Looks brilliant James, and surprisingly small next to the Escort. This has been a really inspiring build to follow - I hope one day my soldering will take the step from making couplings to making locos.

James,

I have been very impressed following your build and your hard work is really paying off, that control desk is brilliant with the dials etc added as well. It will make your project different having more less modelled motive power and it has certainly inspired me to look into building a kit in the future.

Thanks,

Mark

Any plans to put a driver in there?

Well the cab roof is on! The glazing hasn't frosted too badly from the superglue - there is a slight blooming but it looks ok to me!

Thank you all for the kind words - I'm glad my hapless bodging has inspired others to have a go - it's certainly been a lot of fun and next up will be a Judith Edge Sentinel 0-6-0 with a sprung chassis and decent gearbox/flywheel combo to try and get a locomotive that looks and runs superbly...

...which leads me on nicely to the limitations of the black beetle. It's a superb device - very compact and customisable but the small motor and lack of flywheel make slow running tricky - and the gearing is quite noisy. To get reasonable running I've experimented with balancing weight on the cab roof and it's possible. Will require both bonnets to be stuffed full of lead though I expect

It's been a great learning journey and even if she never really runs that much in anger it's my first proper step into finescale modelling!

I even found myself contemplating an 0-16.5 kit of the Welshpool and Llanfair Earl this week!

That's looking really nice James B) B)

awsome shunter james B) looks very similar to the ones you see around C.F Booths scrapyard. What colour are you painting it mate?

Thanks guys again. It'll be blue with wasp stripes on the sides below the running plate and buffer beams as DH26 was decorated for the Manchester Ship Canal railway.