rowanj

Paul. It might be worth a look at the Bachmann spares site- when I was there last they had a fair selection for the 56xx chassis, including a bare chassis block, wheel sets amd motor all as separate bits. to be homest, if I was doing this again, I'd look at building a Comet chassis. Do you have a dodgy 29 tucked away anywhere? All the best. John

Heaton B16/1 has the afternoon Tweedmouth-Newcastle fish train. In my world, it operates as a fish and meat, and may well have done so in real life too. The wagons are a mix of Parkside and Dapol/Airfix. I have just finished a 3D print of a Robert Stephenson loco, ex- Lambton Railway No 5. It is now on the NYMR under restoration. It heads north on my little rake of NCB internal user vans - all wholly unprototypical.

Just for completeness, here is No5 in action.

I certainly will, Paul. Meanwhile, here is No 5 in action on the layout.

And the last 2 photos,

Ready to go into service,, Lambton No 5 is complete. I added dunny coupling chains, transfers from Railtec, and some tools on the LH tank top from an unused RTR pack, glazing from Glue n Glaze, coal from Todington GWR, and some dry brushing and weathering powders. As usual, photos are cruel but fair, and I;m particularly irritated by the RH boiler handrail. I see work is ongoing on the restoration of the real loco on the NYMR, and there is a lot to do, I was happy to make a small contribution to the extensive costs by purchasing the body shell, and am looking forward to seeing No 5's sister/cousin, No 29, at the North Tyneside Gala, just down the road, at the weekend.

I have a few photos and video of No 5 in NCB days, but this one , from 1967, turned up on a Facebook page today, and will be handy for when I get round to weathering it.

Thanks Paul _ guessed it was one of your prints. I am enjoying getting it together, and seem to recall you had a Lamnton Kitson in development. Restoring No 5 is a worthy cause - it looked pretty sad when I saw it last October, but I did slip a fiver into the box at the door of the Deviation Shed at Grosmont. John

Is this how you spend your life on the High Seas, Mark- tracking down obscure posts? Well done remembering this one. I hope it isnt the Isinglass Drawings which are at fault, as I am about to use one to build an A5'2. Well, for starters I'm going to use one as a template to get a footplate, and then see how I get on, It will be a long job, but there is no hurry. I may post progress - it is a long, long time since I scratch built a loco, John

Folk might be interested in my build of No 5. I describe it in my loco build thread. Building kits for Tyneside in the BR era. Lambton Tank No 5 - Page 57 - Kitbuilding & Scratchbuilding - RMweb

And, finally. body and chassis re-united on the test track. It will get a spray of halfords Matt Black, then I need to see if I still have any NCB transfers, before contacting Railtec. One thing I wish were different is the cab roof. In the development phase, early prints were made without the roof, but the production run has the roof as part of the print. Personally, I would have preferred to see the roof as a separate part, as this would allow the cab to be painted and detailed, I suppose it can still be done with those with more nimble fingers than me, but it's a pity.

The completed loco has now had its; coat of primer. I like Halfords Red for black locos, as this can allow it to bleed through and represent rust if that is useful. the loco now has steps fitted, handrails, lampirons, smokebox dart and lubricators fitted, No 5 and its ' sisters had a regulator rod fitted along the top LH side, so this was necessary. There is a moulding showing where it enters the smokebox, but this is a bit punty, so I used a grass casting close to what the real thing looked like from the spares box. There are lubricaors on the print, but are just a bare box. I thought about adding a wheel, but in the event, replaced them with brass castings I had in stock. Ross Pop valves are from Hornby, The whistle is a problem. The loco in NCB days had an elaborate American-style chime whistle fitted to the roof, thogh this seems to have disappeared in preservation. EBAY had what seemes like a lovely version at a reasonable pice, but it comes from the US and the postage on a £3 casing was shown at £20, so for now, the whistle is a plain old thing until I can find something better.

I have completed the loco body, and while it may seem I needed to do a fair bit, this is not to imply an underlying criticism of the print. I actually think those who make an attempt to produce these things should be congratulated rather than castigated as often seems to happen. I have been following another popular thread over the last couple of days where the comments are more akin to a script from Last Of The Summer Wine, but without the humour. Anyway, here are the latest photos. The chassis has been put back together and the wheels and coupling rods painted. Some details had to be fitted to the loco rather than the chassis to get the body to fit, and I added an extra pair of sandpipes to the rear drivers, missing on the 56xx chassis but present on the real loco. One major change I made to the body involved the area under both buffer beams where, as the photo shows, a slot/gap is shown to allow couplings to pass through, This is fair enough, but I'll be fokkowing my usual practice and fitting a"bar" a la Tony Wright, so I filled in the gap as on the prototype.

