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Oh dear, I seem to have got the steam loco bug again. Having just finished my build of a Kitmaster/Airfix/Dapol SR Schools Class, I was going to do yet another one with the original chimney and livery, but instead I thought I would finish off my West Country instead. Originally issued by Kitmaster back in 1959, by the time it got into the hands of Dapol it was a very old mould and the instructions for this one say they were re-printed on September 4th 2010 - the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain - this kit was issued as one of the Battle of Britain class but I am building it as the similar West Country. Here are the tender parts which I started painting about 10 years ago. and here it is an hour later. Still some parts to add and painting to do. Unlike the Schools, this is painted in what seems to be the post war version of Malachite which is both darker and more yellow than the colour I used on my pre-war Schools. I will try and keep the lecturing down this time, but a little background is perhaps needed. When Oliver Bullied took over from Maunsell as Chief Mechanical Engineer at the SR in 1937, they still had a lot of medium power locos inherited from their constituent pre-grouping companies and they were getting old. Although the Southern did not have a lot of long routes, it did carry a lot of traffic to and from London and in 1938 Bullied was authorised to design and build some new and more powerful locos. With his background in the LNER he initially looked at 4-8-2 and then 2-8-2 wheel layouts but the Chief Civil Engineer refused to sanction them as they would be too heavy for the track in his opinion, and in fairness some of the lines were of a poor standard. Bullied therefore decide to build Pacific 4-6-2 tender locos though he had to take steps to make them considerably lighter than "normal" ones as built elsewhere, but more on that later. The fact that he got permission for what would eventually be 30 Merchant Navy class machines was a bit surprising but by then it was apparent that war was likely so the company foresaw the need for big locos to haul troops and supplies to the channel ports. Even more surprising was that he also got permission to keep building throughout the war as the government banned the building of express passenger locos, but he got round that by describing them as "mixed traffic" ie passenger and also freight. The first Merchant Navies entered service in March 1941, and a couple of years later Bullied decided he would built a set of lighter locos for use on some of the less well built lines. This became the Battle of Britain and West Country classes of which no less than 110 were eventually built. So next I will build the bottom end of the loco. Pete

Here's my first ever model loco, a Dapol, Bullied, Battle of Britain Class. Painted Humbrol 117, USAF SEA camo dark green. This one is 34085, 501 Squadron