Halvarras

A little more progress on the bright red one. Bachmann long-type screw-on mini-couplers have been fitted to the chassis, the cab end was relatively simple but the underside of the chassis steps up at the front so a more elaborate solution was required - screwed onto what's left of the cylinders after this area was filed flat (good job I didn't cut them away entirely then!) The bufferbeams were then extended downwards to be level with the underside of the steps and all filed to shape, although there are still a few holes to fill. The cab steps have bowed in a little (too much Plastic Weld?) but it's not that noticeable from the outside. The two screws at the front were used to leave space for a central body securing screw but the chassis is now such a snug fit that I don't think they are going to be necessary - it's not as if the chassis is ever going to be heavy; I can add these later front and rear if needed, but hopefully a job saved. I've had a rethink on the buffers - those I'd intended to use are too long for the couplers, so I'm going to retain these stocks and fit some Lima large round plastic heads - the lower edge of these aligns with the lower edge of oval or small round buffers on other stock, so for me they're 'within tolerance', and saves me another job! I can't lower the body any further as the coupling rods would hit the underside of the footplate. I'm also pondering that radiator grille and whether I should move it down or reduce it to leave enough space for a representation of the 'North British' plaque above it....... Anyway, re-fitting of that fat motor is next, this is going to be the biggest hurdle as the internal clearance issue inside that narrow bonnet will need addressing. What happens will be determined by where the motor's contacts end up - if simple gouging won't hack it (no pun intended..... well, maybe) I have plans A & B. If I need a plan C I'm in trouble! As I said earlier I don't want to widen the bonnet as that would impact my plans for the cab windscreens.

Gave up when he realised he'd cut the bar out of the wrong window?! Major faff, those corridor windows - many people would struggle to achieve a neat result multiple times without distortions to the bodyshell, no matter how 'carefully' they proceeded. A big ask, that.

About 12 years ago modellers were saying good things about a vinyl masking tape called Eurostar (or Electrostar according to George Dent, although he was likely confusing it with an EMU!) so I obtained a roll - mine was red, I think that was the standard colour. Sadly I was not impressed - I found that pulling it taut to obtain a straight line stretched it, and between application and painting it shrank back to its original length leaving trails of red adhesive on the model. In fairness my usual method of slicing it into thinner strips on a piece of plate glass as an economy measure probably didn't help; however wrapping 10mm (may have been less) wide tape around a c100mm cardboard ring was not a brilliant idea as mine developed a peculiar shape and became ever stickier - maybe the roll had been in stock for a while before I got hold of it, but it certainly appeared to have a finite shelf life. In the end I used it up on a silicone sealing job in the bathroom as I didn't want it anywhere my models! But that was my experience, others may find it OK. Just watch for that stretching issue though....... These days I use Tamiya as well, although I still miss the black Alfac masking tape sold by Howes some years (decades) ago - that was a little thicker than Tamiya but paint build-up against its edges wasn't an issue as enamel paints needed fewer coats back then........different subject though.

FWIW - Page 21 of David Larkin's 'BR General Parcels Rolling Stock - A Pictorial Survey' (Bradford Barton) shows LNER-ordered DE75575 with oil axleboxes, in goods vehicle bauxite livery and lettered 'VANFIT'. The caption explains that the majority of these were demoted to stores vans but a small number were classified as ordinary goods vans, but only for a short time - "a few years". DE75575 was photographed at Warrington in 1975 employed as a stores van for a Ballast Cleaner, with steam heating pipe removed. Another such van in stores use, DE75305, is also shown in scruffy white livery, at York in 1968. I first saw 7017 in this guise also at BTM the previous month (1st June). Some sources say it was repainted and lost its cast numbers that July, however 'The Railway Magazine' had a report of it being seen in sparkling condition passing through Trowbridge (IIRC) on 18th May - in other words it was about to get its famous (some would say infamous!) makeover exactly 50 years ago. As for the livery of those vans, the number position at the right-hand end and darker patch above where I'd guess 'SPV' has been painted out would indicate BR blue; especially by 1974.

With Bachmann diesels I usually drop the screw into the hole with a pair of tweezers.......which I discover has somehow become magnetized, refuses to let go of the screw and drops it into the mechanism instead! Grrrr 😡!!

