Right then, after a couple of weeks away off modelling and and with missus gone back for a while ive embarked on something new.

My deltic is slowly progressing through the paint shop, so at a bit of a loose and and filled with ideas from a EE drawing of a 'super deltic' i had a look around to see what i could do. Reading the notes, it was to have 2 turbo charged deltic 18 engines rated at 2300 hp each and with an overall (estimated) weight of 117 tons it would have been an extremely poweful machine. according to the book BR actually looked at ordering some i think around 1967 but nothing ever came from it, possibly the HST lobby won through...

Anyway it looks to be a class 50 body shell with a deltic roof cooling group on the top, so remembering i had a very knakered lima 50 body and a scrap spare lima deltic i did a bit of measuring and it looked possible to merge the 2 so out came the drills and saws:

With the roof sections of the deltic and 50 chopped out i had to think how to create the 2 bodyside grills as per the drawing, coudnt think of anything to hand that looked right until i looked at the 50 radiator bodyside grills and thoughts of cutting them out and mounting the horizontally aproximately where the diagram showed, so i bit the bullet and whipped out the drill and cutting discs.

Suddenly, after the speculative cutting and filling it was starting to take shape and as the cutting and gluing progressed i found myself thinking instead of it being just a rough chop glue and then scrap it excersise for something to do it was actaully becoming quite a pleasing new might have been/never was loco project. Knowing it was a bit of 'make it up as you go' sort of project i stated thinking of possibilites for the the other grills, another raid on the scrap body box found a battered wester which fited the bill for some extra grills so, the cutting disc came out again:

the grills were roughly (very!) hacked out and slightly squared up, i found the best way to get the into the body was to measure up the body and the grills and find a centre line and work from there, basically to keep it as simple as possible and using the old 'if i looks right it is right' mentality just drew around the cut out grills and the chopped out the hole in the 50 body and gluing in, thankfully the body thikness of the western and 50 arnt too dissimilar so a flush finish is easyish to get.

After only a couple of nights doctoring it was starting to take shape. i should have stripped the 50 1st but with a lack of modelstrip and getting a bit carried away with the chopping itl have to wait. Lots of filling will be required i know but i feel its coming together pretty well, the roof still needs some work so its loose stil,l but i reckon itl be quite a handsome beast.

Would love to know if anybody else has done one or has thought of doing one, as im sure alot of people will have a copy 'the deltic locomotives of british rail' by Brian Webb ( one of the drawings just creeping in at the botom of the pic above) so id be surprised if no ones attempted moddelling one of the drawings towards the end.

Anyway thats all for now, so if anybody on here has any thoughts/suggestions or modelled one themselves drop us a reply, id love to see what other models are out there.

Thanks

James