TOPS Rail Blue Class 08

[lapford34102]

Deciding to do a Class 08 shunter is the easy bit, actually doing it is a bit of a minefield . For a class that numbered a handful short of 1200  there’s some detail differences between each batch. These concerned cabside windows, wood framed or not;, cab doors, wood or metal;engine room door hinges, visible or not; number of vacuum exhausters, one or two, and if you’re modelling them in later life then there’s  air brake compressor housing, installed or not and marker lights, all there or some removed. All these either on their own or in combination with others . Now if this sort of trivia doesn’t worry you then fine as you’ll save yourself some bother. If it does then doing a repaint and/or renumber can be fun.

 I had 2 green ones already but now needed a blue  TOPS one.  RTR Rail Blue 08’s look to be the most uncommon version of all so I decided to repaint a green one and the hunt began for suitable prototypes based on the characteristics of my model – wood door, external hinges, 2 exhausters and all original lights.  An article on the class in an edition of MRJ back when the Bachmann 08 came out proved useful in sorting out which sub-species of the breed I had. My one book on shunters proved pretty useless at finding a suitable candidate  so the internet hunt began. Now there's plenty of info out there, maybe too much, Flikr has a huge number of photo's but requires a lot of trawling through to find appropriate ones. I then stumbled on
 http://www.margam-depot.co.uk/locopicturegallery.htm which proved very useful.
Now I'm not sure you can over weather a blue 08 but based on the shots on the Margam site plus a hefty slice of modellers license I went for a moderately weathered one that doesn't look that much like the shot of the real one. My excuse is it's my toy train and I enjoy dabbling in weathering.

The paint is Precision heavily dosed with white for the engine room doors and roof, transfers are FOX, superb but you can’t take liberties with them, weathering is an unholy mix of airbrush, oils and pastels.

A couple of shots

 

 

 

Thanks for looking

 

Stu

[rodshaw]

Very nice too, excellent paint job and weathering.

[caradoc]

Looks superb Stu. Cannot understand why neither Hornby or Bachmann have a BR Blue 08 in their current ranges (although hopefully that may change next week !)

[TimC]

Very nice!

[RBE]

Nice work stu

[lapford34102]

Thanks you all for your comments. Now for a confession - I've realised now that I've numbered mine wrong so spent an hour this afternoon getting a correct one on. That'll teach me to practise what I preach and check before I do anything......... :-(

 

So just in case anyone is interested a very very rough guide to 08's

 

08 001-101 wood framed cabside windows, wood cab door, external engine room door hinges, two exhauster boxes

102 -171 larger cabside windows, wood cab door, external engine room door hinges, two exhauster boxes

172 -268 larger cabside windows, wood cab door, external engine room door hinges, one exhauster box on left

269-542/549 larger cabside windows, wood cab door, flush engine room doors, one exhauster box on left

542/549-704 larger cabside windows, wood cab door, flush engine room doors, two exhauster boxes

705 on larger cabside windows, alloy cab door, flush engine room doors, one exhauster box on left

 

Note there's a number of odd loco's that appear to be in the wrong "group", quite a lot have additional handrails added above the front steps and the marker lights were modified in the late 70's

 

Hope this is of help to someone and if anyone can add to it please do.

 

Cheers

Stu