After a bit of a break from my railway activities whilst building a 1/700 Dreadnought, I'm back with something a little different.

A few years ago I bought a Bachmann Junior saddletank with the idea of turning it into one of the Metropolitan's 0-6-0 Peckett shunters. But what with Hornby bringing out a Peckett loco, and my interests starting to turn more toward the GC and waning a little regarding the Met, I have decided to turn it into something perhaps more interesting.

I've always rather liked the Manning Wardle contractors locos used to build the GC mainline, so thoughts began recently to gravitate in that direction. Now I don't have any drawings for those engines; I haven't seen the preserved 'Sir Berkeley' in the flesh; the only measaurements I have are the wheelbase and boiler diameter- all others I'm guesstimating from photographs. This is therefore very much a project in the 'if it looks right it is right' vein and I am in truth building several models; a few attempts in paper to get it looking right before commiting to plastic sheet.

So I began by splitting the body down into its components, leaving the running plate loosely fitted to the chassis. Once I was happy with my planning models I cut a few bulkheads in plastic sheet and fitted them in place. I have decided that the motor and gearbox will sit in the saddletank, which dictated the minimum height of that, and then sized the smokebox so that it is still vaguely in proportion, going off of photographs.

With the bulkheads in place, I used paper to form the smokebox wrapper and fitted some plastic spacers to the saddle tank, to keep it all square.

Looking towards the back of the loco, I somehow need to clear the DCC chip. This I would have removed, had not the pickups been wired directly to it. My idea right now is therefore to raise the cab floor over it; which would also have the effect of raising the firebox (a typical feature of Manning Wardle tanks).