Halvarras

I assume you mean Swindon-built Class 42? For sure this fleet, which had the highest profile of the three Warship classes, is deserving of a modern upgrade to match the Class 43 and of course the chassis already exists although the gearing was not exactly optimal and, nice though the inclusion of engine detail visible through the engine room windows may be, the Maybachs probably looked a bit different..... In this day and age a new Class 42 Warship model would have to include the disc headcode variant, although these thirteen differed from the rest in several ways other than the ends (and D866-70 shared their train heating boiler vent arrangement) so I fear that, unlike the Class 43s which were all near-identical, the Class 42 tooling suite would be quite extensive and thus expensive. But who knows - it seems everything else is getting upgraded these days and a class of named Type 4s currently represented by an out-of-production basic tooling which can trace its origins back over four decades looks increasingly like an open goal. IMHO anyway 😊.

Does that mean we could have had a diesel version of the EM2 electric?........(note to self: shut up H, yer making yerself look stoopid🤪!)

& all with 'flowerpot' exhausts this time. For once. Please!

43155/70 used on the Newquay branch yesterday following the failure of 150221. Link here and scroll down a bit for pics: http://www.cornwallrailwaysociety.org.uk/latest-input--news--old-pictures-etc

By pure coincidence, photo posted on the Cornwall Railway Society website last Wednesday - scroll down to 19th April.....even taken at Reading (and exactly 20 years to the day after D1661 and D1662 were named at Paddington and Bristol respectively too)..... http://www.cornwallrailwaysociety.org.uk/latest-input--news--old-pictures-etc

Thanks for the tip Darius - I didn't think for a moment that you'd glued it together with Devon Custard.......😜!

Had the vehicles concerned (W51137/50 initially, followed by W50819/62/72/915) had gangways fitted they would have been retained in passenger service - in parcels service the gangways would have been redundant as the two GUVS (W86174/572) were never so equipped - here's W86174 back in normal (loco-hauled) parcels service at Bristol Temple Meads c. October 1984 shortly after becoming TOPS-compliant W93174 - I wasn't in the habit of photographing GUVs but, having often seen the '128+GUV+116' combos at Reading in the 1970s, recognized the number and significance of this one (is that the former MU bracket below the buffer?): I had hankered after doing one of those Reading sets as they were an interesting mix of vehicles, although not really relevant to my favoured modelling location so I resisted........until one day Hattons offered a mint pre-owned Heljan Class 128 in the correct livery/configuration for an inexplicable £46 "with loose detailing" (didn't they all come like that anyway?!) and my resistance crumbled.....so still in my long paint queue is this Lima Class 117-to-116 DMBS conversion clearly with no seats - oval buffers identify it as W50862 - and 'wired' Lima GUV on Bachmann B1 bogies, which will be W86174 (the body is on the lean as it's not clipped to the chassis pending a repaint - these things are difficult to take apart without damage, I broke off one of the lower corner stanchions so I only wanted to do it once!) I was lucky enough to order a '128' parts sprue from Howes not long before they stopped being the UK Heljan agents which included both bufferbeams and all four bogie sideframes, so these - glued to a pair of old MTK plastic coach bogie stretchers - were used to upgrade the Lima underframe, together with Hornby 12.6mm disc wheels and Lima Class 101 bogie steps: Hopefully this summer I'll figure out where I can permanently set up my airbrush gear without having to pack it all away every time, as I have had to in the past, so I can begin chewing through that paint queue at last.........

An interesting vehicle, with an interesting bogie at one end. I see that etched headcode panels are supplied but note that the cab ends are the passenger version with destination panel, n/a on the Class 129s - I assume that the instructions point this out? (I wouldn't expect the kit manufacturer to tool up a new end for a class of only three units - I found the same issue with a 'kit' for one of these which I reckoned was an MTK 'bodyline' product - two cast (passenger-style) ends and both sides stamped out of a single piece of aluminium, all stuck to a sheet of plain black card, and that was it; it put in regular appearances on the club stand at our local show, nobody wanted it so in the end I took pity on it and assembled it around a Hornby Class 110 power car and painted it in green syp livery - it looked quite good but I had no need for it so moved it on - must have been about 15 years ago now). I have a DC Kits Class 205 '2H' kit to build at some point 🙄 - can I ask what kind of adhesive you find works well with this plastic? I usually use EMA 'Plastic Weld' but, although I haven't tested it yet, I have a feeling something more powerful is called for......