That's already looking really nice. One buffer in the middle may be prototypical but it don't 'alf look odd - I keep thinking 'Cyclops'! With your 'open-ended' bogie construction I'm interested to see how you propose to couple these vehicles together - I'm sure you'll have a cunning plan.......🤔

I used to use any old screwdriver to undo screws - a blue-handled flat-bladed screwdriver with a small tip would undo most screws, including crossheads. I still have it, although it's now almost redundant - the multitude of crosshead types found in models produced over the past couple of decades, the tightness of some of these and the awkward locations, forced the purchase of a set of 5 jewellers crosshead screwdrivers, which has definitely proved to be very sensible. Since 'rounding-out' a screw, located at the bottom of a deep hole or not, by using the wrong tool is a big headache, I'm now very careful to select the screwdriver from the set with the best fit into the screw head - even if you can't see the screw, you can tell if it fits properly by feel - no slack. I recently had reason to remove the body from a Dapol Western diesel - I'd read on here that the 4 tiny screws could be problematic but by using the right driver they came out OK - helped by the threaded brass inserts, nice one Dapol. Screws this small can be easily damaged by slippage so slowly with firm pressure was key. Bachmann in particular use self-tapping screws into plastic, so thread stripping is always a concern. When replacing I always turn the screw slowly counter-clockwise until I feel it click when it find the thread in the hole, then screw it in until tightening begins - tug body from chassis to gauge how much slack remains, tighten a little more, repeat until there's no slack.

As thread drift goes this isn't too bad - at least we're still talking NBL! 😉

The new Chinese chassis has been dismantled and cut down to fit the shortened body as per the scrap chassis. There are some minor tooling differences between the two but nothing of major consequence. I was a bit miffed to discover than the new chassis uses much larger-diameter coupling rod pins than the old one, so with the connecting rods removed there was no chance of using the front 'single-rod' pins from the latter to replace the rear 'double-rod' pins on the former, hence the addition of three small Peco fibre washers per side to pack them out; these needed filing out a little to fit, and will be painted (or Sharpied) black later. The old chassis' cast motor bracket shows evidence of a vicious attack by the Dremel! It was easier to use this one than the new one with 'antlers' alongside. Even so it needed filing flat on top and a groove cut with a spiral burr to guide the largest grinding wheel I have. This will now accept the motor in the upright position instead of on its side, although the motor casing is now only around 1.5mm above the rear wheels so I must beware of more grinding causing a short-circuit! I THINK the gears are meshing OK but I can't be certain until I've attached motor to bracket and the brass pin and soldered wire will hopefully enable this (yesterday I tried tying the two together with a piece of fairly thick nickel silver wire through this hole but it worked too well, pulling down the front of the motor so that the armature wouldn't turn freely - undo, undo!) Some way to go yet as, despite filing down the lump of plastic between the contacts as much as I dare, the motor is still a tight fit inside the body. One step at a time.......

Much as I'm doing with that NBL shunter above! Work is proceeding and yesterday my Dremel probably had its busiest day ever - not on the plastic body obviously 😉 but the cast metal motor mount..........from the scrap chassis to take the fatter motor from the new chassis turned 90 degrees! Just trying to ensure the thing meshes with the drive gear now...... Interesting tool the Dremel - I don't use it for months at a time but when I do bring it out it does things I can't figure out any other way of doing!

I remember reports of E3044 turning up at various open days back then, but never saw it myself. I suppose it represented BR electric traction away from the wires without having to take a working locomotive out of service, plus it would have been kept relatively clean in storage. Since many spotters unfamiliar with the AC electrics struggled to tell them apart (myself included, apart from the 86s), the general public would have been even more clueless and wouldn't have cared anyway.

It was the selective cleaning of the initials on 2238's tender and resulting emphasis I was referring to. But I do rather like the 'BRITISH RAILWAYS' in posh Egyptian Serif. Trust Swindon, eh?!

The way we used to do it - take one of these plastic mouldings (included with the kit): And add the gubbins from a Tri-ang Hornby 'Hymek' motor bogie, with the worm gears shifted inwards 1.5mm each end (to convert the wheelbase from a scale 9'3" to 8'6"), taking care not to separate the magnet and pole pieces in the process of course (although contact via just one edge was inevitable), then discover that it would fit into the floor aperture but not rotate unless the upwards extensions on the moulding were cut away, so disassemble again to do that, then reassemble - and hope it still worked! This one, fitted with Millholme brass wheels, was built for my 1975 Class 119 but became spare when I fitted it with Lima bogies all round. After a period of idleness it found its way into an old Tri-ang Met-Cam DMU (which is when it collected the Hornby Class 110 bogie frame) but was again replaced by a Lima unit because sadly this one is simply not as quiet or smooth-running. So this period piece is idle once again, probably permanently now.

I reckon in @Darius43's case the twin keys to unlocking his MTK stash has been the plasticard chassis - designing his relatively simple so quick to assemble alternative to the supplied aluminium floor (as he described a few days ago) was time well spent - and the availability of the recent compact and economically-priced Hornby drive units, along with other bogies as spares. Oh, and a third key - that P-Cutter, for door outlines and roof panelling. I can't think of an alternative to that which would work so well or so quickly.

Dated 1954? Yep, reckon so! The tender displays a form of B R livery I've never seen before! Has the bottom of the cab lining been applied high up to align with that on the tender........which is also too high up?!

