Pierview

With the awful weather preventing me from getting on with the garden I made an effort over the last week or so to complete the Grange and here it is. There was a slight delay whilst I sourced a replacement firebox back head but this arrived and was fitted today. I am reasonably pleased with the rebuild, especially considering the state that the kit it was in when I acquired it. However, these restorations are always a little tricky and very time consuming I find. It is difficult to pick up on someone else's work, and despite best intentions one can't usually make a silk purse out of a sow's ear! Despite that this has been another quite cheap build with the HL motor and gearbox being the only significant expenditure. The prototype chosen was 6861 which, following my usual practice, was an engine that I saw in my spotting days. This series of rebuilds has been great fun but I now need to get back to my stash of unbuilt kits. I am trying to avoid the temptation of restoring any more wrecks as apart from anything else I am getting a degree of duplication now. I think any other rebuilds will have to be extremely cheap or very rare subjects to interest me but you never know! Barry

I have pressed on with the Grange re-build over the last couple of weeks and this was my starting point after paint removal. Back in the old routine! The lower boiler section was missing on the model, presumably to make it fit on the Mainline Manor chassis for which the kit was designed, so I thought that I should do something about that. I cut a curved blanking piece from a white metal kit spare (actually from a Wills E2) and glued it into position as shown. The rest of the loco went back together quite smoothly although the broken RH cab side proved a little tricky to get right. I was able to re-use most of the original parts but I did replace the handrails and part of the ejector pipework. I drilled out the chimney and replaced the smokebox door handle with a finer brass one. Lamp brackets were fabricated in my usual way using office staples. The tender was fitted with a modicum of extra detail, including hand rails and lamp brackets and was fitted to the previously mentioned Comet internal chassis. The tender wheels were re-used from the smaller tender which arrived with the kit and are quite serviceable. The loco lacks a back head at present since ,unbeknown to me, the one fitted by the original builder was plastic. I only discovered this when the loco emerged from the paint stripper and the plastic had turned to a soggy mess! However a replacement cast version is on order. If the weather permits I hope to get the loco primed shortly and then move on to painting and completion. Barry

It seems that e-Bay is the present that keeps giving in terms of finding loco restoration projects for me but I will definitely try not to be tempted for a while after this one! The model for sale looked in a pretty sad way, and no interest whatsoever was being shown in it, but I could see some potential and made a modest bid, which was accepted. It seems that this model met its fate in the post on the way to the vendor. Apparently it was inadequately packed and suffered accordingly with bits being knocked off. The vendor had never got round to restoring it and he had decided to move it on. Despite the damage, however, most parts seemed to be there and , most importantly, it had a full set of later type Romford driving wheels. Had the latter not been present then I wouldn't have considered the project. This is what I got for my money: The loco body kit is by M&L and I remember building one for a friend in the 1980's. It was designed to fit onto the Mainline Manor chassis but I always thought that it sat a little high. However this kit had a Comet chassis, albeit somewhat battered, whilst the tender looks to be a K's product. I wanted a 4000g tender for my grange so I will be discarding the K's one and replacing it with this Wills one which came as a bonus with the 57xx that I recently restored .Perhaps the seller thought that they went together! Fortunately, I also had an unused Comet internal frames set which fitted this tender. I began work on the loco chassis by stripping it down and repainting. The Comet slide bars were so distorted as to be beyond redemption but fortunately I had an unused set in my spares box. These were duly assembled and fitted in place of the damaged ones. The connecting rods were not fully soldered together so I corrected this and dismantled the coupling rods before articulating them to pivot on the central wheel. I find that this improves running where a rigid chassis is used. The existing crossheads were re-used and I soldered on a small bracket to the RH one which will take the vacuum pump rod. Brake shoes came from one of the ever useful Mainly Trains etches. For motive power I fitted the ubiquitous High Level Road Runner + gear box with 45:1 reduction, and treated myself to a HL 1230 coreless motor. I have wanted to try out one of these for some time and following initial chassis tests I am very pleased. There is plenty of power there and I suspect that these motors perhaps have the edge on the Mashimas that I have used for many years. With the chassis running I have now turned my attention to the collection of bits and these went into the paint stripper this afternoon. After they emerge and the cleaning up is done re-assembly will commence! Barry

I have now completed the King restoration as shown here. I only ever knew the Kings in their double chimney guise, but as I already have one of these I wanted the earlier version. I chose 6007 as being a member of the class that I saw in service, albeit by then fitted with a double chimney. It hasn't been a very expensive project but, as is always the way with these restorations, there was an awful amount of work involved. Having done 8 of these white metal kit restorations over the past year it was my intention to now take a break from them and get on with some etched brass kits. However guess what? Yes - there is another kit restoration in the pipeline which is currently being worked on. Watch this space! Barry

