Southern Railways Schools Class***FINISHED***

[PeterB]

Seeing John's @nimrod54 build of his BR Mogul reminded me that I have 3 stalled loco kits that were originally produced many years ago by Rosebud Kitmaster, later known as just Kitmaster. The moulds were then taken over by Airfix who produced part of the range for a good few years, before passing them on to Dave and Polly at Dapol, which is where I got mine from quite a while back. My model railway layout was packed away sometime in the 1990's together with about 60 locos and an awful lot of rolling stock, but from time to time I get the urge to re-visit it. About 3 years ago I got out my Hornby LNER Silver Fox A4 Pacific, my Airfix Large Praire and my Bachman V2 and finally got round to re-spraying them in the correct colours and replacing the rather basic markings. At the same time, and whilst I was in the mood, I made a start on 2 Dapol Schools and a West Country/Battle of Britain. I got the markings together with cast plates etc and then something distracted me so I put them aside and forgot about them - this is how the Schools looked at the time.

 

I removed the horrible moulded handrails and replaced them, and on the one nearest the camera I also replaced the later large "Lemaitre" chimney that Oliver Bullied fitted to a number of them with Maunsell's original smaller King Arthur type chimney with the lip at the front - I believe it is called a Capuchon. The one at the back is more advanced as I have started putting on the lining which I bought from Fox Transfers, which could make things tricky. There are a number of reasons why I might not actually finish both of them - not least the fact that by now some of the parts might be missing. More difficult is the paintwork on the rear one as I decided I wanted it in the early pre-war version of Bullied's "Malachite" which is a blue green colour and I was never able to find any ready mixed, so I mixed my own. I thought I had painted everything, but now find I will need to do some touching up and as the paint I mixed has dried out years ago, that could be a problem. I therefore will probably have to completely repaint it with a new version which obviously means a hairy stick to get round the decs! The earlier version is in the lighter of Maunsells's olive greens of which I have several tins so that should not be a problem. However the LNER style white/black/white Pressfix lining I have is very old and may not work, ditto the Southern Railway numbers/lettering. I maybe can get replacements, but this build may not happen before the deadline - maybe I should do the Bullied "light pacific" instead as I have both paint and markings - we will see. I will probably potter about with them in between building planes as a sort of light relief.

 

Don't hold your breath!

 

Pete

Edited January 24, 2022 by PeterB

[Mjwomack]

It's a Peter B build and railway; I'm going to enjoy this

Ah but malachite green, yes good luck with that. Probably explains the KUTA aspect! Don't railmatch do it?

[PeterB]

Hi,

 

I have tried both Precision and Railmatch and as far as I know they do not have the colour I want. The nearest is the Humbrol but that needs a bit of light blue adding. Unfortunately, this one is dead in the water until I find the "safe place" I put the decs and plates in a couple of years ago - they are not where I thought they were!

 

Later- panic over, I found the missing decs and etched metal plates.

 

Pete

 

 

Edited January 25, 2022 by PeterB

[PeterB]

So, a bit of background. Unlike the LNER, 2 of whose contsituent companies began building large 4-6-2 Pacific locos even before grouping, the other 3 of the "big four" were content to use 4-6-0 locos for the heavy passenger trains until quite late. In fact the GWR built only one Pacific as an experiment and Southern did not start until around WWII. The latter company seemed happy with its King Arthur and Lord Nelson classes for their main express use, but by 1930 they decided to build something a bit smaller, perhaps because some of their lines had limited clearance and the "Central" division had short turntables, and so using features from both the previously named classes, Maunsell produced the Class V or "Schools" which were apparently the most powerful 4-4-0 locos in Europe. Entering service in around 1930, they were initially without smoke deflector plates but these were fitted before too long. They were very successful and although when Oliver Bullied took over as Chief Designer after Maunsell and decided to try Lemaitre multiple blastpipes with a wide chimney as he had done to some effect on the Lord Nelson Class, it did not make any significant improvement so he gave up after 20 had been so fitted out of the total of 40 built.

 

When the Rosebud Doll company decided to start their Kitmaster range of OO/HO loco kits they released this kit in March 1959 as Harrow, which had the Bullied modified blastpipe, and neither Airfix nor Dapol changed that when they took over the moulds in late 1962 and 1993 respectively, though Dapol marketed it as either 3 or 4 different versions with revised nameplates. These are the parts for one, or at least all I could find!

The tender side propped up on the keyboard is for my BoB kit and painted in the only "Malachite" Railmatch offer - Phoenix Precision do have both early and late versions but I will make do with my own mix based on Humrol RC409 with a little Hu 65 light blue added. If I had done he touching up when the original paint mix was still viable I may have got away without repainting, but at least acrylic paint should be useable for a lot longer than my original enamel mix.

