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Gorgeous work Ken! Lovely detail; it has a very complex shape. I like the way that steam engineers took care to design the tender/loco as a whole. Although the pairing didn't always last!

Are Keykits chassis kits still available? I'd forgotten about them and have always liked the look of them. I used to have their lists, sold via another company, but I can't find them on my chaotic computer filing system...

Yes. I bought it from the sadly missed Home of O Gauge. The footplate was quite badly warped and I broke it when I tried to straighten it. I rebuilt and strengthened it with brass channel. It did put me off resin although I'm keen to try a JLTRT Hymeck. (I emailed them about a swap for my Heljan model as they advertise on their website but have had no reply as yet.) I'd also like to have a go at one of their Mitchell 517s...

I found the transfer manufacturers. They are Clasp Decals and have a web-site that I reached through the Gauge 0 Guild Traders List. Or you could Google them, I'm not quite up to posting links yet... I found the lining transfers to be excellent, not too fragile and with the right amount of stickiness and manouverability. You get a lot on the sheet too!

Thankyou Rob, I really enjoyed the challenge of lining and am looking forward to painting my next loco project, "Earl Cawdor". That's after I've built her... Before the 36xx I built a Great Western 517 0-4-2 tank, beautiful little locos, from a kit which had rather more resin components than I like, including the footplate which needed a lot of work...The point is, I decided to line it with transfers. And I can't remember the make! They're fantastic. I ordered them from a web-site on the GOG site's list of traders. I'll try and find them. They're not Fox, which I also like very much. There weren't sharp enough curves for the cab sides so I lined them myself, which led me to doing it all on the 36xx. I've recently bought a very nice antique bow-pen and am itching to use it!

Hi Ken, I agree whole-heartedly with David's comments, I'm very pleased you're still modelling in 7mm and also intrigued to see how your new project progresses. Looking forward very much to seeing your next bunch of locos! Regards Simon

Thankyou very much Dave, it was my second attempt, she did spend some time in the paint stripper and dish-washer before I was happier! I lightly weathered her afterwards. I'm not keen on high gloss finishes but a coat of gloss paint does make it easier to correct mistakes in the lining. Ian Rathbone's DVD is inspirational as he really does make it look easy. He is very calm and unruffled and remembers to breath!

Here are some photos of the painted loco. She is a 36xx built by the Great Western at the turn of the last century for almost exclusively suburban passenger duties. The large cab, which earned the class the "Birdcage" nickname was to enable them to be run equally easily in either direction without turning. 3601 portrays the loco before various modifications such as conical boilers and top-feeds were fitted. I hope to produce some etches to enable me to to build some of the variants. I get a bit obssessed with single classes of locos. I'll show you my 14xxs next... 3601 was spray painted with Phoenix enamels and lined with a bow pen following the work of Ian Rathbone in book and DVD form.

Thanks Dave, I managed to edit the title! My IT skills know no bounds, ahem. Here are a couple more pictures of the coach roofs showing the paper tissue surface and plasticard rainstrips on the Saloon. I sprayed the roofs with etch primer first and the PVA'd the tissue (cheap ones from Wilko's) to both sides as I've read that if you just do the top, when it dries it pulls the curve out of shape. And I didn't want that to happen.

Thanks Dave, I'll give the title an edit when I'm feeling brave! The coach roofs are covered with tissue. I got the idea from an article by Martyn Welch, about panelled coach weathering, in an issue of the MRJ. It also involves copious amounts of talcum powder and flicked PVA, great fun. Here are some further photos of the 2-4-2t... It's interesting what a difference the detailing makes. I think Guy Williams says something about the main body being 90% of the build and the last 10% being the time consuming and effective bit.

On the button Phil! She's No. 3601 in the original form before she was fitted with conical boilers and such. I like the rather old-fashioned toy-like look of the class and there were far fewer rivets! Here she is with some blu-tacked smoke box furniture.

Here's the front end. It was at this point in the build that I discovered that my soldering iron was seriously underpowered and would just stick to whatever joint I was trying to make in the enormous quantity of brass involved. I did move onto those rather nice cheapo temperature controlled irons from Maplins. They have a great small bit option and can whack out some heat but I've got through two in as many years and hope to pick up something a little bit more swish at Warley. Anyone know what it is yet?

Here's the rear end after a bit more work. Incidently, I've just finished reading another Wild Swan book, "The 4mm Coal wagon", by John Hayes. It's excellent, well written, with some great scratch-building tips and ideas for any gauge. And the wagons are superb!

Here's a photo of the frames and cab attached to the chassis. I got a lot of inspiration from the books of Guy Williams and Iain Rice and, from far back in my childhood, a very old and tatty edition of John Ahern's book. All full of excellent tips and advice. Looking at the photo, I seem to have a prediliction for facing my motors in the opposite direction to the norm; prehaps it's my preference for chunky flywheels?

I've found a few more construction photos lurking on the computer. Here's one of the inside motion which I soldered up from bits and pieces. Next time I'm going to try and make it work!

Thankyou Paul, you've got some very nice photos in your gallery. It's not an F8, although an LNER F5 kit is on my wish list! I really like small tank locos. As far as I know there isn't or hasn't been a 7mm kit for this loco... Here's a closer view of one of the radials. I hadn't fitted coil springs on the side spigots at this point.

Thankyou, they're lovely kits. Easy to build, excellent instructions and they look great whatever colour you paint them in! I'm looking forward to thinking of excuses to build more Connoisseur kits. Here are some more pics., of the other coaches and a start on my first scratchbuilt loco. I didn't take many pictures of this build, multi-tasking's always been a little tricky for me! Anyway, this is the chassis almost complete, if I remember correctly. Perhaps you'd like to have a guess of the prototype?