Mashima motors are still available from Branchlines and I bought one a couple of months ago. It depends on the size you need but it would be worth talking to Brian. I believe that he made a bulk purchase as manufacture was coming to an end. As for alternatives i would suggest taking a look at the High Level website. I have used HL gearboxes for many years and recently I have had good results with the HL budget iron core motors. I have only used the 1015 and 1020 to date which are extremely good value at only £9.50 each. One of those should do the job for your B4 but Chris has other motors including the more expensive coreless ones. I am just about to experiment with one of those. Barry

It is an attractive livery but of course quite fictitious! The South Devon painters were having a bit of fun with their take on modern GWR livery before the loco came out of service. The locomotive 1369 actually managed to retain "Great Western" lettering on its side tanks until 1961 when it was repainted in BR livery. That didn't last too long though as it passed into preservation in the mid 1960's and was promptly repainted into GWR green. Good luck with the model and it will be interesting to hear how you get on. Barry

Well done - an excellent effort and quite convincing. I grew up with Kitmaster conversions and this takes me back to the 1960's ! Barry

This is the last of the quartet of careworn kit built locos that I acquired in quick succession just before Christmas. I described the restoration of the other 3 locos in previous threads and although this was the first to be worked on it has been held up for a couple of months awaiting spare parts. It appeared on e-Bay as part of a clearance sale by Hayfield of this parish and although it was lacking a motor it did have a full set of wheels, which for me is always an important consideration. Anyway, my bid was successful and this is what I took delivery of: By this the time this photo was taken I had already dismantled the motion and brake gear. Clearly the original builder had taken some care but the loco then seems to have fallen on hard times and some parts were missing. I believe that this was the condition in which Hayfield acquired it. I began with the chassis which was stripped down to component parts and reassembled. The chassis block is the old Wills cast version designed to take a tri-ang X04 motor and I was fortunate that I had an unused MRRC 1001 5 pole motor just waiting for a home. After so many years with the convenience of modern gear box motors I was out of practice with direct drive units and I had forgotten the trials and tribulations involved in achieving satisfactory gear meshing. I concluded that the original motor must have a tapering slipper plate to support it in its correct position. I think that Wills probably did a cast version but as I didn't have this I fashioned my own by cutting down a section of a wooden clothes peg pilfered from my wife's stock. I think I used this trick on a K's kit more years ago than I now care to remember. It did the job, however, and I moved on to partially rebuild the pick up assembly and fit the brake gear. I originally attempted to re use the original white metal brake shoes but this was a false economy. They inevitably gave trouble and were replaced by ones from a Mainly Trains etch. The tender inner frames from Comet were re used after tidying up and I devised a better method of securing them to the tender body. The loco and tender bodies had been assembled quite well but were a little battle worn and I felt that merely patching them up would not produce the effect that I wanted. To do the job properly they had to be stripped down to basic parts and here we see the result: The King is in the all together - and pieces! Fortunately re-assembly was rapid and this stage was reached by Christmas: Thereafter things came to a halt, as amongst the parts missing were the front bogie castings with the distinctive outside springs. An enquiry to Squires found that King spares were out of stock and I had to wait for a couple of months whilst they were cast. They arrived recently, however. and have now been fitted as shown: Eagle eyed GWR men will note that the chimney is incorrect for a King ,This was fitted just for effect and has now been replaced by a nice brass one of the correct shape. I have fitted my usual small amount of extra detail, including lamp brackets, and the paint shop now beckons. Barry

My personal opinion is that the 1366 class loco is one of the better DJH kits and I had no problems with assembling any of mine. The wheelbase is short on this class and I found that the model, just like the prototype, was quite at home on short radius curves. I can't speak for first radius curves but my 1366's cope well with the tight curves on my small dockside layout. The original Romford wheels supplied with this kit have been improved by Markits and are now more accurate with a finer profile. I would recommend them as being the best and easiest option. Although I used High Level gearboxes and motors on 1366 and 1371, my other 4 members of the class have a variety of motors, including one with a Portescap. However 1370 was built using a DJH unit which I found to be very satisfactory and easy to fit. Regarding pick ups these can come in a variety of forms and I would recommend Iain Rice's book "Chassis construction in 4mm" This gives a number of easily produced solutions for the modeller. Generally for under chassis pick ups I use a couple of pieces of circuit board fixed to the underside of the frames . Sometimes I solder a buzz bar of wire (about paper clip diameter) to these and solder in turn the fine wire pick ups to this. In certain instances I solder the wires direct to the circuit board but there are any number of variations, some of which have been described by others on this forum. It is not that difficult but care and time taken will give the rewards in terms of performance. Good luck if you decide to go for it and I look forward to seeing the results! Barry

That's a really excellent job and thank you for the detail shots. The missing boiler feed clack cover is a nice touch and so typical of engines in everyday use. You have given me food for thought! Barry

Thank you 30368. I think that I should perhaps have put a bit more effort into the chassis detailing. have you done a Q1? Barry

