Minerva - O Gauge Class 14 announced

[New Haven Neil]

TBH I thought the initial 'wrong' colour looked more like I remember them, but admittedly this was after NCB service and given the photos and monitors we're seeing may not reflect the actual colour.

[Trevor H]

On 04/02/2022 at 17:12, F-UnitMad said:

Do you mean on the video posted further up this Thread (& some time ago)??

 

You haven't kept up with the news then.? All the cabs were the wrong colour & had to be replaced, hence the further delay. 

See Mike's post above for the final version (which looks a touch too light to me, but might just be on the screen!!??)

I felt the one in the video looked closer to the right colour than the later, but as others have said it looks darker on the model than on the screen.

Sherwood Green I believe was used, which was used on the Brush type 4's and type 2 Bo-Bo's.

[Ressaldar]

I managed to duck out into the garden between showers and came up with these





the lower one is not a crop of the upper one. The clouds were broken and there was a glimmer of sunshine about.

I will be weathering the loco once the driver is installed and the train reporting numbers are fixed in place and I think that the lighter green will tone down quite well and will take more pictures then.

regards

Mike

[Ressaldar]

As an experiment, I took these shots to see if different cameras gave different answers -

 

taken with my iPad



taken with my Lumix GX7 set on aperture priority and seconds after the iPad shot. Neither photo has been 'photo shopped' in any way.

regards

Mike

[New Haven Neil]

16 minutes ago, Ressaldar said:

As an experiment, I took these shots to see if different cameras gave different answers -

 

taken with my iPad



taken with my Lumix GX7 set on aperture priority and seconds after the iPad shot. Neither photo has been 'photo shopped' in any way.

regards

Mike

 

Sums it up really!  I prefer the top one, but as I said above, every monitor and camera will produce different results.  I have two Minerva locos, and they are excellent, so I'm sure it'll be right, it just does not fit in with my memory of the mucky, aged versions of the original livery in NCB use at Backworth of my youth.  I didn't recall the pale bufferbeam colour either, so my memory is not reliable.....it's 63 years old....

[Lord Flashheart]

Mine arrived yesterday, fantastic model,runs and sounds perfect straight out the box,must admit I'm not keen on the cab colour so will be repainting it,also noted is the lamps should be body colour aswell as the thin sole bar.

Another item but not easy rectified is,with the long bonnet to the right, the cab door handles are on the wrong side of the door.

As a big fan of the 14s non of this has put me off getting another sometime,its much better than building another DJH kit.

 

Rob

[mike knowles]

36 minutes ago, Lord Flashheart said:

Mine arrived yesterday, fantastic model,runs and sounds perfect straight out the box,must admit I'm not keen on the cab colour so will be repainting it,also noted is the lamps should be body colour aswell as the thin sole bar.

Another item but not easy rectified is,with the long bonnet to the right, the cab door handles are on the wrong side of the door.

As a big fan of the 14s non of this has put me off getting another sometime,its much better than building another DJH kit.

 

Rob

 

 

This would seem to confirm your comment about the cab door handle.

Edited February 6, 2022 by mike knowles

[Ressaldar]

one last comparison photo



on the same location as the last two, this time with a piece of 80 thou. plasticard etch primed and coated (badly) with two coats of Railmatch 301 Sherwood Green placed alongside the cab. As I said above, some not so subtle weathering is definitely called for.

regards

Mike

[Hal Nail]

7 hours ago, mike knowles said:

 

 

This would seem to confirm your comment about the cab door handle.

 

Now that green shade is spot on.

W Stroudley.

