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Pierview

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  1. It seems that e-Bay is the present that keeps giving in terms of finding loco restoration projects for me but I will definitely try not to be tempted for a while after this one! The model for sale looked in a pretty sad way, and no interest whatsoever was being shown in it, but I could see some potential and made a modest bid, which was accepted. It seems that this model met its fate in the post on the way to the vendor. Apparently it was inadequately packed and suffered accordingly with bits being knocked off. The vendor had never got round to restoring it and he had decided to move it on. Despite the damage, however, most parts seemed to be there and , most importantly, it had a full set of later type Romford driving wheels. Had the latter not been present then I wouldn't have considered the project. This is what I got for my money: The loco body kit is by M&L and I remember building one for a friend in the 1980's. It was designed to fit onto the Mainline Manor chassis but I always thought that it sat a little high. However this kit had a Comet chassis, albeit somewhat battered, whilst the tender looks to be a K's product. I wanted a 4000g tender for my grange so I will be discarding the K's one and replacing it with this Wills one which came as a bonus with the 57xx that I recently restored .Perhaps the seller thought that they went together! Fortunately, I also had an unused Comet internal frames set which fitted this tender. I began work on the loco chassis by stripping it down and repainting. The Comet slide bars were so distorted as to be beyond redemption but fortunately I had an unused set in my spares box. These were duly assembled and fitted in place of the damaged ones. The connecting rods were not fully soldered together so I corrected this and dismantled the coupling rods before articulating them to pivot on the central wheel. I find that this improves running where a rigid chassis is used. The existing crossheads were re-used and I soldered on a small bracket to the RH one which will take the vacuum pump rod. Brake shoes came from one of the ever useful Mainly Trains etches. For motive power I fitted the ubiquitous High Level Road Runner + gear box with 45:1 reduction, and treated myself to a HL 1230 coreless motor. I have wanted to try out one of these for some time and following initial chassis tests I am very pleased. There is plenty of power there and I suspect that these motors perhaps have the edge on the Mashimas that I have used for many years. With the chassis running I have now turned my attention to the collection of bits and these went into the paint stripper this afternoon. After they emerge and the cleaning up is done re-assembly will commence! Barry
  2. I have now completed the King restoration as shown here. I only ever knew the Kings in their double chimney guise, but as I already have one of these I wanted the earlier version. I chose 6007 as being a member of the class that I saw in service, albeit by then fitted with a double chimney. It hasn't been a very expensive project but, as is always the way with these restorations, there was an awful amount of work involved. Having done 8 of these white metal kit restorations over the past year it was my intention to now take a break from them and get on with some etched brass kits. However guess what? Yes - there is another kit restoration in the pipeline which is currently being worked on. Watch this space! Barry
  3. Mashima motors are still available from Branchlines and I bought one a couple of months ago. It depends on the size you need but it would be worth talking to Brian. I believe that he made a bulk purchase as manufacture was coming to an end. As for alternatives i would suggest taking a look at the High Level website. I have used HL gearboxes for many years and recently I have had good results with the HL budget iron core motors. I have only used the 1015 and 1020 to date which are extremely good value at only £9.50 each. One of those should do the job for your B4 but Chris has other motors including the more expensive coreless ones. I am just about to experiment with one of those. Barry
  4. It is an attractive livery but of course quite fictitious! The South Devon painters were having a bit of fun with their take on modern GWR livery before the loco came out of service. The locomotive 1369 actually managed to retain "Great Western" lettering on its side tanks until 1961 when it was repainted in BR livery. That didn't last too long though as it passed into preservation in the mid 1960's and was promptly repainted into GWR green. Good luck with the model and it will be interesting to hear how you get on. Barry
  5. Well done - an excellent effort and quite convincing. I grew up with Kitmaster conversions and this takes me back to the 1960's ! Barry
