PannierTanker14

It’s a USR! Unidentified Shunting Rat! A bad abbreviation, I know...

Progress has pretty much ground to a halt again, with the diorama now serving as a temporary shelf for an old 90s christmas train whilst I find time to acquire more components for it. It’s still gotten further than any of my other projects and I still think it’ll be done before summertime.

It sure does deserve awards. I hope I get a chance to see it one day.

Mind if I put a few here? all taken at the GCR in July 2019.

The resident 33 at Loughborough, 13th July 2019.

I’ve got a design of an armoured hover train I’ve been working on in a post apocalyptic story of mine. One of the two of these mechanical monsters charges around what’s left of America after the 3rd world war. A lot of America’s deserts by this time had expanded across cities which gives a flat enough surface for the train to reach its maximum speed (about 50mph) and have unhindered mobility. The story is rather Steampunk, so I’ve based the train off of the Zaamurets armoured railcar of WW1 and WW2. The second train was destroyed when it got caught in a catastrophic explosion that took out a fair bit of the Himalayas. The engine is permanently coupled to its armoured cars and is built quite like a massive land-sailing dreadnought. I doubt the land trains would even be mechanically possible but they look visually awesome in my opinion

I’ve been worrying about seeing if I could change the fuels for heritage railways for a while now. I don’t particularly want to see the end of steam so early in my lifetime if I’m honest. There’s hope for the post 50s locos since they seemed less fussy about coal. It seems the GWR locos are going to go first since most only seem to like Welsh coal. The recycled coffee seemed like a good idea for A1 Tornado when I first thought about it. Since the coffee isn’t millions of years old it might clog up a bit more but it should keep steam around for a decade more hopefully. Diesels are still relatively newer than the steam locos too, and the original Diesel engine was never planned to run on fossil fuels (until Mr Rudolf Diesel died at sea very suspiciously) There’s hope for diesel too. I don’t think I’ll ever get the chance to test these alternate fuels but I’ll still try. plus if locos burn coffee, the name ‘Coffee Pot’ will actually make sense (mostly for the Q1).

Once, during my many story making times, I imagined what it would be like if we started to use steam power again. A best designs would be both the Riddles WD 2-10-0 and the 9F. For this part of the story it involved freight movements of the 2025s where the WD 2-10-0 design was built to super-modern standards and runs on recycled coffee instead of coal (I don’t actually know if this would work, but it’s a nice idea) Since not being built for the WD, the re-designed WDs had to find a new name. Currently it’s Coffee Pot, since the locos burn recycled coffee, but for the anti-steamers it’s also called ‘what the heck is that mess!?’. 10 were built, numbered 1000 to 1009. (A basic number scheme until reworked) EWS owns them all and keeps them running at Toton (this is where it’s obviously an alternate history story, since EWS isn’t around anymore(?) and neither will Toton sidings for much longer) The locomotives’ livery is black with yellow trimmings, and with a cast iron plate of the EWS symbol on their tenders. The locos have permanently fixed LED lamps and have built-in safety equipment. These locos are only able to run on the smaller lines since automation has mostly taken over the mainlines and no signals can be found on some of those lines. That isn’t to say that these locos couldn’t appear on other lines, but they would need an escort with the technology to read the digital signals so it’s easier to keep them around their own signal-full railways. (A work-in-progress alternate history)

Legendary pieces of work I was thinking about repainting my Dean into ROD colours. Got my eyes on the 2-8-0s too

I’m still waiting to see what happens with YouTube before I begin this cartoon series but I have decided to continue with the script writing. Basically; Bucket (the main character) is a WD austerity that never got into the WD but was instead made to work at a colliery somewhere in Britain. The reason why Bucket is called Bucket is because One: I’ve read that his class of loco were called ‘buckets’ during their service and Two: in a mining accident Bucket loses his dome, which the NCB replace with a literal bucket. The series is supposed to be humorous but also pretty dark too, considering the end of steam put a lot of hard working locos to their demise. The series will be no longer than three series, with a special episode at the end of each series. The story follows the life of Bucket through the end of the Second World War, through the times of the rise of diesel and through the demise of steam, finally ending at the preservation era. Other characters, including other NCB shunters, a repatriated WD brought back from after the war, a Black 5 and a Deltic, will also turn up along the series. The series is also meant to be a darker and more realistic version of the classic Railway Series (Thomas the Tank Engine), with locos being personified and with faces. I put the cartoon project on hold until the storm within YouTube blows over. After it has blown over, I’ll begin work on my YouTube channel (probably will be called PannierTanker_6414). This project is not expected to properly begin until late next year but we shall see. (here’s an old picture of Bucket, which is not the best of drawings. This depicts one of the episodes where Bucket pushes wagons too far on a cable incline and rolls down the hill)

That 3D view video was brilliant! It almost felt like playing Battlefield again good stuff

(just another project rambling) I remember my grandfather owning a whole Bachmann ‘Big Hauler’ 4-6-0. However, being the rather destructive child I once was, it got damaged. It wasn’t too badly damaged could’ve been repaired, but I didn’t get to it in time before it got thrown out. After finding the little 2-6-0 christmas train that I was hoping to repair and convert into a narrow gauge ROD loco, I remembered the huge ‘Big Hauler’ and set about to find it on the Interweb. Soon enough I found several results and am now planning to see if I can acquire one again. Of course G scale is huge and I’d have no space for it right now but if I could get one earlier than later I reckon it’ll be better. Being battery powered, the locomotive doesn’t need electrified track and therefore is ideal for temporary track plans. I remember how big the initial locomotive was and the wagons were huge too. I just about have room for O gauge, so going into this new plan is more of a loose sketch for now. But I have my eye on those ‘Big Haulers’ and one day I will have one again!

It looks brilliant. I haven’t yet used the Citadel washes (even though I often model Warhammer stuff) but it certainly seems to work for both steam trains and super tanks!