Goodevening -

I've been working on a model of 47580 'County of Essex' in large logo - I've started with a vitrains 47401 - (vitrains are my preferred 47s)

a quick look on fotopic showed there was only a couple of major differences between 401 and 580 , which id have to cover:

47401 had white lenses at the no1 end and sealed beam headlights at no2 end. 580 had sealed beam lights at both ends.

Looking at the headcode boxes again , 47401 had a black headcode box at no2 end , 580 had both headcode boxes painted black.

Rather than trying to carve off the white lenses and try and rebuild the box with sealed beam headlights - i chopped the entire cab off - and grafted on a new cab from the no2 end of

a spare (damaged) 47401 shell I had. So the result - is both ends have the correct style headlights, and the right color headcode boxes - and i didnt even have to get the black paint out

Next I had to remove the numbers and the printed names - unlike Bachmann and Hornby stuff , a cotton bud and thinners wont work with vitrains printing- but all is not lost -

Make a sanding strip - a strip thick of plasticard about 5mm wide - and using double sided carpet tape fix a bit of very very very fine wet n dry to it.

smear the bodyside of the loco with neat washing up liqid - and add a drop - literally one drop or water , just to thin it down a tiny bit -

then rub away wth the sanding strip - the numbers will come off leaving the paint intact and polished perfectly for new transfers to be applied.

And heres the result - renumbered , and with the printed nameplates removed . The 'new' cab i grafted on is closest to the camera

tfn

jon