  6. This is the last of the quartet of careworn kit built locos that I acquired in quick succession just before Christmas. I described the restoration of the other 3 locos in previous threads and although this was the first to be worked on it has been held up for a couple of months awaiting spare parts. It appeared on e-Bay as part of a clearance sale by Hayfield of this parish and although it was lacking a motor it did have a full set of wheels, which for me is always an important consideration. Anyway, my bid was successful and this is what I took delivery of: By this the time this photo was taken I had already dismantled the motion and brake gear. Clearly the original builder had taken some care but the loco then seems to have fallen on hard times and some parts were missing. I believe that this was the condition in which Hayfield acquired it. I began with the chassis which was stripped down to component parts and reassembled. The chassis block is the old Wills cast version designed to take a tri-ang X04 motor and I was fortunate that I had an unused MRRC 1001 5 pole motor just waiting for a home. After so many years with the convenience of modern gear box motors I was out of practice with direct drive units and I had forgotten the trials and tribulations involved in achieving satisfactory gear meshing. I concluded that the original motor must have a tapering slipper plate to support it in its correct position. I think that Wills probably did a cast version but as I didn't have this I fashioned my own by cutting down a section of a wooden clothes peg pilfered from my wife's stock. I think I used this trick on a K's kit more years ago than I now care to remember. It did the job, however, and I moved on to partially rebuild the pick up assembly and fit the brake gear. I originally attempted to re use the original white metal brake shoes but this was a false economy. They inevitably gave trouble and were replaced by ones from a Mainly Trains etch. The tender inner frames from Comet were re used after tidying up and I devised a better method of securing them to the tender body. The loco and tender bodies had been assembled quite well but were a little battle worn and I felt that merely patching them up would not produce the effect that I wanted. To do the job properly they had to be stripped down to basic parts and here we see the result: The King is in the all together - and pieces! Fortunately re-assembly was rapid and this stage was reached by Christmas: Thereafter things came to a halt, as amongst the parts missing were the front bogie castings with the distinctive outside springs. An enquiry to Squires found that King spares were out of stock and I had to wait for a couple of months whilst they were cast. They arrived recently, however. and have now been fitted as shown: Eagle eyed GWR men will note that the chimney is incorrect for a King ,This was fitted just for effect and has now been replaced by a nice brass one of the correct shape. I have fitted my usual small amount of extra detail, including lamp brackets, and the paint shop now beckons. Barry
  7. My personal opinion is that the 1366 class loco is one of the better DJH kits and I had no problems with assembling any of mine. The wheelbase is short on this class and I found that the model, just like the prototype, was quite at home on short radius curves. I can't speak for first radius curves but my 1366's cope well with the tight curves on my small dockside layout. The original Romford wheels supplied with this kit have been improved by Markits and are now more accurate with a finer profile. I would recommend them as being the best and easiest option. Although I used High Level gearboxes and motors on 1366 and 1371, my other 4 members of the class have a variety of motors, including one with a Portescap. However 1370 was built using a DJH unit which I found to be very satisfactory and easy to fit. Regarding pick ups these can come in a variety of forms and I would recommend Iain Rice's book "Chassis construction in 4mm" This gives a number of easily produced solutions for the modeller. Generally for under chassis pick ups I use a couple of pieces of circuit board fixed to the underside of the frames . Sometimes I solder a buzz bar of wire (about paper clip diameter) to these and solder in turn the fine wire pick ups to this. In certain instances I solder the wires direct to the circuit board but there are any number of variations, some of which have been described by others on this forum. It is not that difficult but care and time taken will give the rewards in terms of performance. Good luck if you decide to go for it and I look forward to seeing the results! Barry
  8. That's a really excellent job and thank you for the detail shots. The missing boiler feed clack cover is a nice touch and so typical of engines in everyday use. You have given me food for thought! Barry
  9. Thank you 30368. I think that I should perhaps have put a bit more effort into the chassis detailing. have you done a Q1? Barry