Even before it gained celebrity status as the last A3 in BR service, Prince Palatine was a common sight on Tyneside, It heads for Newcastle on an Edinburgh-Kings X express, probably an extra given the Thompson Brake. GBL body, Hornby super-detailed chassis ( I remember when you could get them for £30 or so on EBAY), with a cutdown Hornby tender-drive body on loco-drive chassis.

Re the 9F on the Alnmouth-Alnwick shuttle, this took place on 18th June 1966, the last day of steam working on the Branch. 92099 is carrying a headboard from The Norseman. The train still seems to have been the usual Thompson SK/Mk 1 BSO, and it must have been a pretty untaxing turn for the loco. By the time I got to Alnwick, the trains were 2-car Class 101's on the shuttle, and through trains to Newcastle wre pretty thin on the ground. I think the photo, though uncredited in my collection, is from the Neville Stead Collection. I was saddened to learn of his death last week. He lived nearby, and , though I hadnt seen him since pre-Covid, we used to bump into each other occasionally in a coffee shop we both frequented in Whitley Bay. I got to speak to him by shamelessly name-dropping local railway photographer I S (Ian) Carr, who was a master at my alma mater, Wallsend Grammar.where he tried to teach me Geography.

You are correct, Mark.92099 worked the Alnmouth to Allnwick shuttle on the last weekend of steam service. I have a couple of photos which I'll post next time I have something else to put on. John

Generations apart, two classic goods locos which also could be seen n passenger duties pass at Little Benton. The 9F is one which arrived at York in 1965, and has a fully-fitted freight for the North- probably Millerhill, This is the loco to which I fitted a CD motor, and been doing a bit more experimenting with weathering. Originally a GBL Evening Star on a Hornby tender-drive chassis. I have no evidence whatsover of a York, or indeed a Tyne Dock 9F on any service North of Newcastle. The LRM J21 has been given the task of returning the parcels from Blyth to Central. By now, the GUV has been fitted with bogies from Silver Fox and transfers added, The correct diameter wheens require cutouts in the chassis floor, but the conversion is easy and really transforms the overall look of the GUV.

A bit more work on the Robert Stephenson Ex-Lambton No 5 has involved some renovation of the chassis to restore the mouldings for the front sandbox/brake/guard irons, The rear guard irons needed to be removed from the chassis to allow the body to fit, and these will be fitted to the loco body in due course, A squint under bright light showed dimples where holes are drilled for handrail knobs. I also drilled the smokebox for the knob at the top, then found a really good front -on view of No5 which shows, at least at some point, that there were actually 2 offset "knobs" on the smokebox. Never mind- the hole in the middle will do for a lamp iron, There are only 2 of these on the footplate in NCB days, as far as I can see, The damaged cab handrails have been fitted, as has the handrail at the rear. This runs across the full width of the bunker back, and looks to be welded directly in plce i.e not fixed usinh handrail knobs. This was standard NER practice, and is one of the common errors when building tenders- a fate I managed to avoid thanks to a timely e.mail from Arthur Kimber back in the day, The print comes with what I believe is a vacuum injector on the RH boiler side, which was fitted at the NYMR in prservation. It was easily removed, and is seen lying in front of the engine. Two Wakefield lubricators are fitted - some locos only had one, usually on the LH side, but the print is correct, I think, for No 5. However they are not particularly well made - they are just flat boxes- so if, as I think, I have some spare brass castings, I'll probably replace them. The rest of the build should be straightforward, so hopefully the next post will be the completed loco prior to going into the paint shop,

The J39 heads a local freight-probably a pick-up from the Blyth and Tyne- headed for Heaton Up Yard, The tarpaulin in the leading wagon was an experiment in making home-made covers taken from a Youtube video, involving paper towels doused in watered-down PVA ,and cling film. The V3 has the late afternoon parcels from Central to Blyth. The rake contains a Hornby LMS GUV, behind the LIMA Mk 1CCT and GUV which I picked up for peanuts at the GWR Steam Gala at Toddington, Both are better above the waist than below, and the photo illustrates the major issue with the ride height, On this picture , replacement wheels of the corect diameter have been fitted to the CCT, but at this stage the GUV remained to be tackled. This has now been done, with a photo to follow. The Mk1 BSO was a GBL coach to which Comet sides and a scratch-build interior was fitted in the days before the Hornby model appeared. In the fictional work, it is there to get railway staff home as a non-timetabled service, but, in reality, it is there to help me get the GUV ride height sorted.

