Captain Kernow

I am an extremely happy bunny today, as the postman has brought me this: And exactly as Tony said a few posts ago, it is such a sweet runner. Based at Croes Newydd for some of the time period covered by Bethesda Sidings, it is absolutely ideal. I count myself very lucky indeed to have been able to acquire this and other locos from the Peter Lawson collection. Many thanks again to Tony, Graham and anyone else assisting with this.

Yes, you are correct, they did all start out in lined black livery, the green came later (it was the naughty Western Region's fault!). What surprised me was that they started with the unlined green as early as 1957, one might be forgiven for thinking that that came a bit later (ie. after some were initially repainted lined green), as some kind of an economy measure. In the end, most of the W.R. allocation of 82XXXs were in green (lined or otherwise). When I built my 82041 in 1995, however, I didn't realise quite how widespread the green was on the W.R. in my layout's time frame. I was going to finish it in Mixed Traffic black, but then realised that some folk at exhibitions might mistake it for the soon-to-be-released Bachmann Ivatt 2-6-2T, so I opted for green, to get away from the 'is that the new Bachmann one?' questions...

A special train of box vans for the peat works arrives at Bleakhouse Road: Photo: Chris Nevard, courtesy Hornby Magazine

Hi Tony, not wishing to contradict you on the origins of the 82XXX, but the shape of the individual castings around the cab and smokebox area, plus the thickness of the cab itself does look like the body at least was built from the Kemilway kit?

There are some good photographs of the area in Volume 11 of Lightmoor's 'British Railways, The First 25 Years', North Wales, Chester and the Wirral'.

This is my Kemilway one, built almost 30 years ago now and I still haven't been able to bring myself to weather it!... Apologies for the 'planter in the sky' behind the loco, never was any good with Photoshop...

I've always liked the BR standards and especially the Standard 3 2-6-2 tanks. I've built both the Kemilway and DJH ones in my time. I probably prefer the Kemilway chassis (for the lovely valve gear) and the DJH body (for the sensible way that they combine both etched brass and whitemetal, depending on the part being replicated). I did acquire a couple of Bachmann ones, when they came out, but one got sold on. The other one refused to run smoothly, so eventually I replaced the RTR chassis with a modified Comet 76XXX chassis. 82044 is the last of the class (further batches were planned but never got built) and was also unique, livery-wise, in that it was the only black one to have no lining on the bunker and the number on the cab side. It was based at Barrow Road at the very end of Western Region steam in 1965. I built it to run on my S&D layouts, so in this photo, it's in Mid-Wales, a rather long way from home!

I had thought that the repainting into unlined green came later, but there's a photo in the RCTS book (Volume 3) of 82007 standing outside Swindon Works, newly repainted into unlined green with a large early crest.

That's absolutely right, according to the RCTS book on the Standard tank classes.

Try these - http://www.lanarkshiremodels.com/lanarkshiremodelsandsupplieswebsite_019.htm I think they are excellent.

I certainly agree with that. Back in the 1970s, when I first started building whitemetal kits as a teenager, the choice in RTR was extremely limited and kits actually offered more accuracy and detail than the average RTR product. Today, so much has changed.

Here's a question for all of you who have cats - do any of your cats eat vegetables? We've discovered that one of ours loves eating cooked courgette (cooled off, of course). He loves eating and we now use this to bulk up his food, as it has next to no calories, thus helping us keep his weight under control. The other one, however, can't stand the stuff...

On the question of pricing of kit-built locos, I am aware that a beautifully assembled P4 Pro-scale 'Princess' in BR maroon, built by Alan Sibley, sold very quickly (was advertised on the S4 forum and also was on Ebay). The asking price was £350 (o.n.o.). I don't know if that represented the final price paid (I didn't buy it, despite being tempted (it would have been too big for my little P4 layout anyway). Even for that price, there's no way that you could get a kit professionally built for that, especially one so well finished.

I think it gives the station the air of a seasonally important West Country holiday terminus, such as Minehead or Ilfracombe!

I completely agree. I still get surprised by the amount of dirt that accumulates on my OO and P4 stock, despite my having a very strict (almost draconian - just ask my friends who have helped me at shows in the past!) track cleaning policy.

You make a very interesting point, Tony. If we accept for a moment (for reasons already discussed), that kit builders are now in a pretty small minority as compared with the number of RTR-buyers (especially when the collector market for RTR is factored in), then that might imply that the market share for ready-built kits is already very small, unfortunately. It leaves me wondering why a ready-built kit (no matter how well assembled and no matter how well it runs), might still not appeal to someone who has hitherto only had experience of RTR locos. Perhaps such individuals, having little or no experience of kit building, are not attracted to kit built locos because they are (i) wary of something going wrong and perhaps (ii) wouldn't know how to go about fault-finding and rectification, whereas someone who has experience of building kits themselves may already have sufficient confidence to take something like that on. Kit-built locos are, by their very nature, more 'individualistic' than mass-produced RTR items. If an RTR model goes wrong, most owners have the option of (a) returning it to the retailer or even manufacturer under some kind of warranty or (b) fault-finding themselves, with the confidence that they are dealing with a 'standard' product and the fact that there are many, many other folk out there with the same model, who may be able to advise them on what to do, on a forum such as this one.

'I'm here to help'. 'Honest'.

Unfortunately I've had to tell Rob just now that I won't be able to attend the show this year after all, due to having to have a medical procedure, the timing of which has clashed with the event.

I agree, but from what I can recall, YouTube just give the name of the piece, not the artist playing it...

The problem is, I am only just about computer literate enough to add the sound track in the first place. I've just gone back to my YouTube channel home page, but I can't work out where I can find out the name of the piece!... Sorry about that!

To be honest, I don't think it's Einaudi, it's something that YouTube offered for free as background music and it seemed pleasant and about the same length as my clip...

I've now finished working on the second of the two whitemetal panniers that I bought from Tony, which were from the Peter Lawson collection. As I mentioned previously, I have renumbered them and added just one or two additional details. The second one has also now received some weathering and both locos now have a second member of footplate crew on each, courtesy of the ModelU Staff Agency... Here they are, when they first arrived, posing on 'Bethesda Sidings': And here they are as they are now, in approximately the same position on the layout: The work on the second pannier (now 9741, formerly 9681) took a bit longer that I anticipated, for reasons outlined in my Workbench thread - Finally, here's a short video of 9741 shunting:

I meant to add a short video I took of 9741 shunting, so here it is:

More info on the work done on the second pannier can now be found here, on my Workbench thread -

Some more info on the recent work I've been doing on the two whitemetal panniers is shown here in my Workbench thread -