  10. My third kit rebuild of the winter is a K's Bulleid Q1, which was something of a random purchase on Christmas Eve. The "buy it now " price was reasonable and with the distractions of the festive season I didn't give too much thought to the merits or otherwise of the kit. If I had done my homework properly though I may perhaps have not bothered! What I got for my money was a quite well built kit, albeit motorless, fitted with Hamblings driving wheels, which I hadn't seen for years. Until I consulted my files I hadn't realised that this kit was first introduced as far back as 1963, and it is definitely of its time. Further investigation revealed that the wheelbase is innacurate by a few mms, for reasons best known to K's, and the coupling rods should be fluted. What then to do with my purchase? I did consider selling it on again but decided in the end to accept the compromises and to make the best of a less than perfect model. The preceding photos show the kit as acquired but with some improvements already made. I began with the chassis and dismantled the coupling rods in order to carefully drift out the central driven axle and remove the k's worm wheel. The thick brass frames are quite narrow and I therefore used a High Level Slim Liner + gearbox with a 54:1 ratio and a Mashima 1420 motor. As can be seen. the new mechanism fits snugly in the top of the k's frames. I added Mainly Trains brake shoes to the front and rear drivers but had to omit the central pair as the sandboxes were to close to the wheels and left no room - no doubt because of the wheelbase compromise. the generic K's brass buffers which were fitted were far too large and I replaced them with white metal ones which are a bit closer to the prototype. The AWS kit under the LH cab was cobbled together from bits in the spares box and I then turned to the body and tender. Dismantling these was out of the question as they had been very solidly assembled, possibly with solder. Furthermore, the previous builder had seen fit to cram the loco boiler with lead, which made it very heavy indeed. it was only with very great difficulty that I was able to extract sufficient of this ballast to allow clearance for the motor. The sparse nature of this prototype offered little scope for detailing but I did fit lamp brackets and hand rail to the tender back. I also replaced the loco cast chimney with a turned brass one that I bought many years ago. So there you have it. Not a patch on my Hornby Q1 both in terms of appearance and performance but an interesting exercise nevertheless. Will I keep it? Well probably! Three down and one to go and the last rescue is 90% complete and just awaiting spare parts from Squires. More to follow in due course. Barry
  11. During the weeks leading up to Christmas I somehow managed to acquire 4 pre-built kit locos on e-Bay, and my winter project has been restoring them. In a separate thread have already described my epic rebuild of the SEF C class loco and I have now completed the next two, which fortunately did not require anything like as much work. The first of these is a K's 57xx 0-6-0PT. I really don't know why I felt it necessary to acquire yet another 57xx as I already had 7 (or 8 if you include the 97xx variant) but I did have a spare set of number plates...... Anyway, I ended up bidding for and winning the said loco which came with a Wills 4000g GWR tender so for £24 I thought that I did quite well. With past experience of K's mechanisms I fully expected to have to re-motor the 57xx and possibly fit new wheels as well but after adjusting the pick ups and cleaning the treads the venerable Mk 2 motor ran surprisingly smoothly and I decided to retain it, at least for the present. A bonus was that a previous owner had fitted brake shoes although the outside rods were missing and I had to add these from the invaluable Mainly trains etch. As the kit was quite well made I saw no point in dismantling it and stripping the paintwork and therefore concentrated my efforts on adding detail. The biggest improvement to be made to the K's kit in my opinion is to replace the somewhat undernourished chimney and I used a nice brass casting from PDK, who also supplied correct pattern tank vents to replace the originals, I also replaced the safety valve bonnet with a cast brass version as this was not being painted over on this particular loco. I replaced the smokebox door handle, and other improvements were rear cab grilles (from the Mainly Trains etch) and sandbox opening rods (from RT models). As my prototype had top feed I fitted a white metal casting ,again from PDK, with pipework shaped from fuse wire. Lamp brackets and rear bunker hooks were fabricated in my usual way from office staples. All 4 footplate steps were missing but Dave Ellis, now in his Nucast Partners guise, kindly supplied me with replacements. My chosen prototype was 9642 which was a Weymouth loco from shortly after it was built until the mid 1950's and is now preserved. WWhi w Whilst working on 9642 I also did a restoration job on the third of the e-Bay purchases and I will post details of this one next. Barry
  12. I have now completed the C class rebuild as shown here. I am quite pleased with the results but an enormous amount of work was involved. I was fortunate that Squires had the spares in stock ,which isn't the case for all loco kits. We were certainly spoiled by the superb service offered by Dave Ellis when he ran SEF! Whilst finishing the C I have also been working on a couple of other white metal kit rescues which did not need quite so much resuscitation. They are both nearly complete and further details will follow shortly. Barry