I have one Clayton, blue D8507, which runs OK - its buffers, springs and sleeves are in a zip bag waiting for me to getting around to looking into filing the small recesses you refer to - but one has to wonder whether Heljan overlooked providing these recesses to clear the buffers in the first place, this poor design condemning owners to carpet searches with a torch and magnifying glass........thanks a bunch Heljan!

I had the Western diesel in this form too - I mail-ordered one (as they weren't widely available, unlike you-know-who) but can't recall where from now, just after Christmas 1971 and I found it waiting for me when I got home from a trip to Penzance on New Year's Eve, which was memorable for seeing D6336 in the down sidings at Truro, one of the last four survivors all withdrawn the following day, goodbye Class 22. Being extremely familiar with Westerns I couldn't live with the very visible extra bogie sideframe reinforcements so cut them away, leaving the rest of the sideframe detail precariously attached only by the brake linkages! I had to therefore be very careful with it and managed to keep it intact; I also didn't fit the holed plastic wheel inserts, and the bogies looked far better as a result. It was later renamed D1010 Western Campaigner using etched plates and the Trix plastic D1004 Western Crusader plates sat around until late 1986 when I had the 'inspiration' to create 52004 in Inter-City livery using a Hornby model (which I restored a couple of years or so ago and posted pics to the 'Fictitious Liveries' thread, so the plates live on). As for the Trix model, it was joined by a couple of Liliput-produced versions in the mid-late 1970s but before I got to do anything with them the Hornby and Lima models were announced and although as you say these ran very well the dimensional issues saw them replaced. Around 1970 I also bought a couple of Tri-ang CKD kits, a pair of maroon Mark 1 CKs (numbered 15917/8 using sticky labels from memory), and a blue Hymek. I also picked up an assembled second-hand green EM2 (sticky labels for 27002 'Aurora' and bolted-on trailing bogie being the clues) shortly after and back then had no problem running this alongside my Tri-ang AL1 under my Super-4 'click-fit' catenary!

Lovely photo.........and a serious pair of buffers 😮!!

Which in turn reminded me of my wife and daughter exiting the cinema having just watched the first 'Lord of the Rings' movie and hearing the person in front of them say to her friend, "Well that was a rotten ending" - clearly oblivious to the concept of a trilogy. (It certainly ended rotten for Sean Bean but he's used to it......he must have been gobsmacked to have survived the carnage of 'Troy'!)

A 75-ton breakdown crane with matching bogie crew coach and loco parked on a siding only accessible by a headshunt into which the loco by itself would just about fit (saw this epic layout planning fail at a show in Bristol decades ago - as you can see it stuck with me!)

Where are the white stripes, light grey roof and red bufferbeam? This loco has not been painted correctly 🤪!! (And that headcode is a mess - time for a domino upgrade!)

Me too, and it's scarily imminent 😬!! But generally speaking I'm doing OK for seven decades' wear and tear.......where's some real wood when you need to touch it 🤪!? Winding the clock back to March 2000, I was 46 and had just finished setting up my layout at a show in Greenford, West London. As usual, being a 'one man band' last job before doors open was to make sure I was empty.......unfortunately the 'gents' had a row of horizontal windows just above head height below which was a row of mirrors - and on this particularly lovely March morning the bright sunlight beamed down through the window neatly illuminating the top of my head as I stood there..... er..... emptying, and in the unavoidable mirror in front of me I suddenly realised just how grey my hair had become! My bathroom mirror at home, with indirect natural and artificial light sources, had flattered to deceive - it was a sobering moment!!

A little surprised to see data panels on D7661 so, unlike D7666, not strictly 'as built' - it would have spent its first two years without them, and so not in such pristine condition by the time they were applied. At a guess D7552 spent much of 1968 in Gfye livery before receiving data panels early the following year....... Data panels first appeared around September 1968 (the first I saw were on D838 'Rapid' in ex-works maroon 🤨 at Plymouth North Road on the 11th of that month) - this was around the same time that D prefixes were dropped following the end of steam so theoretically all works output from that autumn should have combined both features; however d/p uptake appeared to be quite slow - for example ex-works Class 33 6585 at Exeter St Davids on 2nd January 1969 didn't have them. They seemed to become widely available during early 1969 for depot application - even green-liveried Penzance pilot D4013 was displaying them by April. Data panels are so easy for modellers to apply if required that on RTR models which bridge this period they would be better left off. Railtec supply blue-backed data panels suitable for green (and maroon) locos, which avoids having to paint a 3x2mm blue patch in preparation. Done that a few times.....🙂

Regarding the boiler compartment roof panel and because a picture is worth a thousand words (well, a few dozen), here's one I made earlier which may yet find its way onto a similar conversion (I knew I had it somewhere......) - this is 10thou plasticard, it may be possible to create it from 5thou for a flusher appearance but it would be very close to cutting, drilling and filing paper.........perhaps not impossible, I've never tried it! Looks like it still needs a bit of tidying-up (thank you, digital photography, grrrr!)

