pete_mcfarlane

The kit is currently listed at £118 on PDK's website, and this one has a set of Romford wheels thrown in. So £150 isn't too ridiculous a price for it - Gostude must have made a mistake.....

I've now detailed the chassis, and it's ready for a coat of etch primer. The brake gear is from a Mainly Trains etc - I think it's intended for a Maunsell loco. It replaced the cast DJH brake shoes, which are nice castings but a bit basic. Having read DLT's thread about his Southern kitbuilds I decided to make the brake gear removable, so it fits in to 1.5mm tubing attached to the chassis sides. The plastic firebox looks huge but is definitely the correct size - you can see how much empty space DJH left under the chassis, so adding this should improve the look of the loco! I also replaced the sandboxes with plastic ones DJH only provide 2, which I've used for the front pair (and attached them to the underside of the footplate rather than the chassis). The (Finecast) tender chassis is no so advanced - it comes with some vague looking etched brake shoes, so I've sent off for a set of Brassmasters etched ones intended for the Bachmann C class to rectify this.

Over the weekend the loco had a lot of metal carved from underneath, so that it now runs smoothly through points and the wheels don't rub on the underside of the boiler. The cast bufferbeam/valance piece wasn't used, as it was the wrong shape, so I built up the valance area with plasticard. It was then filed and sanded to shape, and the bufferbeam (which I'd already made) glued in place. This evening I also fitted the steps to the loco - the cab ones were modified from the DJH ones (basically I bent them to the correct angled shape). The ones at the front were the wrong shape, so I made some from brass section and n/s sheet. This is the current state of affairs - there's the a bit of Milliput filler under the cap that's setting before it can be sanded down).

And probably a lot easier than doing the same mod to a DJH cast whitemetal footplate.

Sadly these drunken weirdos seem to be standard feature of diesel galas.

IIRC their two diesels have regular booked turns alongside the steam locos. When my Grandparents used to live in Hythe (20+ years back) the lunchtime departure from Hythe was always worked by a diesel.

I found this photo of the dreaded Fell whilst looking for something else. Post fire and part dismantled, it's lurking behind 10800 at Derby.

It's starting to look like a loco. Boiler glued in place and the gaps (mostly) filled, and test assembled for the first time. It now needs a lot of work to the front frames to get the bogie to swing, so it will actually negotiate my test track (unpowered and being pushed along). Because I've lowered the loco by 1mm on the chassis, the bogie cut outs aren't big enough and are going to need enlarging. It looks like whoever built the model on the box lid has had to do the same thing to clear the 1980s era Romford wheels with their huge flanges, presumably to get the thing round trainset curves. In fairness, the DJH website says that the minimum radius for the kit is 2'6" which seems not unreasonable.

Clicking on that link made me all nostalgic for the mid-1990s, when all websites looked like that.....

And Sunday's update. I've added most of the detail to the tender, with only the more fragile bits now to be added. The tender side extensions are a bit fragile, so they're reinforced with lots of araldite and a bit blob of Miliput. All of this will be hidden under a big pile of coal once the loco is finished. You'll also note that I've fitted the axleboxes. What you can't see (because my camera isn't good enough) is that they have 'SE&CR' cast on them in lettering about 0.75mm high. Which is pretty impressive. I've also reverted to using the chimney provided with the kit, which is the correct pattern for the locos in their late 1930s condition. The Crownline one can go back in the spares box.

45015 looks so far gone that it's starting to look like one of those 'professionally weathered' locos on eBay.

And in case anyone is wondering about the shape of the coal space in the tender, it is accurate. Presumably the fireman spent a lot of time climbing up in to the tender to rack the coal forward so he coal get to it..

I've nearly finished the tender - without much in the way of modifications as it's going to be 1768's C class tender. It's waiting for some Miliput to dry before I sand it down and for the last of the details. As you'd expect from SEF, everything has gone together pretty well. I've also produced a few more parts for the loco - a Comet SR type bogie has been modified to look more like the one on the L (again, the DJH one is a bit crude). A replacement from buffer beam has also been produced out of n/s sheet and a couple of Maygib SECR buffers.

A quick Google discovered Narrow Planet - who do custom 4mm scale Southern number plates, which allows me to pick any L class I fancy. So it may very well become 1768, which gained the spare C class tender (the one off the C that was converted to a tank engine) after writing off its own tender in a prang. http://narrowplanet.co.uk http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/18221-narrow-planet/ I also checked the DJH tender - it too is wrong for an L in case anyone is thinking that I made a rod for my own back with the tender swap. It's a slightly weird attempt at the D1/E1 tender with the wider footplate at the front (to match the wider rebuilt loco). Except that they read the drawing wrong and made the valence and the footplate wider at the front, instead of just the valence.

Not much happened over Easter, but since coming back I've started the assembly of the tender, and have made the coupling between the tender and the loco. This shows the general arrangement of the coupling. It's cut from 15 thou n/s sheet. It allows the weight of the tender to be supported by the rear of the loco, as in this shot. It runs nicely through the point on my test track, and shows no tendency to nose dive. The front of the tender is slightly too low - this is deliberate as I've not fitted the correct Gibson wheels yet and will allow me to adjust the ride height with washers until it's correct. What you can't see in the photo is that the footplate valence is different depths on the loco and tender, and after looking at photos I've noticed that the tender steps appear to be different between a L and an E (the L ones are cranked inwards, as are the ones on the locos, which needless to say DJH have got wrong....). At this point I'll leave it and pick up again on Wednesday (although I have just spotted a picture of 1768 with a modified C class tender, so that's one option to avoid any tender modifications. I would notice these things after sticking it together).

