Sometimes, I find, it only takes a little work to set a RTR product apart from its brethren and a few minor alterations here and there can certainly help to capture the character of the prototype. I do not consider myself particularly skilled so nothing here comes under the banner of 'major surgery'. With that in mind, let's meet our first patient: 47847

Here it is, as Heljan intended, pretty much. Looking over it, there are a couple of things that are just wrong - the boiler exhaust being the biggest one. '847 had a round plate to cover it's exhaust and HJ never covered that variation on their more modern releases. Looking beyond that, the numbers struck me as odd. When '847 got repainted, they applied the large white numbers using the EWS font.

Somewhere there was sufficient uproar and they replaced them a short while later. When they did, they left no gaps which is unusual and for me, one of the things that sets '847 apart from other Large Logo examples. Have a look at photos of it and you'll see what I mean.

I carefully removed the original numbers by gently picking at the edges with a scalpel until they were all gone and, in the interests of economy, I used the HJ numbers, trimming as close as is possible to avoid leaving any carrier film visible. Voila!

The sparrow that HJ put on the engine room doors is laughable. From a distance they are fine but take a closer look... They came off easily enough (more gentle scalpel fun) and were replaced by the Replica Railways ones.

The photos I have been using for reference show '847 in 2002 and at the time it had a new set of bogies (well, they look new) so I set about trying to recreate the tyre slip markings. After a couple of false starts using a paintbrush I hit upon the idea of using some waterslide white lining cut into very short lengths. Hey presto, tyre markings!

The other bits and pieces are what most would consider 'bread and butter' stuff. A bit of gloss silver paint just behind the buffer heads, a light coat of grey paint on the marker discs at number one end and a set of bufferbeam pipes at one end. I also fitted the Shawplan details for cut-away bufferbeams and gave them a coat of satin black. The air pipes on the bogies were picked out in white (HJ ones are very shallow and this requires a steady hand and lots of patience) and the cab front hadnrails were painted white too.

The battery boxes have little warning labels on these days so I chopped up some modern OHL flashes and stuck them on the boxes, referring to the photos as they were not applied centrally and that is where I am now. Still to do:-

Fit the cable ducts for the ETH wiring on the sides of the bufferbeans

Come up with some ETH cables/socket for the front ends.

A little weathering (maybe).