Diesel Brake Tender 'OO' gauge, white metal kit

[Mr T]

A bit of a change from my usual aircraft models, here is a model of a Diesel Brake Tender. These were introduced in rather a hurry by British Railways when it became apparent that the new diesel locomotives being introduced from the late 1950s onwards lack sufficient braking power and adhesion to stop unfitted (that is, the wagon brakes were not controlled from the locomotive, in the UK at the time that meant vacuum brakes. Modern passenger and freight stock are air-braked) mineral trains. BR took some old coach underframes, shortened them and added simple bodies filled with scrap  etc. to give a weight of about 35 tons to supplement the loco brakes.

My model comes from a defunct company call Genesis  Models who produced white metal loco and wagon kits of varying quality. The kit itself was fairly simple consisting of sides ends and roof with some LMS pattern coach bogies which  were pretty dire and replaced by some LMS bogies made by Bachmann as spare parts. The white metal parts were fairly crude and the fit was pretty poor, think Unicraft resin here. The two sides were more or less the same length, but one side was slightly deeper at one end and the roof was pitted and scored and lacked any detail whatsoever (should be joint lines) and underneath and had a fish symbol, presumably to reflect the manufacturers beliefs. The ends sort of matched the sides but were much larger than the roof section and required reshaping with a saw and files to match the roof profile. Epoxy resin was used to hold the kit together with a lot of Miliput, proper railway modellers might use low melt solder. Handwheels and buffers were replaced with something that had a shape and lamp irons and handrails came from scrap etch and brass wire. The buffers are LMS coach type, reflecting the use of an LMS coach underframe, some used LNER coach underframes. British Rail Green from Humbrol  was applied by hairy stick and the decals came from a sheet from Fox's Transfers that annoying only had numbers in the early style for LNER based Tenders and so cutting up was required. It looks the part, but I am not convinced by the size, I think it is a bit over scale. Not yet had a chance to try it with a loco.

[bigbadbadge]

You've done a cracking job on this . Great work.  I have recently picked up white metal soldering and it is not scary at all. I used to think it was, but a cheap adjustable soldering iron and it has opened up a whole new world. 

Chris