 

Speaking of paints, most of my steam locos are ones I would see around my home in Yorkshire, but pre-grouping so mainly LMS and LNER, though there are a few in BR colours together with BR Standards. Since moving to Wales I have added a few GWR staples and once my son took an interest I added the Hornby Battle of Britain in BR Green and their old King Arthur in Southern "dark olive". However my knowledge of Southern locos is mainly based on preserved ones I have seen, either in the flesh or in photos. When visiting Steamtown at Carnforth 30 or so years ago I saw Lord Nelson in a very light Malachite scheme and I have also seen pics of Cheltenham in the same colour, hence my attempt to reproduce it. I have also seen another preserved Schools loco in what seems to be "light olive" and it looks very attractive, which is why I chose to use it on my other kit, but I now find it may be inaccurate. I have now read that the 2 main SR works mixed their own slightly different versions of the "Maunsell Olive", as was the case with the "Apple Green" mixed by the LNER works at Darlington and Doncaster. It seems the "light" version of the olive came from Ashford works, but the Schools were all build at Eastleigh which used the "dark" version so I may have to rethink the colour.

 

Anyway, enough of that. I will now try and put as much together as I can before mixing up some paint.

 

Pete

[Mjwomack]

And this is exactly why I love your bullds Peter! Even on subjects I allegedly know about I learn things 😁

A factor for the southern in general was the need for light axle loadings, hence when Bulleid did get round to building a Pacific it was a lightweight one, but.id never thought about how advanced the lner were with them compared to Lms, let alone gwr😳

Of course for a ger person like me, anything more than 6 wheels is more than we can count too!

[Mjwomack]

Ps 

I love the subject of 4-4-0?, Thought you might be starting a whattif of an articulated Schools class as 4-4-0-0-4-4; certainly solve the axle weight problem!

 

 

 

 

[PeterB]

Most of what little I know about the Southern Railway comes from various books by O.S. Nock, and I gather that the various contituent companies that were grouped to form it varied greatly in terms of finance, engineering, and overall business profile, eg the considerable effect of the London commuter traffic. One company at least - can't remember which without looking it up (South Eastern and Chatham?), had a reputation for a poor standard of track, partly due to the use of shingle from beaches as ballast, and although Maunsell had been thinking of using the his new 2-6-4 River tanks (K Class) for high speed work there, the derailment at Sevenoaks put an end to that. Part of the problem was the alleged hard and wobbly riding of the loco, but when Gresley offered to test one on the rather better standard LNER track it was not too bad. Whatever, the Rivers were withdrawn and rebuilt as U class tender engines, thus getting rid of the high centre of gravity which was caused by the water in the tanks (which also sloshed about adding to the problem it seems) and Maunsell designed the Schools instead, or so I understand it.

 

Pete

[PeterB]

I had intended to spend an hour or two yesterday continuing putting the never ending suppy of stencil decs on my Airfix Phantom and a couple of other planes I am currently building, but instead I spent some time researching the Schools Class locos and built the tender. Well, they do say a change is as good as a rest!

 

I think I sprayed the parts before assembly as it made getting the decs on the boiler easier, but with hindsight it was a mistake. I started on this one rather than the other because I had spent a lot of time cleaning up the parts before painting - they originally came out of the bag with an awful lot of flash.

Not too difficult to remove but tedious, particularly cleaning out between virtually every spoke on 14 wheels. A couple of years after David Boyle and his wife Pauline (Polly) had set up Dapol and aquired the moulds from Airfix, I paid them a visit at their old unit near Winsford in Cheshire. In between bouncing one of his small electric racing slot cars off the walls to prove to me they were "indestructible", Dave showed me one of the old Kitmaster "Blue Deltics" kits and said that I should by one now as the moulds were on their last legs. That was about 1995 and I am not sure how much longer they managed to keep them going but I think they must have got a few more years out of the Schools moulds! I never did buy a Deltic from him as I already had one, but my young kids did persuade me to buy a racing car set, which the cat used to find fascinating!

 

As well as the kits, Dapol eventually bought the Airfix electric trains and those made by Mainline, and also produced some very good locos of their own including a GWR County and a superb 0-6- Terrier tank, but I believe that they have since sold most of their locos to Hornby. I am not sure what exactly they are doing now and whether they are still making these kits.

 

Pete

Edited January 26, 2022 by PeterB

[PeterB]

Leave a tender alone for a few minutes and they breed!