 

[Ressaldar]

I have just removed the cab from the superstructure and it is not as straightforward as it might be. The cab needs gentle easing on both sides and front/back to get things started and I had to remove the screws which retain the desk unit as the cab light cable the roof which passes under the floor is not long enough to enable the cab to be removed as suggested. When re-assembling I found that the best way was to invert the model having located the cab into its runners, then with fingers from both hands on the cab roof gently ease the cab upwards and it clicks into place, then the six screws can be replaced (there was one cabside screw missing on my model)

Hope that this is of use.

regards

Mike

[Ressaldar]

One last mention of the cab colouring, in J K Lewis's 'The Western's Hydraulics' page 163 states "Cab sides and ends Sherwood Green" unfortunately no BS number is given ( the bonnets etc are stated as being BR Locomotive Green to BR Specification No. 30)

There are a couple of photos which show a colour very close to that which Minerva have produced, one by Colin Caddy in Michael Welch's 'Diesels on the Western' and another by W Potter/R Carroll collection in Robert Carroll's 'The Western Region Diesel Hydraulics - A Pictorial Observation'
Not sure if I am allowed to post the pictures.

regards

Mike

[Hal Nail]

3 hours ago, Ressaldar said:

Not sure if I am allowed to post the pictures.

All photographs are automatically the copywrite of the person who took them but whether anyone is going to mind someone using one to illustrate a point, as opposed to commercially, is debateable!

[AY Mod]

3 hours ago, Ressaldar said:

Not sure if I am allowed to post the pictures.

 

Not unless you have the consent of the copyright holder, ask @robertcwp

 

[adb968008]

6 to compare from in green in one picture here…

 

 

(flickr link, not mine).

[Gilbert]

3 minutes ago, adb968008 said:

6 to compare from in green in one picture here…

 

 

(flickr link, not mine).

A great weekend..

 

[Foxley]

Has anyone thought that perhaps the original cab's Minerva had delivered, were the correct tone (comparable to the pictures above)? I wonder if Chris would allow us to purchase those 'wrong' coloured cabs so that we can choose what we prefer?

[F-UnitMad]

On 21/03/2021 at 11:26, TEDDYBEAR D9521 said:

Some great news off Chris hoping the Class 14’s will be here the end of April 2021.

 

D9544 Brand new Swindon May 1965 my photo,

Worth repeating this post from page 3 of this thread. The cab colour is obviously not the same green as the lower green on the Hymek, and is quite dark. Did it fade badly? The green paints BR used at the time all seemed prone to fading - look how tired many of the Class 22s looked after only a decade or so of service!!

That photo does look more like the first green cabs the models came with. I must admit I had the same thought as Mic, above - could we buy a 'wrong' cab off Minerva if we want to?

Edited February 7, 2022 by F-UnitMad

[robertcwp]

2 hours ago, AY Mod said:

 

Not unless you have the consent of the copyright holder, ask @robertcwp

 

The BB code is available on images on my Flickr site and it's fine to use that to post them on RMWeb. On the bottom right of the page, there is a curved arrow pointing up and right. Click on that then choose BB code on the right from the four sharing options. Copy the code into a message and the photo will appear. Like this:

 

D9553_CoalEmpties_Stroud-Wallbridge_16-5-66 by Robert Carroll, on Flickr

 

It gives the photo the proper credit and links back to my Flickr site.

 

On my Flickr profile, I state: "The HTML/BBCode is available so images may be linked from other sites using this code."

[AY Mod]

14 hours ago, robertcwp said:

It gives the photo the proper credit and links back to my Flickr site.

 

Thanks Robert, I just didn't want an image from the book being republished. Thanks for pinning down which image it was from your extensive library.

[neal]

9 hours ago, F-UnitMad said:

Worth repeating this post from page 3 of this thread. The cab colour is obviously not the same green as the lower green on the Hymek, and is quite dark. Did it fade badly? The green paints BR used at the time all seemed prone to fading - look how tired many of the Class 22s looked after only a decade or so of service!!

That photo does look more like the first green cabs the models came with. I must admit I had the same thought as Mic, above - could we buy a 'wrong' cab off Minerva if we want to?

That thought had crossed my mind. I asked Chris, but the original cabs were sent back to Hong Kong such that detail parts could be removed for the replacements.