The first task is obviously to get the body to fit the chassis, and this is easier said than done. To be fair, Paul mentions that a lot of metal needs to be removed and he is rigt. The photo shows what I had to remove, using a Dremel. To do this properly, the wheels and motor should really be removed, but I was too lazy. The chassis came DCC ready, but my carving up caused me to cut a couple of wires, and I decided to just remove the recoder and rewir the motor directly to the pickups. With greater care, this would not have been necessary, as the decoder does fit inside the smokebox. I also had to cut off the fronk brakes/sandpipes and the rear guard irons to get the body to sit properly i.e to get it lowered so that the bottom of the tanks on the chassis are flush with the footplate on the body. For the last bit of fitting, I carefully shaved the body rather than the chassis and eventually all was well. I was continually checking that the chassis still ran during all this butchery, and , to be honest, I am relieved that it did, and very nicely too. The photos show what I got in terms of the body, which is a very nice print. I'm not sure if Paul supplies anything else with the "proper" version, but I'll need to fit buffers, couplings, steps ,handrails and other pipework and lampirons to add the necessary detail.

I have been gradually assembling a small fleet of NCB locos based on prototypes found in the Northumberland and Durham Coalfields, and, one day, I may have a layout to run them on. Paul Sterling produced a 3D print of the Lambton No's 5 and 29 which are now preserved on the NYMR, though I believe only No 5 was released for sale - I think 29 was reserved for copyright purposes. At the time, I seriously considered having one, but it was when I already had a pile of kits which had built up, so let it go. On one of my occasional visits to Ebay, I came upon the listing for a few "seconds" where the printing had failed for whatever reason, One was only missing cab handrails, which I would probably have replaced in metal anyway, so I ordered it. I assume the seller was Paul, though I'm not sure. The body is designed to fit a Bachmann 56xx chassis, and I picked one up when my wife wasnt looking at Toddington during the recent GWR Cotswold Steam Gala, Combined cost of body and chaiis was £65, Paul posted some details of his work on both RMWeb and the LNER site, though neither take the build through to completion so I thought I may as well show how I am getting on . Mine will be built as the NCB versin, without some of the additions made at the NYMR to allow No % to pull passenger stock. The loco last steamed in 1990 or so, and, although restoration to working order is supposedly in hand, it looks to be a slow process.

Any make which needs a sealed unit fitted is going to be expensive. The garage which told me I needed to go to Volvo in case the lighting module had blown and would need replacing and re-programming told me about a Ford where sorting out a headlight resulted in a bill for £1500. All this happened on holiday at Broadway, handily placed for the GWR which just happened to have a steam gala on the middle weekend we were there, and I picked up a couple of books and a Lima Mk1 GUV and CCT from the trade stalls. I also got a Bachmann 56xx chassis- more of that later. The CCT is just behind the Hornby ex-LMS GUV, which has a (PDK) B16/3 in charge,The train probably started at Kings X, and the B16 will have come on at York. Others will know better, but I believe the London -Edinburgh fast freights, with the notable exception of the Scots Goods, effectively operated as 2 services - Kings x- York, then York-Edinburgh,

At one time, if a bulb went out in the car you just popped into the garage, paid a few bob for a new one and plugged it in. Now when a rear light goes in a cluster in your car 5 months out of warranty, even though all the rest still work, you cough up £549 for a complete unit. So while waiting for the call from the garage to pop along with my plastic card to collect it, I visited a local Hornby stockist and spotted the LMS Brake Van in Ashington Blue livery. £30- a mere pittance!!! The loco is a Judith Edge kit of a Kitson long boiler, which I built during the first lockdown. The prototype is just down the road in a museum, but out of traffic, and, last time I asked, was well down the queue for returning to steam. Here , it passes with the full rake of NCB wagons having somehow acquired running powers on the mainline.

Some of my NCB locos have come out to play, From the front is No 40, an RSH 0-6-0, designed for Ashington to haul miners trains on the complex.It is scratch built by a good friend. Next is Hudswell-Clarke No 28 a 3D Print by Hardy;s Hobbies which seems to have vanished from sale. Both these run on Electrotren chassis, Finally No 7 a Hunslet Austerity, modified to have a "Lambton" cab with a few other mods, brings up the rear. Transfers were from Railtec.

I'd hesitate to use the body I had to check Cratsman's dimensions, and I havent found a description of a build to see what, if anything, might have been done to the kit by experts to remedy any issues. I would say that it would seem to be tricky to build the kit with the tank sides and bunker in line, so the kit is probably ok in this respect ie the line of the bunker behind that of the tanks. I did find a comment that the bunker rear was too narrow, but the amount wasn't specified. The A5/2 was narrower by 2 inches -0.8mm in OO-from the tank front to the rear, and I do wonder if the effort to reduce this on the footplate, tank, cab and bunker sides (and rear) would be worth it. I might, however, try to add the additional 4 inches to the overall length which occurs between the rear bogie wheel and leading driver- the A5/2 does have a slightly "stretched "look compared to the A5/1,