The Ebay entry was rather forthcoming. "Whitemetal LNER J10, non-runner, spares or repairs" it read, as I recall. This was a few years ago- the exact wording may have been slightly different- but from the photographs it looked a promising option. The bodywork didn't look too bad, it had the wrong tender, and there was the problem that it didn't work- but I felt it had potential and a few days after seeing it I put in a low bid and, surprisingly, won.

When it turned up I separated the body and the chassis to see what the problem with the motor was, but from the start it was pretty clear that the chassis was hopeless and I'd be better off just putting the body on a new one. I had a couple of Hornby Jinty chassis, so I set to work attempting a transplant.

~~~

Many hours later I had a loco body in pieces, a chassis that had several lumps cut out of it, a blunted saw, a bloodied hand and a thick lip (the domestic authorities overheard my use of some Anglo-Saxon....) In frustration I dumped it all back in the box and put it in a drawer hoping to lose it.

~~~

Fast forward two years and I had another option for the chassis. My second-ever attempt at a scratchbuild- a J11- had been usurped firstly by a BEC kit and then by the Bachmann RTR example, and was being scrapped. The boiler fittings (rather nice brass castings) had been put in the spares box and I had thrown the body away, and I was casting about for a reason to keep the chassis (from an Airfix 4F) when I idly noticed that the driving wheel diameters and the wheelbase matched up pretty neatly with the J10 mouldering away in a box in a drawer. Lightbulb moment.

It still had to wait awhile though, until I was in a position to order some numberplates (I tend to go for bulk orders of 9 or 10 sets at a time, to see me through a few years' worth of modelling projects), but a few weeks ago my latest batch arrived and once I had finished a few of the slushpile projects (the narrow gauge loco and wagons, and a Revell Sopwith Camel), I was in a position to start.

It didn't look very promising to begin with.

This is what I was starting with.

I placed the body on the Airfix chassis to see how much material would need to come off- a few smallish cuts on the chassis were easy enough, but the loco body had rather a large lump of whitemetal right precisely where the chassis was going to go. It would lift the front of the model 2mm too high....

... so I set to work with a saw and a couple of files. After an hour and a half I lost patience and broke out the dremel with a 2.8mm drill bit to ream away the last millimetre or two of extraneous material.

But the result looks promising.

Now I just need to hollow out the splashers a little more, so the chassis doesn't try to climb out from under the body..... and then I can start putting it all back together.