Corbs

These are absolutely wonderful. The two blue ones put me in mind of term used by car enthusiasts - 'restomod' - restored and modified at the same time.

But we would have missed the Austin 7 converted with a Ljungström turbine!

No it doesn't fit. The Castle/County motor mount is too narrow even for the slimline CD motor. I was looking for other motors of similar dimensions for a while and couldn't find anything.

I think it would be best to send it back, mate. Sorry I know it's a pain but it is the best way to ensure it gets fixed.

I'd love an RTR 44xx. A Lima 4575 was the second loco I ever got, and the small wheeled, 'hunkered down' look of its grandfather has always appealed.

You might need to try a retailer as I think it's soled out on the Rapido site

I've ordered mine in BR black (easier to repaint). All locos will be this kind of price soon, prices are going up across the board as costs rise.

Livery samples (pics from FB)

I had a similar conundrum trying to find a suitable donor - I didn't find any RTR tender locos in the end that were small enough. The Lambton 0-6-0s had nominal outside wheel diameters of between 4ft 2.5in and 4ft 7in (ish, depending on tyre depth) and coupled wheelbases between 13ft 6in and 16ft. I think I found the J15 was the closest with 4ft 11in wheels and 16ft 1in wheelbase. My 'Lambtonesque' 0-6-0 is oversized really. The tender from the Standard is also very large but in styling it is quite similar to some of the Philadelphia works-built tenders. These may have been new bodies on old chassis. Lambton 26 had this along with the enclosed cab - note the tender chassis is quite old in design. No.9 had a similar one. Both had tender cabs as they spent half their lives in reverse. I've not had a great deal of experience with whitemetal (only a couple of kits) but I much prefer plastic to work with. My clumsy hands kept bending the whitemetal and I could never get the bits properly straight again or to fit together well :( Trying to solder it made me feel like I was going mad as either I'd accidentally melt it, or when trying to join one piece, another would come unstuck. That said, maybe there are bits you can salvage like the chimney, dome, safety valves, splashers, buffers etc even if you didn't use the body?

109.5mm over buffers 97.5mm over headstocks 44mm (approx) wheelbase 48mm from railhead to chimney top

I know that feeling!

Hello Lofty, How did you get on with these? A lot of you will have already seen this but thought it relevant to the thread - I recently bodged together an approximation of a Saint from a Castle, a 28xx and a Hall. A lot of imperfections but hope to make another soon.

Vectis Models do a 3D printed adapter to put NEM couplings on the Pug, hope that is useful!

I think it's been banned from being imported, I tried to buy some from the USA but they had to cancel the sale as they wouldn't be able to post it :( I've switched to Tamiya matt clear which isn't as good but have to make do.

The brown should be the same as used on the Chatham open wagons 😀 the red oxide is a new colour though.

A few months back Hardys Hobbies announced they would stop printing new body kits and the only ones left would be remaining stock, I guess that may have run out now.

Hoping to get some fall plates in metal but felt a bit impatient, so used some scrap plastic from a piece of packaging to make one. Raided Pat's stash of figures and found a painted crew who help to make the cab feel less bare. Hopefully there is just the tender coupling, cab glazing and elecrickery to go now. I have placed an order with Micron for a couple of receivers as this will be going RC. There are only 6 pickups, they are all pretty knackered and I can't be bothered to faff around with them, so going to see how big a battery I can get into the tender.

Which livery did you order Robin?

Just got my 2, very excited. I am really pleased that the factory were able to reproduce things like the Lifted/Painted dates, and the way that the oiling date panel is a separately defined colour. Planning to give them a coat of matt lacquer to tone down the shininess a bit, hopefully the weather tomorrow is suitable!

I don't like it. I love it.

I'm really pleased with how they are looking and am so excited about them being out in the world, a lot of time went into them!

Found the box with the coupling rods, PLUS they had the crankpin screws with them, yaaaay. For some reason one of the wheels was missing the threaded crankpin insert so I nicked one out of a spare wheelset. Not an exact fit but held the soldering iron against it to melt it into the slot, seemed to work. I pinched an idea from someone on twitter doing a Saint to make something resembling a vacuum pump. Cut some brass tube in half and glued to the running board, then painted black. Link to Twitter build: Coupling hook and vac pipe added to the front end, more odds and ends from the bits box.

Handily I had a Hornby 4000g tender from a King, providing they got the measurements right it matches that, so the height thing might be an illusion from the cab height being slightly off.

Ahh yes you are right, in this pic of Clevedon Court double heading with a Hall you can clearly see the difference between 3500 and 4000g tenders (pic is linked to Flickr). Annoyingly I have a heavily damaged 'Grange' in the overhaul queue but it came to me without a tender. I have thought about slicing the height difference out of the 4000g one but might shelve that for another day. I'd love for Hornby or any other manufacturer to do an RTR Saint (I bet one will be announced the second I finish this...) but apparently it's quite tricky to do as there are at least 3 toolings for even just the production batches (not including the 4-4-2s or the 4-6-0 prototypes), and to do 'Lady of Legend' is different again (although I do think people might be forgiving if LoL used the same tooling as the 'main' Ladies). I think the splashers are about the same size as Hall ones (with the raised running plate making up for the wheel diameter difference). I think 4000 North Star may have had the same/similar running plate/splasher combo but it was the only Star to have this. This and the Saints have the bottom of the smokebox basically sat on the running plate. The production Stars seem to have similar running plates/splashers to the Castles - running plate lower and splashers consequently taller. (Pic from: http://www.gwr.org.uk/no-stars.html ) All this is why my drop-down at the back isn't deep enough - because I didn't take the extra few mm off the bottom of the smokebox saddle and base of the firebox, it sits slightly proud of the running plate (Hall-style), not too bad at the front, but at the back either I would have had to move the cab down so far that the corners of the firebox would be touching the cab roof, or extend the cab sides in height so much that they would look stretched and weird, so I've settled for the compromise. On the flip side, the extra height of the 4000g tender means it lines up with the cab cutout as the 3500g one would were the cab slightly lower, so swings and roundabouts. For me these kind of models require a certain amount of fudging anyway, nevertheless I am pleased with the result and can always incorporate learnings into the next build. Interestingly, before its final guise, Clevedon Court had inside steam pipes but was wearing an outside steam pipe smokebox with the holes blanked off, as seen here in 1939: https://www.warwickshirerailways.com/gwr/gwrbsh1232.htm The Cathedral notes make sense - although I don't think any RTR OO manufacturer has done a 'proper' wide County cab? The one I have here that came off the Ringfield drive model is the same width as the Castle cab I replaced it with. So kitbuilt might be the way to go. Offering the 4 Hawksworth tenders sat on my desk up to each other, the Bachmann one (31mm) is narrower than the Hornby examples (33mm) so I hope that gives a steer on which one to use.

It's not skill it's just filler ;) It's from the Great British Locomotives static models range from a few years ago (buy an overpriced magazine and get a loco free). This one was paired with 'Earl Bathurst' so I think the model it was copied from based on was the ringfield drive Castle. A similar one came with the King they did but it had the dual filler lids.