The research to locate a suitable two car DMU for ‘Hayfield’ has resulted in my deciding that Longsight MPD had severe problems in keeping their fleet of DMUs on the road and had to resort to asking for loan from Carlisle. In short I’m now fairly confident that the Bachman version I purchased, is of a pairing that was never used on the Hayfield Branch. I don’t want to start carving the Bachmann set to suit, so I have come up with this story as to how this set got to Hayfield. All lies of course but so too is my story that allows the use of a York based J72 at ‘Hayfield’, - Gorton had it on loan waiting for the ex MOD austerity tanks to be delivered!

Back to the J10 :-

It now has a reach rod, brakes, sandboxes and sand pipes, and the Belpaire box now has some washout plugs. Comparing as many side-on pictures as possible, scaling from each pic, and calculating a mean value of each measurement have achieved all these additions. I think that sizes and positioning will be pretty close to the prototype; more to the point it will look right.

A small number of you may remember articles in the model press written by Jim Whittaker of Manchester MRS, a scratch builder of the very highest order, sadly no longer with us. Jim had a lot of influence on me in my younger years and I still use many ideas he passed down to me. One is making small, delicate parts by punching them from shim brass. I have several punches which have been used many times over many years and the J10’s washout plugs owe their being to Jim. So too will the works plate when I get round to it.

This picture shows those plugs, the reach-rod, steps with grab rail, brake hangers with shoes and the sand boxes with pipes.

The sand boxes are white metal castings. I made a set of four out of tufnol (any of the tufnols based on fabric machine just like brass!) but having done so realised that the same type of box was used on the Q4 (my next effort) and on several other Robinson locos; so I made a rubber mould and cast a few.

The brake hangers and shoes were profile milled using plastikard masters originally made for my J39. Profile milling is such a useful process I’m amazed that more clubs with their own rooms don’t get one for the workshop. I can’t house one at Honley Tank but the Manchester MRS workshop is visited fairly frequently; - it just needs planning!!

These last two photos show both sides of the chassis before the sand boxes went on. Neither shows the motor in its correct position; when the body is added it is pushed to a similar angle, but forward, to the first pic.