A while back I started a project to use the Hornby GWR Castles Tintagel and Wellington to convert to Berkeley and Nunney Castles.

Berkeley Castle has been covered previously, while Nunney Castle has sat waiting for me to work out how I would deal with the new design of nameplate Hornby have been using.

I started by snapping the glue connection between body and splasher, to remove the existing name plate. After slightly distressing the brass beading around the edge of the Hornby plate, the Modelmaster's etch was glued into place. This follows the usual method of cutting the plate away from the mounting bracket. Once dry the excess brass (circa 1mm on each side of the plate) was then filed back to match the new etch, with a touch of filler needed to tidy up the gap between old and new etch before gluing back onto the loco body. Moving onto the cab sides, the rivets were carefully scraped off to give a flat surface to glue to etch to. About half a mm of printing also needed to be removed as the printed plates were a fraction bigger than the etch, which was then glued into place. Finally the buffer beam, numbers were removed with IPA and replaced with HMRS transfers.

the 4000g Collett tender was next up, with the removal of the underframe lining (along with a touch up with some black paint).

As per Berkeley Castle a little extra work was needed to convert the loco to tender drawbar to match loco and tender (using the leftovers from the previous loco). While the tender was on the bench a Lenz Gold was fitted (nice and easy) and the coal load removed ready for its real coal replacement (at some point)

There is still one final job remaining, the area below the nameplate still shows the "Castle Class" plate from Wellington. My lining ability isnt great (and the need to repaint means matching Hornbys "GWR Green" which is nothing of the sort... My plan is to commission a transfer exactly the size of the plate, coloured in Hornby green with lining in place. In the mean time I can live with the small error...