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Nice one Pete! And so the weathering begins, here is the first pass, a lot more to do yet...

A grab shot of the little known 3 tender 9F, it wont be clean for very much longer....

There are two v3s on the shed, a DJH and its poor relation from Ace.....

Nth Degree, I think that you are right, its a re-worked Oak ville by Allen Hammett. Regards Tony

A visit to Hollowbeck shed finds a few shunters in residence, see more at the Cleethorpes show May 9/10. The houses in the background are actually on another layout, but they give that north east sort of feel.. At least I managed to get some sort of depth of field across the room.

Meanwhile ( sadly no longer in a Clarkson voice ) I've been changing the top feed on this Royal Scot and putting a Griffin one on. A temporary heat shield was made up, so that the casting could be heated up with my new Nimrod torch. It dropped off ok, without too much collateral damage. The loco is due to be repainted by Warren Heywood.

David Hill - yes it will be weathered, limescale streaks have been requested by the client.. Peter Cross - thanks for your kind comments, I never think I am that good, but I get great satisfaction from being told I have inspired others.. I've not reported much of late as it's been continuing work on the 9Fs, with one nearly finished - photos to follow soon. In the meantime I've managed to get an article in the current MRJ, one of my long time ambitions, you saw them here first folks!:-

Good recovery Sandy! You are not alone!

At last ready for a track test. Those injector pipes need a shove to click them into place under the footplate. I couldn't get a BR type lubricator which has the level gauge at the side, so an LMS one will have to do. Them some final tidying and detailing, paint and out the door!

I've also found that trying to copy extreme weathering from photographs doesn't work and that the solution is to apply in a restrained manner. One of my Ivatts was described as heavily weathered, but you could still see the insignia and number! Often in 60s photos these are almost completely obscured. For some reason extreme weathering doesn't scale down. I like everything to be weathered, even new items of rolling stock will display dirt and rust. My pet hate....shiny motion, it looks truly awful, I don't recall ever seeing photo of a prototype in service in this condition... I very much enjoy the discussions on this thread Tony, interesting and informative. Regards Tony

I had to scratch a representation of that to replace the white metal item in the kit........

Good point Paul - maybe that's why DJH didn't include it. Two of the locos will be Annesley ones, well known for it's hard water.....

Whilst I'm waiting for various bits of paint to dry, I thought I'd get the back heads done. Most of the castings are brass apart from one, which disintegrated when I tried to drill it for pipes. Why was that one not brass as well?. I ended up scratching a representation, which should only be dimly visible in the dark confines of the cab. I still need to add the continuous blowdown valve, but that's not in the kit. Mr Ragstone?

So, I spent a day finishing off the body detail and added the WR platform over the reverser tunnel and the a representation of the hefty bracket behind the buffers. This was made from square brass tube, otherwise it looked too empty there. Next job is to weather and re-assemble the chassis, and we could be on the home straight! Hurrah!

Thanks Dave - So after a trip to the Harz and some onsite work I'm back at the workbench. It's strange - none of the location holes for some of the parts seem to be in the right place on this kit. The regulator crank position had to be moved up slightly on the boss and the midway crank was lowered to get the rods looking right relative to the handrail. I junked the white metal pipes in the kit and made mine up from copper wire - it's far easier. 92204 also has the ATC conduit along the running plate.

Dave - you are most welcome - what an excellent model, it really looks the part. Are you sure it's not O gauge!

Anyway, I teased about the deflectors, its 15 parts in each, including the retaining screws...! The time has now come to finish the loco's individually, so its 92204 first and on to my favourite bit, the pipework. The valves and injectors are Ragstone, replacing the DJH white metal items which I just could not get along with. Ragstone also supply a set of rather nice pipe castings that include the square pipe unions. That saves a lot of time so this chassis is pretty well ready for painting.

Good idea Simon! The great thing about RmWeb is the ideas that you can find, so I thought that Simon ( Hobbyhorse ) came up with a great way to make the deflectors removable. I used some angle section and drilled and tapped it. Each deflector consists of 23 parts, so it was a days work to make them all up and fit them.

In the end it's all compromise, maybe the running plate is a shade high, but I couldn't get both Ragstone castings to fit and look right. The bracket on the firemans side should sit well down between the wheels. So I ended up leaving the weighshaft at the original height setting and using the DJH casting on that side. The Ragstone one looked better but sat too high, and I didn't want to start carving up castings in decreasing circles of despair.. The drivers side captures the beefiness of the bracket and also reaches up closer to the running plate. The cab roofs are now on - they were a battle as they were a very tight fit.

Nice to see you back Colin, my best wishes for a quick recovery, and I'm sure we are all looking forward to seeing more of your modelling. Best Wishes. Tony

I've had 5 days in bed with flu since the Bristol show, but I had spent time mulling over the DJH motion brackets. I wasn't fully happy with the castings as they didn't quite represent the prototype fully in that the main bearings were too inboard and the distinctive triangular hole on the drivers side was far too small. The Ragstone ones are crisper castings, although the bearing bosses seem slightly large. So 92031 was selected for conversion. It was a fiddle to make them removable, and the screw mechanism seems a bit low, but the overall effect is far better than before.

92204 takes shape, although not seeming very different from the previous photos, the boilers have been drilled and as many item fitted as possible before attaching to the running plate. As usual BR Standard cabs are tricky and all three locos needed careful fettling of the firebox end of the boiler to ensure the cab fits tidily and is level. There is still some work to do before permanently attaching the cab. Most of the items cannot be soldered from the inside of the boiler as the spigots are too short - or the boiler is too thick! So I've had to resort to epoxy. I feel I'm getting somewhere now, although ther is a long way to go yet. The roller bearing covers have arrived from Ragstone, so I can put on the eccentric rods when I return to the chassis.

The running plate is supported by a hefty casting, I didn't want to use all of this as in places it made the running plate look to solid, so I cut off each end and used bullhead rail as re-inforcement. It also makes it easier to pass pipes etc through. The boilers were interesting, the one for 92031 bought who knows how many years ago needed hardly any cleaning up, that for 92069, about 5 years old and 92204's fairly new, needed flash cutting off with a hacksaw... Moral - buy a kit when it is introduced, when the moulds are in good condition. And at last we have a line up, propped up with bits of wood and plastic, but you get the idea...

And I should have said right hand eccentric - that's what toothache and headache do for you. Despite that I have pressed on today, snow outside and storm approaching... I can't get on with some of these one piece fold ups, I couldn't get a clean fold, or the front panel in the right place at the top of the side piece. So I broke them off and cleaned up. It was a lot easier to gettem in the right place then. I also cut out the holes for the filler access on the mechanical lubricators, it just looked blanked off as a half etch.

I think I finally worked out why folks have had problems with the left hand eccentric rod on this 9F kit. The pivot point on the motion bracket casting is in a different position to that on the drivers side. Both castings seem to have errors. The drivers side should not be so recessed below the weighshaft - this makes the lightening hole far to small. The fireman's side doesn't look deep enough in the area of the lightening holes. I considered Ragstone ones - but it would mean more back tracking and retro fitting. I've done a cut and shut job on the right hand eccentric rods to shorten them a couple of millimetres.