Back in October I reported on a revamped Hornby Princess, using a Comet chassis under the body of an old tender drive model. Keeping on the same theme, toward the end of the year I also embarked on a similar upgrade to a Princess Coronation - aka Duchess - from the same source.

 

Here's the loco nearing completion:

 

 

The basis of this model was an even older specimen than the Princess, which was a relatively recent 1990s release. This one goes back to 1979! The original tender drive Duchess of Sutherland was bought from Holt Model Railways with (I think) birthday money, with some careful budgeting allowing for the purchase of the loco and a pair of Graham Farish LMS-liveried coaches. Modellers who haven't been involved with the hobby for donkey's years may not realise that Grafar did a range of 00 rolling stock, including carriages in various bogus liveries. I'd have preferred the then-new Hornby LMS ones, which (like their contemporary GWR, LNER and Southern stock) were slightly less generic, evem if making use of many common parts, but the budget wouldn't reach to those! I should add that my parents were incredibly generous and supportive of my hobby over the years, but were also careful to set limits.

 

What of the Duchess? It ran very nicely, and even after a bit of valve gear fell off, Hornby repaired it free of charge. I liked it a lot. But then an article appeared in Model Trains showing how to improve one with Crownline parts, and I decided to try and make mine look better as well. The only problem was that I didn't have the Crownline bits (nor the skills to use them) so I bodged my way along instead, substituting enthusiasm for finesse! Inspired by a photo of City of Manchester, I cut away the front framing of my Duchess to make one of the de-streamlined type with the utility front, which I'd always thought looked more impressive. I painted the loco in BR maroon instead of LMS red, hand-lined it, and added City of Manchester nameplates made from paper and a fine black Rapido pen. They weren't great but I was dead chuffed with them at the time as it was the first occasion on which I'd ever changed the identity of a loco. The cherry on the cake was when I took 46246 for a running session at the Bridgend Model Railway club, Word came down that one of the older, proper modellers had asked about the City!

 

Fast forward to 2022, and I must confess that the Duchess had been languishing for some time. I'd added some extra detailing bits in the 90s, then repainted it using a too-bright shed of red (a pity as the lining was good!) and then decided that, while the tender drive was still very smooth, I wasn't so happy with the clunky loco chassis, with its lack of detail and overscale valve gear. An attempt to graft a newer Duchess chassis onto the old body only got so far before I lost enthusiasm again. With the Princess done, though, thoughts turned to the possibility of repeating the exercise with another Comet job. As luck would have it, a complete kit came up on ebay, and fortuitously it also came with a complete wheelset, making a considerable saving on ordering them separately.

 

Here's the start of the work:

 

 

I would estimate that there are about 3 - 4 nights of low-stress modelling to get to this point. I usually get the frames erected on night 1, complete with bearings. On night 2, I might add the wheels and coupling rods. After that, adding brakes and possibly installing the motor and pickup might be another night or two.

 

These Comet kits go together very well, with excellent fit of the various parts. The Duchess chassis above is an older etch, but the newer ones are as good if not better - they've just tweaked a few things to make (for instance) fitting hornblocks easier, and generally allowing for a bit more detail. There aren't any slots and tabs with these kits, which could be slightly intimidating, but provided you take care, make use of axle jigs where possible, and constantly check for squareness and parallel-ness before soldering everything up totally, there shouldn't be any snags. I don't consider myself any kind of clever modeller, and my tools are nothing sophisticated, but I find that I can make these work very nicely provided I exercise care and approach the work with the right mindset.

 

With the chassis coming along, I like to begin checking the fit against the RTR body. Comet kits are designed to work with RTR products so generally there's very little problem.

 

 

Things are looking good already, with the wheels looking just right and no clearance issues between the rods and the footplate, or at least mothing that can't be resolved with a few file strokes. Since I've added the pickups at this point, the model can even be test-run. There's little weight in the body as it stands, so if the model performs as a basic 0-6-0 at this stage, it bodes well for when some more adhesion is added.

 

Oh yes, and that lurid red is well on display here. I think it was some car spray labelled maroon or similar. Unfortunately, while the BR Red applied to these locos could look quite vivid, I decided I'd need to repaint and reline (again!). Further sealing the paint job's fate, I've been adding the missing continuation of the boiler, where Hornby had vertical skirting, long since cut away.I just added bits of plastic card along the approximate arc of the boiiler, along with plenty of filler and sanding to blend them in. Was it worth it? Undecided!

 

Incidentally, it's a good idea to have reference material when working on any model. I don't always follow this advice, I must admit - I'm not going to buy an expensive book for just one project - but as I've always had a thing about Duchesses, that wasn't a problem this time.

 

 

 

Matters progressed quickly with the addition of valve gear. Compared to the Princess, this was a much easier job. That's just down to the way the prototypes had their valve gear arranged: the motion bracket on the Duchess is much easier to work with than the Princess type, enabling the work to be much more easily broken down into small steps. As with the rest of the chassis parts, the Comet parts all work with little or no fuss. A few bits might need a bit of fettling or opening out, but there certainly won't be anything that's too big or too small.

 

I was going to retain the older tender moulding, with a new sub-chassis, but the more I became familiar with the de-streamlined types, the more I realised this wouldn't do. The ex-streamliner tenders were a bit different to the type supplied for Duchess of Sutherland, so I decided the easiest thing was to order a complete tender as an ebay spare. I got one in LMS red but it didn't really matter as it was going to be resprayed anyway. 

 

A loco-tender coupling was arranged and some proper running trials could commence!
 

 

This is just on DC for the moment, but once I'm fully satisfied with the running, I'll be fitting a decoder.

 

The remaining work has mostly been cosmetic. I reprayed the model with BR maroon, which is arguably a bit too ... err .. maroon, for BR red, but I didn't want to go down the same road as before and end up with something that was too bright a shade. In any case, I've told myself, whatever shade was applied to the Duchesses in BR days, it seems to have weathered to a much more maroon-y hue as soon as a decent coat of grime appeared, which seems to have been almost instantly, judging by the conditons of some in photos. Incidentally, I've seen that livery described variously as crimson lake, red and maroon, so there's clearly some disagreement among the scholars. And regardless of what you call it, was it the same hue that the LMS applied, or a distinct shade of red?

 

Moving on, lining is Fox, and numbers and tender crest thingy are HMRS. There's still more to be done: front numberplate, lamp irons and lamps, cab glazing, cab doors etc but it's coming on and looks OK from normal layout viewing distance, as I hope the below illustrates. I do like a good going-away shot.

 

 

Cheers and thanks for reading.