Leaderboard

Not much active modelling recently, but i took advantage of the good weather to take a section of the layout into the back garden and pose a couple of trains. First up, we see the part completed Rebuilt Royal Scot, 46109, having arrived with a returning Wakes Week holiday excursion. Then a more prototypical push-pull train, hauled/propelled by BR Standard Class 2 tank, 84012. Dave.

The first job for this project was to completely strip the existing awful paint finish from the model, it was stripped down to its component parts. This included the removal of the chimney, splashers, smokebox door, fall plate, whistles, handrails and buffers. The removed parts were stuck to a length of masking tape to keep safe, somehow it has disappeared in the garage. Thankfully this only contains the whistles, pipes along the footplate and buffers, so nothing irreplaceable. With that done it was dunked into a bath of 70% IPA, left for an hour and then scrubbed with an old toothbrush. This was followed by another soak in IPA and removing the remaining paint with cotton buds and cocktail sticks. With the main body of the loco and tender prepared, the same process was followed with the splashers, smokebox door and chimney. As the paint started to come off, the moulded detail started to return and you could finally see some washout plugs. That said, the washout plugs still looked a little anaemic, so they have all been drilled out in preparation for adding some Gibson replacements. The splashers have all been modified to remove the extra rivets. I did give a lot of thought as to whether or not I should have a go at improving the splasher size, in the end I decided to leave it alone given that while fixing the separate ones the splasher integrated with the cab side would be more difficult to get a consistent finish. a little more sanding is needed on the cab side to remove the last remains of the old moulded number plate, while the boiler could do with a little fettling with emery paper as well. The tender needed a little more attention to repair some damage, both front handrails had previously snapped in the centre so these had to be removed and replaced with brass wire. The rear handrails were completely missing, so some replacements were added with 0.45mm wire and Markits handrail knobs. While the removal of the original paint had certainly helped improve the damage under the former BR early crest, a little filler was needed to fill the remaining cuts in the tender side. This still needs a further coat of filler this evening to complete the job. Finally the missing short buffer between loco and tender was added. After a quick look I couldnt see an obvious source of these buffers, but had a feeling that I had some brass nails for hanging photos which was of a similar size. The head was filed down to get rid of the domed top, while the shaft was cut to length with an old pair of Xurons before gluing into place. The final job on the tender was to remove the moulded parts for the filler etc from the rear of the tender, and add a plasticard spacer into the resulting gap. This will mostly end up covered with the Finney dome and separate filler once my order arrives. The only other jobs remaining on the tender are to add a missing lamp iron to the centre of the tender back (again in the Brassmasters order), and to add Dinghams. The latter will need the hooks modifying to fit in the Oxford slot thanks to the bizarre choice for a die cast tender chassis. There is also a very annoying scraping noise coming from the tender pickups, so that will need some attention in due course. I think I am going to be modelling 2534 or 2578 (both Bristol St Phillips March locos). However I have not managed to find a late 1940s photo of either loco, just much later images in BR days. 2578 is shown with the additional step on the side of the smokebox, and a horizontal rear handrail in BR condition, but no way of determining when these changes were made. In both cases there is no clear view of the tender, so I am assuming like the majority they would be with the separate dome / filler unlike the model. I have now placed an order with Brassmasters for the Finney castings for the tender dome/filler, smokebox door dart, along with the smokebox pipe cover (which I think looks a little oddly proportioned). I will need to scratch build the missing brake linkage on the other side of the chassis as I cant see mention anywhere of a source of Oxford Rail spares. Unless a prototype image comes up saying otherwise, the plan is currently that I will finish the model in wartime black (of course if anyone has more info about either of these two locos in the late 40s it would be very welcome). The model will likely stay without numbers for the time being until I get around to placing a Narrow Planet order for another batch of numbers.

Keeping with the Great Western theme for now over the last week or so I have been working on this beautiful locomotive Soon to be 2912 Saint Ambrose this particularly elegant GWR 4-6-0 has a rather interesting heritage. It was built more than 25 years ago by Martin Finney using the Proscale kit as a basis. However, how much of the Proscale kit is left is very much open for debate. Whether it is fact or fiction the story that I have been told is that his (frustrating) experience with this loco is what got Martin started on designing his own kits. The rest, as they say, is history. My association with this loco started about 3 or so years ago when my friend Gerry Beale bought the loco from Martin. Martin's interest in the pre-grouping LSWR made a Saint finished in 1920's condition surplus to requirements. The original loco was built to P4 standards and one of the first jobs I did on it was to re-wheel to EM gauge and make some modification to the compensation beam arrangement. In essence simplifying it. This image shows how it looked after I re-wheeled it back in 2012. The original guise was 2920 Saint David although it is not wearing the nameplates in this photo. Following the re-wheeling Gerry took the loco back and stripped off all of the paint and spent a lot of time updating the loco to the late 1940's appearance seen in the first picture. The level of extra detail that he added is quite stunning. Speedo drive, fine pipework and lot of small sundries really lift the loco into the "very special" classification. The agreement between us was that once he had completed the detailing I would take the loco back and apply a coat of GWR Middle Chrome green. Gerry would then do all of the finishing work. Painting the black areas, applying plates, transfers, weathering and final details. It would have been nice if things were so simple as at this point the Saint became a Sinner. Whilst the loco ran tolerably well we both felt that it could be better especially as the loco had a Portescap drive. Some investigative work concluded that the old "variflex" type hornblocks would be worth replacing along with the Maygib steel plunger pickup which were showing signs of rust. However, the biggest issue I discovered was the right hand leading coupling rod was longer than the left hand one by a fraction of a millimeter. This problem explained an awful lot in terms of the running quality of the loco so it was fixed with the help of my chassis jig. New Highlevel fold up hornblocks were fitted and provision made for a removable wiper type pickup plate. In addition to this the brake gear and injector pipe work were modified so that they could be removable for future maintenance should it be required. The chassis has now been repainted and trial run. With the rogue coupling rod shortened to match it's twin on the other side it is much smoother. It has eliminated some rather unhealthy slewing of the middle and leading wheel sets caused by the rods and movement in the variflex bearings. In the meantime the loco body has been thoroughly cleaned and degreased. Following a coat of primer.... ....the loco and tender have had a thin glossy coat of cellulose GWR green. So, with a little more work to be done on the chassis over the weekend Saint Ambrose should be going back to Gerry for final finishing next week. I'll make sure I post a final photo in due course when he has finished it off. Cheers....Morgan