My third kit rebuild of the winter is a K's Bulleid Q1, which was something of a random purchase on Christmas Eve. The "buy it now " price was reasonable and with the distractions of the festive season I didn't give too much thought to the merits or otherwise of the kit. If I had done my homework properly though I may perhaps have not bothered! What I got for my money was a quite well built kit, albeit motorless, fitted with Hamblings driving wheels, which I hadn't seen for years. Until I consulted my files I hadn't realised that this kit was first introduced as far back as 1963, and it is definitely of its time. Further investigation revealed that the wheelbase is innacurate by a few mms, for reasons best known to K's, and the coupling rods should be fluted. What then to do with my purchase? I did consider selling it on again but decided in the end to accept the compromises and to make the best of a less than perfect model. The preceding photos show the kit as acquired but with some improvements already made. I began with the chassis and dismantled the coupling rods in order to carefully drift out the central driven axle and remove the k's worm wheel. The thick brass frames are quite narrow and I therefore used a High Level Slim Liner + gearbox with a 54:1 ratio and a Mashima 1420 motor. As can be seen. the new mechanism fits snugly in the top of the k's frames. I added Mainly Trains brake shoes to the front and rear drivers but had to omit the central pair as the sandboxes were to close to the wheels and left no room - no doubt because of the wheelbase compromise. the generic K's brass buffers which were fitted were far too large and I replaced them with white metal ones which are a bit closer to the prototype. The AWS kit under the LH cab was cobbled together from bits in the spares box and I then turned to the body and tender. Dismantling these was out of the question as they had been very solidly assembled, possibly with solder. Furthermore, the previous builder had seen fit to cram the loco boiler with lead, which made it very heavy indeed. it was only with very great difficulty that I was able to extract sufficient of this ballast to allow clearance for the motor. The sparse nature of this prototype offered little scope for detailing but I did fit lamp brackets and hand rail to the tender back. I also replaced the loco cast chimney with a turned brass one that I bought many years ago. So there you have it. Not a patch on my Hornby Q1 both in terms of appearance and performance but an interesting exercise nevertheless. Will I keep it? Well probably! Three down and one to go and the last rescue is 90% complete and just awaiting spare parts from Squires. More to follow in due course. Barry

During the weeks leading up to Christmas I somehow managed to acquire 4 pre-built kit locos on e-Bay, and my winter project has been restoring them. In a separate thread have already described my epic rebuild of the SEF C class loco and I have now completed the next two, which fortunately did not require anything like as much work. The first of these is a K's 57xx 0-6-0PT. I really don't know why I felt it necessary to acquire yet another 57xx as I already had 7 (or 8 if you include the 97xx variant) but I did have a spare set of number plates...... Anyway, I ended up bidding for and winning the said loco which came with a Wills 4000g GWR tender so for £24 I thought that I did quite well. With past experience of K's mechanisms I fully expected to have to re-motor the 57xx and possibly fit new wheels as well but after adjusting the pick ups and cleaning the treads the venerable Mk 2 motor ran surprisingly smoothly and I decided to retain it, at least for the present. A bonus was that a previous owner had fitted brake shoes although the outside rods were missing and I had to add these from the invaluable Mainly trains etch. As the kit was quite well made I saw no point in dismantling it and stripping the paintwork and therefore concentrated my efforts on adding detail. The biggest improvement to be made to the K's kit in my opinion is to replace the somewhat undernourished chimney and I used a nice brass casting from PDK, who also supplied correct pattern tank vents to replace the originals, I also replaced the safety valve bonnet with a cast brass version as this was not being painted over on this particular loco. I replaced the smokebox door handle, and other improvements were rear cab grilles (from the Mainly Trains etch) and sandbox opening rods (from RT models). As my prototype had top feed I fitted a white metal casting ,again from PDK, with pipework shaped from fuse wire. Lamp brackets and rear bunker hooks were fabricated in my usual way from office staples. All 4 footplate steps were missing but Dave Ellis, now in his Nucast Partners guise, kindly supplied me with replacements. My chosen prototype was 9642 which was a Weymouth loco from shortly after it was built until the mid 1950's and is now preserved. WWhi w Whilst working on 9642 I also did a restoration job on the third of the e-Bay purchases and I will post details of this one next. Barry

I have now completed the C class rebuild as shown here. I am quite pleased with the results but an enormous amount of work was involved. I was fortunate that Squires had the spares in stock ,which isn't the case for all loco kits. We were certainly spoiled by the superb service offered by Dave Ellis when he ran SEF! Whilst finishing the C I have also been working on a couple of other white metal kit rescues which did not need quite so much resuscitation. They are both nearly complete and further details will follow shortly. Barry

Well done. Your purchase was even more derelict than mine and it would be interesting to see the progress that you make with the rebuild. I think that there is a great deal of satisfaction to be gained in breathing fresh life into a heap of junk! Barry