PenrithBeacon

If your kit has the same smoke box and chimney as this one then the only livery, MR, LMS & BR is plain black. Just a note, the brown ones were MR with earlier Johnson chimney/smokebox and the colour was the purple brown undercoat for the crimson lake which was varnished as an economy measure. It seems to have been applied to only a few locomotives . I have two of these bought made up off eBay one day I hope to get them working.

The Leamington show

I know what the top feed arrangement was and I also know, with a working lifetime of experience, about standardisation. With that in mind, it's all too clear looking at the photo that when the top feed of the 8F was changed by the WD (and with good reason) it rendered the modified boilers non-standard with the original. This is why 48774-5 always kept their WD boilers rather than receiving a standard boiler change on their heavy general overhauls. It must have made their heavy generals a longer drawn out business but BR must have thought that the balance of advantage lay with leaving l

I don't think the boilers with the WD top feed were interchangeable with the others and a look at the photos you have provided above shows why. It's interesting that the lower photo shows a vac pipe, I wonder if 48773-5 were so equipped before they got to Eastleigh. Are there any photos of 48773 in traffic with the WD boiler.

On the matter of 48773's boiler again. Is there any record of the WD boiler number that was fitted before the engine got its standard Stanier boiler? I ask because it's very clear the 48774-5 kept their WD boilers to the end , while 48773 swapped Stanier boilers. Clearly the WD boilers were considered non-standard probably because the top feed and weren't interchangeable within the boiler pool.

I've looked through RM (there's nothing at all in the index) for further info, but it seems me memory is faulty, there doesn't seem to be another reference to this matter. Very odd.

Got my dates a little wrong, sorry. This appeared in RM September 57

I'll have to check in RM, but IIRC the engine as delivered to BR from the WD had the WD top feeds as did the other two. When the boiler was replaced at Eastleigh the engine then had a standard Stanier boiler for the class and, I imagine, the removed boiler was scrapped. Whether it got a replacement smoke box as well, I don't know. This happened over late 1956-early 1957 IIRC, but I might be wrong, memory isn't what it used to be.

So many wagons for such a small layout! But please don't think I'm not enjoying them, they're brilliant.

At least one of the three engines was marked, officially, by a number in the WD Austerity series at Eastleigh but then the error was noticed and the engine didn't go into service like that. I'll see what I can find in RM.

48773's boiler was found to be beyond economic repair during the overhaul at Eastleigh immediately after purchase by BR. A spare was sent from Crewe but this seems to have taken a while which was why the loco was the last in traffic of the trio making the total in BR service 666. Not that this lasted long!

I use Pinnacle, but it has a huge amount of functionality which I don't use and these require a very capable computer even though I don't use the software to its full extent. Because of this I've stayed with v12 from 2009 rather than upgrading to the more recent versions. If I were starting again I think I might explore the downloadable apps and use the tablet.

Comet do their own jigs and very good they're too

My understanding is that the inside of loco frames were painted indian red or vermilion to show up any cracks in the frames. These cracks would fill up with grease and oil which would contrast very nicely with the red. The practice assumes that the loco would be kept clean which they would during the Victorian era. Later practice of making frames from steel, not iron, would render this less important and these painting practices just became part of tradition. This isn't to say that steel frames couldn't break, it was just less likely.

I've been looking on eBay and Amazon for a power pack for rapid charging of 1S Lipo batteries but I can't find anything. Does such a thing exist? They seem to if you want to charge a phone or tablet but not for RC, the best thing I can come up with is high power 3S batteries.