Phil Bullock

A couple of spots of glue and glaze holds them in place robustly but will allow removal if you want to change the codes again

I gave a talk to the Worcester Locomotive Society Tuesday last … a very enjoyable evening, about 80 ex and current railwaymen and enthusiasts present. Took the opportunity to explore two points …. D9506-9 May have been allocated to Worcester on paper but they were never actually on the ground and As Mike Thomas mentioned to me in his notes up this thread they did work up to Worcester from Gloucester but only for a short time after steam finished until replaced by NBL type 2s … so that’s 1966 to 67. Cheers

Great got it thanks was just about to reach for the Xurons! The two bars in the accessory pack complete the bogie frame at the front once the kinematic couplings are removed…

Anyone else looking at removing the kinematic couplings? Have undone the two little screws visible behind the buffer beam but that doesn’t seem to release them….

Well said Jeremy…. Totally agree!

Done headcodes on one end of D6702. Have to say this loco wins the prize for the easiest to change! As suggested earlier finger nail leverage removes the outer frame of the headcode box. It is retained by two small pins which will either come away cleanly with the outer frame or snap off. You can see the remains of the snapped off ones above and below the 11 headcode in this photo… the pins came out cleanly on the other side. Underneath is a piece of glazing which is an interference fit and under that are the self adhesive headcode digits on a lovely metal frame. I peeled the old ones off with the help of a pin and replaced them with digits off the excellent included sheet. I then reassembled with a couple of tiny drops of glue n glaze either on the pins or on the frame if the pins had snapped off in their holes . And jobs a good un! Scunthorpe to Newport ADJ bolster Es loaded with 4 inch bar going south… 8E63 in the opposite direction, 16 tonners Radyr to Scunthorpe 16 tonners loaded with coking coal. A pretty convincing pair of workings for a Tinsley split boxer to appear on Abbotswood

Not unique …. Stands for no boiler. Although as modelled the boiler port is plated over the safety valves … the two small protruding items in front of the port … are still present. The reference photo Here still has a steam heat bag too so it may well be that NFB would be more accurate …. No functional boiler … although that could be open to misinterpretation…

Is my first job. Initial investigation suggests the frames are an interference fit… finger nail enough to budge them. Just beware of the superb detail on the boxes and frames

Yes withdrawal patterns seemed erratic … a good few later batch locos went in the first hit. There’s a picture of D6324 on Flickr with me in it! D6324 Worcester open day That furtive oik climbing in to the cab of the 03 in the shed is me. Of course by this time D6324 had standard headcode boxes. It’s a back burner modelling job at the moment …

@Downendian and I are both looking at D6324 …. GSYP for me

Got my D6702 too … now where’s me ECoS?

Oh yes! Here they all are with the nearest to a real one at Toddington A team effort between son James and yours truly.D842 and D857 have gone back in to works for livery adjustments.... D832 is of course a 42 not a 43 but she does have NBL pattern fan grilles .... and ISTR originally had engine mountings to take MANs so perhaps a little of the spirit lives on. If the fleet floats your boat come and see us at the Redditch show next March where no doubt a highly improbable number of Warships will appear on the layout....

Not convinced it’s a marker light …. Looks to have a riveted rim around it. No idea why 56/7 didn’t have it but only goes to prove these blighters are one of the least consistent classes to model! Just represented it with a small washer on my conversions… D6336/42 on the right , D6320/31 On the left

There certainly are examples of blocks too short to accommodate a train … Worcester Tunnel Junction to Worcester Shrub Hill Junction immediately comes to mind. If you look at the panoramic view here Worcester Shrub Hill shed For trains approaching Shrub Hill from the north there isn’t much more than a couple of loco lengths between Tunnel Junctions starter (with a fixed distant) and Shrub Hill Junctions home signals. I don’t remember trains being held at Tunnel Junctions starter however so perhaps there was a rule about tunnel junction not accepting a train unless SH junction was also clear. Am seeing a load of Worcester railwaymen tomorrow night as am doing a film show for the Worcester Locomotive Society will add that to the list of questions for them!

Allegedly a scrapper bid for and won a load of 16 ton mineral wagons …. Not a happy chappy when he only got the tare weight of scrap!

And believe it or not that consist actually ran from Swindon to Derby in 1972 when the test coach was refurbished… RTC sent 8598 down to collect it. My good friend Brian Thomas was at Abbotswood with his camera but had used all his film on the more common traffic…. No internet then to prewarn of what might be coming next …

The nose end doors are perhaps the most conspicuous. Whilst the pilot and second batch were built with single …. Not bifold …. Nose end doors they mostly…. If not all …. acquired the bifold pattern by the time they received headcode boxes. The third final batch had single nose end doors from new which they retained throughout their life.

That railway room is far too neat!!! 😉

BRdatabase lists D8035/6 as Bescot locos in addition to the D8040-44 batch . Am sure I remember D8038 being around too …. Always thought it significant that Bescot had D8038 and D8138 …. Happy days!

For anyone looking for an interesting nose first working to model … how about D8036 on a train with a transformer at Blaenau Ffestiniog in 1961… D8036 Blaenau Ffestiniog

D8035-39 IIRC from series 1. D8138 tried to mate with D7038 at Hartlebury …video here D8138/D7038 smash York also used their D83xx singly particularly on Foss Island branch trips.

And single 20s not unknown in the West Midlands either…. The Stourport PS job was usually a 25 but 20s not unknown …. 50% of the mileage must have been bonnet first!

Phew that’s great to hear!

if the cobaltIP motor is mounted at 180 degrees then swapping over the Dcc feed wires from the bus will achieve the desired result without using another switch ….

Me too! Must be our age….