  13. Well done. Your purchase was even more derelict than mine and it would be interesting to see the progress that you make with the rebuild. I think that there is a great deal of satisfaction to be gained in breathing fresh life into a heap of junk! Barry
  14. That's great 41516 - do you have any photos? I think UHU was used on mine as well ! Barry
  15. Despite previous good intentions on my part not to take on any more kit built wrecks my resolution was not very good, and I somehow managed to acquire another 4 in the few weeks leading up to Christmas. I always make a point of dealing with such purchases as soon as possible as otherwise they are likely to go back in a box for another 10 years or so. In consequence, I have spent the last few weeks working on them and the first of the quartet, an SEF/Wills Southern C class is now almost finished. I have to say that this is the most bizarre kit built locomotive I have ever encountered! The E-Bay seller was completely honest about the item in his description , and the photographs pulled no punches, but when I received the loco and saw the state of it my immediate reaction was to cut my losses and move it on again. Apparently the loco was one of a batch of similar items purchased by the seller some years ago and most shared the same characteristics of being poorly constructed and painted for static display on the LH side only. No motors were fitted and the wheels were glued into position. The RH side, which was not on display, was unpainted and also missing some detail parts. I am surprised that I had competition in bidding for this loco and even more surprised that all the other wrecks sold as well. Obviously I am not the only madman about! Clearly what was going to determine if this was a viable project was whether the Romford wheels, which appeared to be in good condition, could be salvaged. I managed to extract them from the loco and tender frames and painstakingly picked away the copious residue of contact adhesive with which they had been secured. After testing them I found that they were all sound. The loco chassis frames could have been salvaged but so much was missing that the only sensible solution was to purchase a replacement chassis etch from Squires, who now handle SEF spare parts. Unfortunately I also needed to purchase quite a few white metal parts to replace those missing or damaged,, and this illustrates the drawback of taking on a project such as this. Even so, the overall cost was substantially less than the current price of a new kit and wheels. The new chassis was assembled using the original frame spacers and powered by a High Level RR+ gearbox and 1020 FE motor, The tender frame was saved and rebuilt with etched brake shoes from my spares box. Loco and tender bodies then underwent the paint stripper treatment and were reduced to this. Dismantling of the body revealed a break in the running plate in front of the LH cab side and this proved to be slightly tricky to repair. It was eventually achieved by aralditing a short piece of wire to join the two sections and refining the finished joint with Milliput to conceal any imperfections. Replacement and added detail completed things as shown here. It received its top coat of paint this morning so completion should follow in the next few days. Barry
  16. Hi Peter Well done on an excellent conversion. I may have a go myself if I can find a Peckett at a decent price. Regarding the bell, it is one of a batch I bought from Mercian Models a few years ago. The firm is no longer trading following the sad passing of its founder Trevor Cousens last year, but I note that CSP Models offer a similar GWR bell amongst their range. As well as 1144 I have also used the bells on my Weymouth tramway 03 and 04 diesel shunters and may fit one to an Ivatt 2-6-2T as well. The under tank ones fitted to steam classes 1361, 1366, 57xx and 74xx , however, are noticeably smaller and I made these myself by cutting down Billing ship accessories brass bells. Barry
  17. I rather like those! Did the Hornby Peckett require much modification to turn it into 1151? Barry
  18. Thanks for that CEINEWYDD and sorry that I pipped you at the auction! Barry
  19. I have now completed 1144 as shown. The distinctive bell adds to the character of the loco I think. I have wanted to build one of the Swansea docks shunters for years and this has been an interesting little project. On to the next rebuild! Barry