So it's true then - the excitement of replacing the final Mirrlees power unit with an EE lump in the first-built Brush Type 2 thus concluding the re-engining programme resulted in the fitment of windscreen washers and shields being overlooked! 🤔🤭

The Parkin book on BR Mark 1 stock has a colour photo of choc/cream CK and FK vehicles end-to-end with yellow stripes, but comments that it was an unusual combination as by the time the stripes were coming in the choc/cream livery was already on its way out (BSK W34885 still extant in summer 1968 didn't get the memo!) Yellow stripe on green DMU stock does seem to have been unusual to rare but examples did exist post-1966 - a quick scan of my DMU books found such treatment applied to Classes 100, 108 and Derby Lightweight vehicles. In 1969 I regularly saw Class 120 W51576/59582/51590, a late survivor in green (a couple of other sets had already progressed from green through plain blue to blue/grey by then), but now wish I could recall whether it had acquired yellow first class stripes by such a late date.....not something the young me would have paid much attention to 🥴!

Another point about the first three, confirmed by the photo - they didn't have the 'catwalks' over the fan grilles.

Yes I agree, it looks like the Craftsman kit. It appears that all of the disc headcode locos received yellow panels except (because there always seems to be an exception*) D803 'Albion' which was still running in beaten-up plain green livery as late as October 1964 and was modified early the following year. When these 13 were modified to headcode panels D801/4 retained the centre lamp bracket and headboard clips, D806/9/12 retained just the lamp bracket and the rest retained neither. 'Book of the Warships' enables these to be listed in order of date of modification, and guess what? - D801/4 were done first, then D806/9/12, and then the rest - so Swindon clearly decided to simplify the task as they worked their way through them! (Sorry, can't list them in correct numerical order right now as can't access the book.) *Think D6301, D6109, D6123, D5701, D5909, etc!

D800 in green or D804 in blue, by any chance? These seem to be the Mazak victims....... I have five Mainline bodies on Lima chassis, created during the 1990s - no gear issues or bent chassis (except one which has developed droopy ends over the years - I'll fix it one day).

An elevated photo on the Cornwall Railway Society website taken over the wall at Penzance may help - you won't need to scroll down too far to find it: http://www.cornwallrailwaysociety.org.uk/penzance-area-to-marazion.html Note that the circular boiler compartment panel is off-centre compared to the in-line roof fan grilles. I've made a few of these in the past for D600 and D800 Warships, some from 10thou plasticard and others using self-adhesive paper (plasticard is easier as it can be drilled and filed - paper has to be cut right first time, although gives a flusher finish) - I used a compass to draw a 14mm diameter circle (estimated overall size), then two more inside this at 12 & 13mm; lines were drawn dividing it into four quarters, then again dividing it into eight segments; within each a 'curved sausage' shaped opening was then drawn between the 12 & 13mm lines and formed by drilling holes at each end, cutting away most of the infill with a scalpel and filing to shape with mini and 'rat-tail' files. Yes it's fiddly but AFAIK an etched item has never been available. Once glued to the roof you could open it up properly by drilling and filing the eight openings through the roof but life is too short so I painted them black instead (you could attach it over one circular hole which would look great but IMO be too fragile without additional support - more fiddliness!) Both Warships in the Penzance view have short nose-top handrails, identifying them as two of the first three as built (neither appear to have long thin nameplates so these must be D801/2). Since your model already has long handrails perhaps avoid these three, which also had cab door handrails with top and bottom ends curved in, but not difficult to amend if desired. Other differences between D800-12 and the rest include the twin access panels on the lower cabsides being removable not hinged along the top edge; side engine room grilles having single not twin support struts (aarrgghh grilles! - too much work to do neatly and life still too short!); and a plainer appearance to the lower side valances with fewer obvious openings. It depends how far you want to go....🙂

Agree on both (can't remember the title of the first one either, only seen it the once), but they're comedies so I guess they're supposed to be a bit silly 🤪!

I wonder where the '7s' with curved stems came from - these were not 'corporate'. They even appeared on Large Logo Blue, 47467 being one example IIRC. I had some old waterslide transfer sheets with curved '7s' (SMS I think) which I had to use as nothing else was available at the time, although they always looked wrong to me.......