 

I think my order is nearer the end of the queue, so I may have to wait a while for the one I ordered. Still looking forward to it arriving.

 

N

[Ressaldar]

This is the photo in Robert Carroll's book that I am referring too

 

D9505_Swindon_16-8-64 by Robert Carroll, on Flickr

 

Thanks Robert for the heads up for the transfer process.

 

regards

 

Mike

[Hal Nail]

11 hours ago, F-UnitMad said:

The cab colour is obviously not the same green as the lower green on the Hymek, and is quite dark.

Agreed they look different but that's a very dark photo generally. Unless all the colours and lighting in a shot look natural and clear, I think it's impossible to interperate anything accurately.

Edited February 8, 2022 by Hal Nail

[robertcwp]

I believe the cab colour was Sherwood Green, the same colour as the lighter green on the side of a Class 47. The lower green on a Hymek was a different, more yellowish shade.

D7069_BristolBR_27-10-63_m by Robert Carroll, on Flickr

[73080]

I too wondered for a moment whether Minerva's original cab colour would be a better choice - until I reminded myself what it actually looked like !  It was shown in pauliebanger's attached video posted on January 5 (see about one and half  pages above).

 

The preserved Class 14 locos in green livery seem to have varying liveries for the cab area.  In particular, D9500 seems to be an outlier with a much more vivid green than many others - see this flickr image:

 

https://www.flickr.com/photos/33106/17097256083/in/photolist-s3PUzi-9b2Qhk-2k8R4RV-9ab2A8-wXfXB4-aj3NBK-2k8UTfz-2g36Zf3-2h6kQgF-2j3GbgU-x2A4gH-oa1L6R-fQqnc1-af4bWK-miNwB2-x8d9ra-5fiyEb-bTrAzk-DRBMtC-apdqfy-apdoWd-9bLan4-aMnTXT-gKY8nG-akErHd-johxzi-a3HFPN-2kXBxPA-KuHfXb-q3S7Pv-cfNJRm-aqjzpd-2jAxiuS-bWC9YW-nHpFp7-akBCsD-fBLeZY-pAhy4q-akBCqt-aenRwo-dQ5QBA-9uXTsi-GBZUKs-d5d8Qj-2mVPk5h-9LQxB8-9PBG5J-CN8Sgc-2jWz89p-s9cDrN

 

The following comments only refer to the BR 1960s green livery, and not necessarily to preserved liveries.  It is the result of studying numerous Class 14 web images, and those in Strathwood's books in the 'Sixties Diesel & Electic Days Remembered' series.

 

I believe that the Robert Carroll image of D9505 (shown above by Ressaldar) correctly indicates an unusual greyish green cab colour not seen on any other class of BR locomotive.  If anybody disagrees, please post a link to a colour photograph that refutes this statement.

 

The Heljan 4mm Class 14 cab colour is also wrong - in that case the colour is too much a yellowish green rather than a greyish green.

 

As such, I now believe that Minerva did the right thing in changing the cab colour.  The new colour is marginally too light (which maybe could be darkened by weathering), but appears to be as close as most of us could achieve to the correct colour balance (as opposed to containing a little too much white).

 

If anybody thinks the 1960s cab colour was sherwood green, please see what Railmatch paints think is Sherwood Green, and compare it to the colour of the cab of D9505 shown above ?

https://howesmodels.co.uk/product/br-diesel-sherwood-green-15ml-enamel/

 

In this debate, in the interests of tolerance, we should also be mindful that about 1 in 12 caucasian males (some studies quote a little less) suffer from colour blindness, and this often affects the ability to distinguish between different shades of green. Therefore, some people will genuinely perceive this cab colour differently to others.

[Trevor H]

Hope this link to an image by Grahame Wareham is OK to copy.

 

Although a bit dark, what It shows is the side of the cab on D9500 is clearly the same Sherwood Green as on the class 47 behind it. Hope it helps.