Thankyou all. Adam, thanks very much for putting up the video, I'll try harder next time! Ozzy, it just goes to show what a fresh view can point out, I'd not noticed the wheel centres throughout the build or when posting the photos. All my other locos have had them painted or blackened; excellent spot, thankyou. And Ken, cheers, I'm very proud of my curtains! As this has been such a useful and positive experience, both IT-wise and modelling, I'll continue to post with some of my other projects. And I'm going to try and edit the title...might take me a while. Meantime, some photos of the lovely coach kits (and so cheap) by Connoissuer, as running contemporiously on the NSR with the Lady Armstrong...

So, here she is as finished. I made the "curtains" that the crew used to fend off the North Eastern winds and cold weather from wine bottle metal seal material. Wolf Blass, I think! I pressed it onto loops of cotton and the ends of cocktail sticks to get the folds. Dry brushing helps to show them up. The driver had some radical waist-line surgery to help him lean out of the window, his wounds were healed with Milliput. The lights were from my cannibalised Harley Davisons from TKMax. I used card-board templates to cut the flush glazed windows from a lovely cast acrylic material from Wizard Models. It's absolutely flat, cuts and snaps very cleanly and I've never had trouble with frosting. The couplings are Dinghams which I like very much, a bit fiddly to make, easy to use and you don't need a bar across the buffers. I managed to put a short, rather clonky video, (plus Radio 4 soundtrack,) of The Lady demonstrating the Dingham couplers on YouTube. I'm not sure how to add the link but if you search for "Armstrong Whitworth Dingham" you should find it!

Thankyou! Here are the underframe details. I decided to make some of the more complex shapes from plasticard and was very pleased with the results. The sandboxes were laminated, filed and sanded to shape and drilled to take a piece of brass tubing with a cast cap stuck on top. The casing for the jack-shaft gearing was similarly made up from plasticard. The brake shoes are modified Slaters.Various pipes, springs, bits and pieces and bullead rail guards were either epoxied or soldered on. I've found that a well hardened paint finish will withstand a quick bit of local soldering, handy! You can also see where I've applied the Archer rivet head transfers to the louvres before I sprayed the topcoat. They were very easy to use and there's no sign of carrier film, an excellent alternative to other methods.

Thankyou Paul, here she is pre-weathering after spraying with Humbrol satin black. I often use JLTRT satin black straight from the tin but I wanted more control for such a tiny loco. The Humbrol's very good but the downside is that it takes longer to dry than the cellulose(?) of the tin stuff. I want to experiment with Chris Wesson's cellulose paints on my next project.

Thanks Ken, always with the good questions! She got pretty delapidated near the end but I didn't want the paint finish to be too rough, as seen in some photos. So I aimed for work-worn but looked after. Here is the body-work in JLTRT Etch Primer; I love the stuff, goes on smoothly and dries very quickly. A few more of the details showing are; the horn, which was a beautiful little turning run up for me by Michael Edge of Judith Edge kits; the bonnet catches which I bent up from strip folded around brass rod; and lamp irons soldered up from strip.

The buffers are internally sprung as there's no-where for the usual bolt and shaft to go. This was done by pegging the buffer shaft with a length of 0.9mm brass rod, through a horizontal slot. This holds the spring in to the rear of the buffer body. The rod is soldered where it enters the top and bottom of the main buffer shank and in this case is concealed by the chequer plates. This is a great method; detailed and much better explained by Nick Baines in a recent Gauge O guild Gazette. The original buffer turnings were square based so I filed the top and bottom, lengthened the sides with sheet brass, backed them with copper backed circuit board for the chunky look in photos, drilled and added 4 brass rod bolts each and made the 6 webs by soldering on lengths of brass strip and trimming and filing to shape. All this took ages. And I dropped the last one and it completely dissapeared. I have a wooden floor and shine a torch along it to make large shadows of small objects but to no avail. All I could think of was that I hadn't heard the usual clonk as it hit the floor. After 3 days of occasional searching it turned up in the lining of my sweat shirt as I put it into the washing machine! Grrr! Phew!

As promised, a photo of the various bits of engine paraphernalia on the other side of the loco. It seems the equipment was to provide power for the coach lighting? I'm not sure what the cylinder did! There are parts from a Triumph motorcycle, white metal scraps soldered together, my bits box and a diesel detail pack from JLTRT, (which is a fantastic source of peculiar lost wax brass shapes.) The photo shows all the parts balanced in place to get an idea of the 'look.' I later added a plasticard plate underneath the stuff at the front before gluing everything together after painting.

Thankyou everybody for your encouragement. Ken, there are photos with all sorts of different radiators on the front, the style I built seemed definately attached to the "Lady Armstrong" and yours could be equally correct. I installed the small tube in the rectangualr cut-out beneath the radiator in the rather whimsical hope that it was used to hand start the engine with a crank handle! I've no idea if that's the case but it does seem to lurk in the darkness in some photos. Sometimes the hatch is covered with a small panel. I've really seen the importance of having photos of a specific prototype with this build. Thanks Bernard for the information about the radiator tubes, from the book it seemed that AW had some problems with ventilation in the high temperatures of places like India! And Rob, I made up those little square louvres from some etches/pressings(?) I bought at a Guildex, from a bits box for 50p-I love bits boxes. I cut the longer pieces to the right size and soldered on a top and bottom to complete the outside frame. I was going to try to punch rivets in the framing but happily decided to experiment with Archer's resin rivet transfers. They're great and their customer service is second to none! I'll get back to you Ken on the side gubbins, the bits-box definately came in handy and the toy department of TK Max!