Halvarras

Dated 1954? Yep, reckon so! The tender displays a form of B R livery I've never seen before! Has the bottom of the cab lining been applied high up to align with that on the tender........which is also too high up?!

I think the first Heljan diesel I obtained on the shiny wheels was D0280 'Falcon', first 'Limited Edition' (hah!) run in 2007 IIRC. I always suspected the Western's wheels were different to the standard Heljan items, to take the plastic inserts. It has been suggested on another thread that Hornby 14.1mm coach wheels can be use used on the Heljan axles (not tried this myself - yet), and R8234 sports four holes too: Yes, the wheel face profile is a little un-Western-like, but the resulting 0.5mm reduction in ride height isn't likely to cause a problem. On the Lima Westerns I did up in the 1990s I painted the wheels in mucky track colour then applied spots of black paint to represent the holes - it looked OK at a glance, but of course didn't work on the ex-works blue one (that got white tyre slippage marks instead - mainly because up until then I hadn't seen anyone else do this!) Hope this is helpful......

That's cute!!😁

According to the OP's linked article, if 2239 was a member of Lot 337 then it was built new with a cab without side windows. The article claims that all '2251s' eventually received side windows and that 2238 was still running windowless as late as September 1957 - the above photo of a stored windowless 2239 in 1962 would contradict "all", and the author may be correct about 2238 and somehow unaware of 2239, or he has confused the two. A pre-1957 photo of 2238 with windows would sort this......

With incorrect right-facing BR emblem too.

Just found this photo while image trawling.......the man himself! Hello Ron!!

If these two arrived and two '700s' departed at roughly the same time (presumably to that great engine shed in the sky) then it's logical to assume they were sent there for a purpose, so maybe that was it - let's see if anyone can confirm........🙂

Perhaps unsurprisingly it appears to be coupled to the same tender as the above pic. It does look slightly odd with the L-shaped cab side handrail and lining framing a window which isn't there! Also I doubt if it carried those OHLE flashes for much more than a year. How close would it have got to such equipment anyway, to make them worthwhile?

I noted a decent colour photo of this example while browsing steam mags many years ago now and was very surprised to see one of these in BR lined green without cab side windows - couldn't help wondering how it managed to collect one without the other. I can't recall the condition of the tender now but here the lining on the loco's cab side is just discernible but not on the tender - the latter's large BR crest suggests this isn't lined and may not be green either. I'd also be interested in the answer to this question! I've always been a diesel modeller with the odd foray into steam, but something about these locos always appealed - so much so that I bought the Wills kit in the 1970s but never built it as the Mainline model came out, so I bought one of those instead. Eventually I had this, an Airfix 14xx and 'Castle', a Lima 45xx and Mainline 57xx and 43xx, but moved them all on in the early '90s when I got seriously into modelling diesel-hydraulics..........until around 2003 when the Bachmann 45xx was announced. I knew resistance was futile with this so immediately started another steam collection with the purchase of........yes, a Bachmann Collett Goods, 2277 in lined green! From my point of view it's a pity these were never seen in Cornwall, although I looked up 2277's allocation history and discovered that it was an Exmouth Junction loco late on in life (along with 2214 IIRC) which must have been as close to Cornwall as any '2251s' ever got, lending a little extra validity to Rule 1! That Wills kit was the closest I ever got to building a whitemetal steam loco kit - I often wish I'd persevered with it, just for the experience. After all, no pony trucks or valve gear to worry about. No, no, please don't mention Ebay, it's way too late now 😁!

Looks like the ETH connector was moved from inside to outside the buffer (nearest corner above) during that overhaul too.......

My take on a Bachmann D7660, but at the other end of its life! Last year I combined an early Class 25/3 chassis with an as-new D5211 body from Elaine's Trains plus matching underframe from EKMexhibitions to create a model of Scottish D7579. This left me with a spare 25/3 body and underframe - what to do with these? Easy (!?) - combine with a set of Class 25 bogie sideframes left over from a Bachmann-powered Hornby Class 29 project, and a pair of old Hornby B4 bogies with the sideframe detail brutally filed down until the pinpoints showed through and fitted with Hornby 14mm wheels to create an ETHEL! ETHEL 1 (ex-D7660/25310) was selected as the paint job was easier than the other two, and a boiler compartment grille/blank swap with D7579 put both models right. Transfers from RailTec. It still needs spray varnishing (roll on the summer!) before the glazing, 'domino' headcodes and cab door handrails can be refitted. Another reason for doing ETHEL 1 was that I had photographed it without having to go all the way to Scotland - actually about 3 miles from home in Wiltshire! Seen outside Swindon Works in August 1984 with fellow Scot 27040 for company: It's interesting to reflect that D7660 never had its boiler grilles blanked, and that the chances of this one of only two late-style Class 25s to carry blue paint around its cab windscreens at the beginning of its career reacquiring this feature at the end were remote - and yet it happened!I Anyway, except for D7660 this is wandering off-topic into 'imperfect previous model' territory so I'll 🤐 zip it here!

