Director chassis being as rare as hens teeth and not offered as a spare by Bachmann.

So here we see the material removed from the model to allow the chassis to fit- I also had to file down the thickness of the boiler a little.

And the chassis it sits on- I removed a tiny amount of material from the motor mount to get it to fit. If you aren't concerned about getting the bod to sit at scale height, you can save the hour or so of filing and fine-tuning and just have the body sit around 2mm too high.

To get the tender rolling, I had some Triang axles and wheelsets sitting in my spares box. I drilled right through the axleboxes and inserted the axles through them. I then used plastic sheet to reinstate the axlebox fronts- in this photograph I need to repaint the tender frames.

The only real part of the locomotive body I found disappointing was the moulded on boiler handrail, so I scraped this off and drilled holes for new handrail knobs. I used split pins for the knobs and brass wire for the new handrail. At some point in the year I had the model in storage the front lefthand buffer had disappeared, so I used some 2mm plastic sheet to form a new buffer head and 1.2mm plastic rod for a new buffer shank. To get a strong joint between the two I drilled a 1.2mm hole through the buffer head and cut off the shank about 1cm too long. Once I had slid the head along the shank, I flooded the joint with plastic solvent and once it had dried cut the shank back to length. Etched nameplates were bought from Modelmaster, etched numberplates are on order from Narrow Planet.

The model as it currently stands. There are a few areas which need repainting- I have tried with this project to retain the factory finish as far as possible- I also need to fit frames over the bogie and look to the cab glazing. For a cheap, quick and easy project though, this has made a nice change.