I thought I'd start a new blog to record my slightly hamfisted attempts at building 4mm loco kits.

The first victim is a Chiver's SECR J class 0-6-4T. These are one of Harry Wainwright's more obscure classes - there were only five of them, and all were scrapped by 1951. I've heard it claimed they were the last 0-6-4T tanks in Britain (although the type survived in Ireland until 1969 due to the Sligo, Leitrim and Northern Counties' peculiar attachment to them).

When finished it will be 31599 in early BR condition.

The chassis is a pretty conventional affair in etched brass, with a separate etch containing the coupling rods, brake gear and a gearbox (to go with Romford gears and a DS10 motor). I'd experimented with the settings on my camera, the combination of an LED desk lamp, flash and macro mode on the camera produced the slightly odd effect in the photo (which reminds me of a German silent film).

The kit suggests starting with the chassis, but then mentions that it needs shortening slightly to fit the running plate. So I started by assembling the running plate (using epoxy). This needed a bit of filler, but otherwise went together OK. A couple of millimetres was then removed from the chassis etch to ensure that it fitted before soldering it up.

I used a Comet jig to help with the assembly. I also added extra frame spacers off one of their etches to ensure that the chassis was nice and rigid.

The next step was to paint the basic chassis before fitting the Alan Gibson wheels. These were then fitted using a GW models wheel press. This is my first use of the Gibson driving wheels, and no major problems so far. Once they are on, it's not straightforward to remove them, hence the need to paint the chassis (or at least the bit's behind the wheels) first.

The moulded plastic gearbox is from a firm called Northyard, who hail from New Zealand. I bought it from Branchlines a few years back and have now finally found a use for it. The huge side tanks will hide a fairly large Mashima 1628 motor driving the gearbox via a length of neoprene tubing. Again this is something I've not tried before, but so far it all seems to fit.

The motor will intrude in to the bottom of the cab, but with the doors modelled in the closed position this shouldn't show.

So it has taken a week of odd hours here and there to get this far. The rest of the kit seems pretty straightforward, so I'm hoping for a quick build.