Got this far with it - yellow panels (which also covered the headcode panels) were too large so were reduced sides and bottom with Railmatch 300 BR Green, almost perfect match, also for heacode frames; yellow redone with Precision P134 BR Signal Yellow; lower lining extended to yellow panel with Railmatch 302 BR Yellow-Green; bufferbeams painted Railmatch 400 Signal Red, fitted with Hornby buffer heads, Heljan coupling shackles and (probably) Craftsman cast whitemetal pipework; underframes, bogies and wheels finished in Railmatch 412 Weathered Black. Replica blue-square coupling codes, destinations from cut-up MTK WR Toad brake van 'RU' names (that was 'fun'!) and after a lot of searching for something to fit into apertures only 2.5mm wide the headcode characters were cut down from those supplied with the Dapol Western diesel. Side window First & No Smoking labels from the HMRS pressfix sheet 14 (printed in reverse to be applied on the inside), also the BR coaching stock roundels which Lima only applied to one side of each power car! Interiors partly repainted and bits of crude detail stuck to the otherwise plain driver's control desks (the handbrake wheels are filed-down discharge wheels off a Hornby TTA underframe). The only job remaining is renumbering to a Scottish Region unit - 36 characters, I think I'll ask RailTec for assistance with that! It appears that the majority of green DMUs displaying the yellow First Class stripe were in Scotland, so...... Lima printed those numbers too low....... Close coupling via those small Airfix couplers with one hook removed, pinned in place with Hornby track pins - I don't see why Bachmann mini-couplers couldn't be used instead: As well as the modern heater grilles the unit also has incorrect full-length guttering, but I can live with both. (With the Lima motor bogie, who needs digital sound......?!) Very pleased with this, I think it confirms just how good this model was, and it's great to know that it's still with us.

Only started on Monday - even faster than the Ultrasonic Test unit! Granted, that one required the scratchbuilt trolley and cab-interiors-plus, but this one required two full interiors. Astonishing! At this rate I reckon if you leave that Trans-Pennine unit until last you'll get it done over a weekend 😜!

Looking at the running number and those shiny wheel rims I'm thinking they used the Mainline model as a reference. A spare Nellie chassis to do what with exactly......?! 🤔

The Elliot vehicle was based on the Wickham design but was a bespoke build which differed from the passenger-carrying version in a number of significant ways.

Funny you should mention long lead times, I remembered that yesterday marked 5 years since the delivery of my D600 'Active' from Kernow, after a wait which lasted longer than the real locos were in service!! Me to postie: "Yay, I've waited years to receive this!" Postie to me: "I hope that wasn't our fault!" It was worth the wait though.......

This may be so if the magnetic strip is removed from its steel holder, but otherwise it should be OK. If a previous owner has removed the magnet and re-inserted it the other way round the demagnetisation problem probably already exists! I rebuilt a motor bogie last year which required complete disassembly (magnet + holder excluded!) and it's working fine. As others have said if the magnet + holder have been inserted the wrong way round - which should be obvious as on taking off the face plate you'll see shiny steel instead of brown magnetic strip - the central locating pip at the top won't engage properly with its hole in the plastic outer casing. Um...........not really 😁!!

It's good to see four different Class 03s being produced and all with the 'flowerpot' exhaust. Until now Bachmann has seemed fixated on the conical exhaust which was only fitted to 35 examples from new (D2000-32 plus Departmental 91/2, later D2370/1), plus 03129/62 changed later on. That left 193 with 'flowerpots' - somewhat more numerous! Still no plain green with the 'pot' - maybe next time then.......