  20. When this little chap appeared on that well known on-line auction site recently I took an immediate interest. What was on offer was a quite neat Hawthorn Leslie industrial saddle tank, which I think was built from a Centre Models kit. I like industrial engines in any case but what drew me to this model was that it appeared to be almost a direct ringer for the GWR's own HL, which was originally with the Swansea Harbour Trust, and eventually became BR no 1144. Close examination of the seller's photographs seemed to confirm my suspicions, and I was sufficiently encouraged to take a punt at the auction. Despite some keen competition my bid eventually prevailed although I did end up paying a tad more than I had anticipated. Given that this is an unusual model that doesn't become available very often, however, I thought the cost was justified. When the model arrived I lost no time in comparing it with the basic outline drawing in Russell's GWR absorbed engines book, and I found that all principal dimensions appeared to be correct. In addition there was only a modicum of "Swindonisation" involving small detail changes. I began with the chassis. The loco was described as a non-runner and this was not surprising as the motor did not mesh with the worm wheel and no pick up assembly was fitted! The ECM motor was sturdy and quite serviceable but unfortunately protruded into the cab. I therefore replaced it with a High Level road runner gear box with a 60;1 reduction and a 1020FE motor. I don't like white metal chassis blocks and this one looked a bit weak owing to the cut out needed for the ECM motor. I therefore cut a couple of fill in strips from brass and araldited these to the chassis block. This had the dual advantage of both strengthening the block and also improving the appearance of the frames when viewed from beneath the running plate. The slide bars were missing the distinctive end support plates, so I fretted a couple out of NS and soldered them in place. The coupling and connecting rods were stripped of paint and a new pick up assembly was fabricated. The result was a quite smooth running little chassis. The body was striped of paint via the usual dettol bath and I then set about some "Swindonisation". 1144 had an open back cab so I sawed off the cab rear as shown and added an upper arc fretted from brass strip. The sandboxes were of a different design so, they were sawn off to be replaced by some GWR style ones that, fortuitously, I found in my spares box. Likewise. the buffers were removed to be replaced by GWR tapered shank ones that I drilled out to take Gibson industrial pattern large diameter heads that will be fitted after the main painting. I filled in the cab interior with NS sheet and felt it essential to provide at least an impression of cab fittings. It is all rather conjectural and based on a few glimpses in photographs but with a crew in place I hope that it will give the overall effect. I used Mainly Trains etchings together with bits and pieces from my scrap box. The hand brake column is built as ingeniously described by Iain Rice in one of his books. The back head is actually the tender dome from an Airfix City of Truro kit - never throw anything away! This is the current state of play showing the further modifications made. The safety valves have been replaced by a GWR bonnet, a continuous handrail is now fitted and the smokebox door securing wheel has now been replaced by handles. The rear cab handrail will be added when the roof is secured in position. I need an improvement in the weather now to get the painting done! Barry
  21. I need foot steps to complete an old K's kit that I am rebuilding. I have one cab step but am missing the other and the 2 front steps. Paint condition immaterial so long as they are sound.
  22. RT models offer an etched detailing fret, including ladders , for the Airfix/Dapol kit. Barry
  23. Some fascinating and cleverly crafted conversions there 33c - well done. I tried a bow pen once but didn't really get on with it. Subsequently I used to hand line using a mapping pen (anyone remember those?) but I am not sure that I have the patience and steadiness of hand for it these days! Barry
  24. At last I have managed to complete the L1, and the finished result is shown here. The Model Master lining took me quite a long time to apply and it was not an exercise that I enjoyed on this occasion. I was not helped by the fact that I ran out of corner pieces and found great difficulty in getting replacements. I suspect that there are supply problems at present as none of my usual dealers had any in stock. In the end I managed to find a bespoke lining set for a standard tank and cut this up to get what I needed. Something of a waste and also a bit expensive but I could see no other way of completing the job quickly. As I didn't see any L1's in service, I had no particular engine that I wished to portray, and therefore decided on 31757 . This is a nod to Tri-ang as 31757 was also the identity of the original model which emerged from the Margate factory all those years ago. It has been an interesting exercise which didn't cost very much and I hope that I have achieved my objective of building a slightly better L1. The next project will involve a somewhat smaller locomotive, and more on that in due course. Barry
  25. I remember reading an article written in the 1960's on a Kitmaster/Airfix Bulleid pacific motorisation which used a HD Duchess chassis. If I recall correctly, the author disguised the spoked wheels by slicing thin sections from the kit wheels which he then rubbed down to wafer thickness on a sheet of sand paper before gluing them on as overlays. Not for the faint hearted though! Barry
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