The Cyclops crame tank conversion leads on to an interesting question - has anyone produced a full Plasticard loco body using the Silhouette?

Not really, there are plenty of Derby/Sheffield/Nottingham to Leeds services as it is, so losing a few HSTs at inconvenient times won't matter.

I wouldn't worry too much. From contemporary accounts it seems that the Olive green from the different Southern works didn't match. And that was before it started to fade.

And another evening of work to report on. The SEF Wainwright tender came today. This is what you get. A nice Alistair Rolfe designed etched nickel silver chassis and some pretty good castings. The castings are from the early 1980s but are streets ahead of the DJH ones, and the chassis is dated 1989. Which my brain tells me was 26 years ago, but it can't possibly be that long ago. I need to make a couple of modifications. Firstly, the only real difference I can see between an E and L tender is that the bulkheads have curved top on the D, like in the photo below (which is actually the spare C class tender on the Bluebell). On an L this is straight. So a couple of new parts need making out of N/S. The other modification is that I want to hang the tender off the loco's drawbar, to get extra weight on the driving wheels. This is the basic chassis etch. The rear axle now has a proper bearing in it, and the front hole has be elongated in to a slot, to allow the axle the float up and down. The middle axles already had this. This is the current state of the chassis after doing this and assembling it. So far, so good.

The chassis was test assembled tonight. I say test assembled, as it's designed to be screwed together. I'll be disassembling it at some point to drill holes for the brake gear (the kit comes with whitemetal mumps) and will probably solder it up and lose the visible front set of screws. It's using the Romfords that came with the kit at the moment - I was surprised that this kit has the more modern kind with finer flanges, although they still look nothing like the wheels on a real L. It's OO, and you can tell from the cab interior. The backhead is also way too deep. I managed to lose a few millimetres in depth, although it's still too deep. It shouldn't show much when the thing is finished. Even before doing this there were some massive gaps in the cab interior which will need sorting. And finally test fitted. It's now at the right height, and there's plenty of room for the wheels inside the splashers. There would have still been room if they'd made them the correct height, and not added an extra millimetre.

Here's today's progress. I've decided to built it as A777, in late 1920s condition with the L1 smokebox (as per the kit) and the original pattern of Chimney. I have a Cownline turned brass chimney of the right type, so the later type of chimney that came with the kit has be squirreled away for use another time. I miss Crownline - some of their stuff was a little ropey but the turned chimney is nice. The other discovery is that kit seems to be made form a soft variety of whitemetal, and so is a little prone to distortion. i don't recall this problem on the previous DJH kit I built. Anyway, after cleaning up and removing 2mm from the rear of the footplate, I glued the cab in place, This highlighted the problem with the firebox being too long. The smokebox saddle is too far forwards. After removing nearly 2mm from the rear, buy rubbing it on coarse glasspaper, it now sits in the right place. There then followed some cursing and filing whilst I got the boiler to sit level and not foul the cab windows. Eventually I ended up with this - the boiler is only resting in place. I've now filled all the gaps. Next time (probably Tuesday) I'll sand these, and make start on the chassis. I want to get the basic chassis/body/tender relationships right before before going much further.

I got a copy of the loco GA for the SSPL - at £36 it wasn't cheap, but it's extremely useful. As far as I can tell. these are the dimensional faults with the loco. There is an extra 2mm stuck on the rear of the footplate in the form of a thick rear drag beam. This makes the area behind the cab side sheets too long, and looks odd. The firebox is 1mm too long, all at the rear. This forces the smokebox saddle too far forward. All of these are fairly straightforward to rectify with a little work. It's also worth noting that the kit is only suitable for the locos after they acquired L1 type smokeboxes. It would need a bit of work to replace the door and remove all the rivets from the smokebox to do them as built. I also need to work out an identity for my model. The kit comes with plates for A763 (Manchester built) and 1781 (German) . A763 is the one that got named 'Betty Baldwin' during the 1926 General Strike, but had the original smokebox at that point. Anyway, next steps are to start cleaning up the whitemetal parts.

Nice photo but that's class 74, not a 71.

We've been here before a few times - as soon as somebody on the Labour front bench says anything about HS2 it gets presented by the press as Labour no longer backing the scheme. Even when that's not what they've said. Expect them to clarify things in a day or so, and for this to be presented by Fleet Street as 'backtracking'.

The Nottingham station is quite well situated for most of the city, which sprawls for miles to the North and West (to the point where some of the suburban stations have hourly services to London so people don't have to travel in to the city centre and back out again). It just won't be ideal for the city centre. As for Leicester, it has 4 trains an hour and the 2 fast ones take just over an hour (1h06m). That's pretty good, and will get better once electrification happens and they raise the line speed on a few more bits of track. So why both routing HS2 that way, when you can serve Birmingham instead? And to be honest, the plan isn't to serve Nottingham and Sheffield. The plan is to take trains from further North off the ECML and WCML to free up capacity there - Nottingham and Sheffield just happen to be served because they're on the way.