I have just been reading through the description of DRP81522 on Kernow's website and at the bottom noticed an acknowledgement of assistance provided by the crane's current owner, Ron Bailes. Ron was already a member of the Swindon Model Railway Club when I joined in 1973, he was a Swindon Works apprentice at the time and it was thanks to him that I got involved in the repainting of D1062 Western Courier for the September 1975 Open Day; in May 1977 he and I undertook what would be my one and only weekend tour around Scotland by rail - that kind of long-distance roaming wasn't in my nature and almost certainly wouldn't have happened without his enthusiasm and organising (and BR connections!) Ron went on to much greater things on the railways - in later years we'd occasionally see each other at exhibitions when he was attending with his O gauge layout 'Cherry Orchard'. All the more reason to pre-order that one, which is the one I wanted anyway 😊! I already had another reason to pop down to Kernow so now I have two (well........at least two.......!)

It was D5026 which carried the same livery scheme as D7660 and D5389 - D5028 was I believe in the early blue fye with four cabside arrows when it got severely torched and inevitably withdrawn before it could become 24028. A photo in one of the Strathwood '1960s Remembered' series indicates D5026 had red bufferbeams*; D5389 did, but I haven't seen conclusive evidence of D7660/1 in this regard as the 'beams are always filthy in photos (you'd have thought somebody at Derby Works would have taken official photos of these first blue ones out the door, but if they did they're still being sat on!) There was a minor change between D7671 and D7672 on which the works plates were moved from the driver's cabsides to the cab doors, enabling the BR logos to be centralised on the cabside, with numbers moved down to maintain alignment, on D7672-7. AFAIK only D7669 lasted long enough in this original livery to acquire its TOPS number (25319) - the derbysulzers site has a good photo of it like this. *The photo is a bit distant and head-on but I'm sure the arrow logo can just be seen on the cabside, in the higher position unlike other early blue '24s'. I know of only a couple of other b&w photos of D5026 in Bsyp livery, one of which was taken in Crewe Basford Yard, with data panels dated 1970 IIRC - incredible really as I reckon it must have run for around 4 years in this condition yet its existence remained a rumour for decades, unlike Bsyp D5021 with its old BR emblems (but then I saw that one for myself at Crewe on 3rd November 1969!)

The degree of difficulty varies, not only between manufacturers but also within manufacturers depending on the age of the model. You never really know how easy or difficult any particular model will be until you tackle it - past experience with any one manufacturer's models is only a guide up to a point, as printing techniques constantly evolve. Some paint finishes don't take kindly to certain substances which others shrug off - testing first on an inconspicuous area isn't always possible as few if any areas on the outside of a model are inconspicuous, and the problem here is the risk of damaging these increasingly expensive new purchases. Yes, obviously you can disguise less-than-perfect renumberings with weathering - if you do weathering, which not everyone does. I do a lot of renumbering myself, to recreate specific locomotives, but the majority of these are on models from the 'sub-£100' era so I'm not too bothered if some prove obstructive and it shows (a bit!) My point here is that 25057 has been treated differently to all of the others in this batch of releases and this may be inconvenient for some multiple-purchasers who do find renumbering difficult.

Yes indeed, the Reading photos in the Hattons thread I refer to are immediately followed by photos of 81509 and friends doing just that, taken by @VIA185 of this parish I believe.

Wasn't 'Freight BR Blue' just BR Blue with a layer of filth?! Interestingly, from the above photos of the more numerous curvy ones at least, these appeared to always have the yellow ends applied as two panels, upper and lower. It's hard to believe there weren't a few with just one large panel. Granted the yellow on the curve wouldn't have been very effective as a warning device (the same comment could be made about the large expanse of yellow on the cabsides of locos in Large Logo Blue livery), especially when the usual layers of muck settled on it from above, but such practical considerations were not always applicable on the railway! If your model is one of the Hornby Magazine specials produced by Dapol, I and others have found that the handrails and brake wheels stick out too far and pushing these in a bit improves the appearance. It's necessary to drill slightly larger holes to take the thicker shank of the brake wheel behind the rim. Mine's a blue one, by the way!

Ah, OK, many thanks - I don't think I'd noticed that before, even though the lining accentuates it in a 3/4 view.

Thanks Paul, I'd just been attempting a 're-trawl', as it were, based on a memory of '975411' and ended up in page 3 of the original Hattons thread where the Reading photos I could remember appear. As you say, the crane was 81509, the tube wagon ZDV DB732251 and the ex-Fruit D DB975411 (I worry myself sometimes, although I suppose it confirms I still have at least two brain cells to rub together!) The brake van was a standard type (B951128), I think the Toad brake van idea was in my own head, as I already had that (Kernow's departmental green DW35377). Hmm, it still looks like a very attractive short train........oh hang on, there seems to be a voice echoing in my head loudly reminding me that I've repeatedly said that "I don't need any more projects!" - just ignore it, it'll go away 😉 !