I think the first Heljan diesel I obtained on the shiny wheels was D0280 'Falcon', first 'Limited Edition' (hah!) run in 2007 IIRC. I always suspected the Western's wheels were different to the standard Heljan items, to take the plastic inserts. It has been suggested on another thread that Hornby 14.1mm coach wheels can be use used on the Heljan axles (not tried this myself - yet), and R8234 sports four holes too: Yes, the wheel face profile is a little un-Western-like, but the resulting 0.5mm reduction in ride height isn't likely to cause a problem. On the Lima Westerns I did up in the 1990s I painted the wheels in mucky track colour then applied spots of black paint to represent the holes - it looked OK at a glance, but of course didn't work on the ex-works blue one (that got white tyre slippage marks instead - mainly because up until then I hadn't seen anyone else do this!) Hope this is helpful......

That's cute!!😁

According to the OP's linked article, if 2239 was a member of Lot 337 then it was built new with a cab without side windows. The article claims that all '2251s' eventually received side windows and that 2238 was still running windowless as late as September 1957 - the above photo of a stored windowless 2239 in 1962 would contradict "all", and the author may be correct about 2238 and somehow unaware of 2239, or he has confused the two. A pre-1957 photo of 2238 with windows would sort this......

With incorrect right-facing BR emblem too.

Just found this photo while image trawling.......the man himself! Hello Ron!!

If these two arrived and two '700s' departed at roughly the same time (presumably to that great engine shed in the sky) then it's logical to assume they were sent there for a purpose, so maybe that was it - let's see if anyone can confirm........🙂

Perhaps unsurprisingly it appears to be coupled to the same tender as the above pic. It does look slightly odd with the L-shaped cab side handrail and lining framing a window which isn't there! Also I doubt if it carried those OHLE flashes for much more than a year. How close would it have got to such equipment anyway, to make them worthwhile?

I noted a decent colour photo of this example while browsing steam mags many years ago now and was very surprised to see one of these in BR lined green without cab side windows - couldn't help wondering how it managed to collect one without the other. I can't recall the condition of the tender now but here the lining on the loco's cab side is just discernible but not on the tender - the latter's large BR crest suggests this isn't lined and may not be green either. I'd also be interested in the answer to this question! I've always been a diesel modeller with the odd foray into steam, but something about these locos always appealed - so much so that I bought the Wills kit in the 1970s but never built it as the Mainline model came out, so I bought one of those instead. Eventually I had this, an Airfix 14xx and 'Castle', a Lima 45xx and Mainline 57xx and 43xx, but moved them all on in the early '90s when I got seriously into modelling diesel-hydraulics..........until around 2003 when the Bachmann 45xx was announced. I knew resistance was futile with this so immediately started another steam collection with the purchase of........yes, a Bachmann Collett Goods, 2277 in lined green! From my point of view it's a pity these were never seen in Cornwall, although I looked up 2277's allocation history and discovered that it was an Exmouth Junction loco late on in life (along with 2214 IIRC) which must have been as close to Cornwall as any '2251s' ever got, lending a little extra validity to Rule 1! That Wills kit was the closest I ever got to building a whitemetal steam loco kit - I often wish I'd persevered with it, just for the experience. After all, no pony trucks or valve gear to worry about. No, no, please don't mention Ebay, it's way too late now 😁!

Looks like the ETH connector was moved from inside to outside the buffer (nearest corner above) during that overhaul too.......

My take on a Bachmann D7660, but at the other end of its life! Last year I combined an early Class 25/3 chassis with an as-new D5211 body from Elaine's Trains plus matching underframe from EKMexhibitions to create a model of Scottish D7579. This left me with a spare 25/3 body and underframe - what to do with these? Easy (!?) - combine with a set of Class 25 bogie sideframes left over from a Bachmann-powered Hornby Class 29 project, and a pair of old Hornby B4 bogies with the sideframe detail brutally filed down until the pinpoints showed through and fitted with Hornby 14mm wheels to create an ETHEL! ETHEL 1 (ex-D7660/25310) was selected as the paint job was easier than the other two, and a boiler compartment grille/blank swap with D7579 put both models right. Transfers from RailTec. It still needs spray varnishing (roll on the summer!) before the glazing, 'domino' headcodes and cab door handrails can be refitted. Another reason for doing ETHEL 1 was that I had photographed it without having to go all the way to Scotland - actually about 3 miles from home in Wiltshire! Seen outside Swindon Works in August 1984 with fellow Scot 27040 for company: It's interesting to reflect that D7660 never had its boiler grilles blanked, and that the chances of this one of only two late-style Class 25s to carry blue paint around its cab windscreens at the beginning of its career reacquiring this feature at the end were remote - and yet it happened!I Anyway, except for D7660 this is wandering off-topic into 'imperfect previous model' territory so I'll 🤐 zip it here!