After cleaning out 60 gaps between wheel spokes, it went together a bit easier than the previous one but of course I knew where to file it down this time. I am not a particularly tidy modeller, particularly when it comes to paint, not helped by the fact that between my two storage cabinets, 18 boxes and half a shelf I must have over 400 tins/jars/bottles in 10 different makes. I eventually managed to find a couple of 40 year old tins of the original Precision paints SR Maunsell "dark olive" which Eastleigh Works ued and is therefore apparently more accurate than the later Phoenix-Precision "light olive" I used on the boiler. It has actually come out a bit lighter than I remember it from when I painted my King Arthur 20 or more years ago, but as anybody who ever used the old Precision paints may remember, they took an awful lot of stirring and even then could take several days to dry - perhaps I stirred it better this time! I have also completed one set of frames and the other is on the way. I will finish that off then I had better get back to my decalling. I still have to drill holes for one smokebox handrail and the pair at the back of each tender - Airfix had them on the tender sides but the plan I have suggests they were actually at the edge of the backplate. Once that is done I can think about mixing up some Malachite.

 

Pete

 

Later - I have overpainted the steam sanding pipes on the frame as it seems they were not copper after all!

Edited January 26, 2022 by PeterB

[PeterB]

Incidentally, not sure GWR fans would say the LNER were more advanced - more a case of horses for courses as the saying goes - the Castles and Kings were powerful beasts even it they were "only 4-6-0" - the extra pony truck under the cab on a Pacific was to take the extra weight of a longer boiler but the King had a higher quoted tractive effort than even the upgraded A1/A3 and the A4 and the same as the LMS Princess Coronation aka Duchess class, at least on paper - the GWR tapered boilers, precision construction (Swindon supposedly worked to far closer tolerances so their parts were far more "interchangeable" than other companies and introduced optical devices to align the frames etc well before anybody else in the UK I believe) and better streamlining of the steam passages counted for quite a bit. As to 4-4-0+0-4-4 then both LMS and LNER used a limited number of Garrett type twins. I think the LNER used one 2-8-0+0-8-2 Class U1 for banking the heavy coal trains over Woodhead and the LMS had 33 smaller 2-6-0+0-6-2. It's more of a narrow gauge thing - powerful enough to haul heavy trains but flexible enough to get round tight curves, which is why we have a few here in Wales still. The full size versions were more in "wide open" places like South Africa. We are still paying the price for being the first to invent the railway as we know it - too many built up areas often developed before or soon after the railways arrived and restricting access, narrow loading gauge due to tunnels, and lots of tightish curves.

 

Ok, not quite as bright as before but close enough and at least I have paint available for a few days for touching up.

 For those who do not know, Malachite is the name of the colour that copper oxide forms on unpainted pipes, also known as Verdigris - the colour varies a bit and this is the bluer version. Suppose I better press on and get this one assembled whilst the paint is still viable - so much for my planning!😆

 

 

Pete

Edited January 26, 2022 by PeterB

[CliffB]

I must admit to knowing absolutely nothing about steam locos Pete (despite having spent most of my life living next door to the Severn Valley Railway). 

Nevertheless, I can already see that this is going to be a very attractive model when it's finished .

[PeterB]

Thanks Cliff,

 

Yes, it is no a bad looking loco though the boiler is a bit large and heavy looking perhaps compared with some others. It is actually one of those that look better with smoke deflectors fitted to my mind - not all do. I suppose this is the "purest" of the common boiler shapes. Many had the Belpaire firebox fitted which resulted in the cab end of the boiler having a wider, flat topped fairing over it which broke up the line a bit, and of course GWR and LMS Stanier designed locos had a tapered boiler as well, but the Schools inherited the parallel round topped type from the Arthurs, rather than the flat topped Belpaire from the Nelsons.

 

Anyway, enough lecturing - here is where I am at now.

The kit wheel rims are too wide so the black paint is too prominent - should be about half that width but nothing much I can do. I left the cab roof off to make it easier to fit the windows. Neither the kits nor most of the Hornby etc steam locos came with glazing back then but a company called South Eastern Finecast brought out sets of inexpensive vac moulded sheets of windows for many locos and coaches which actually fit into the window spaces, looking much better that the normal sheet of clear plastic inside the bodywork.. I don't know if they are still going but they must have still been around when I bought these kits as I aquired 2 packs of their windows for the Schools, M7 and Battle of Britain loco. They are designed for the Triang-Hornby models and the square side windows are very slightly under size but look fine. The shaped ones for the windows at the front of the cab may be too small so I may have to revert to Krystal Kleer or something similar. Next up the valve gear, coupling and connecting rods etc, and that will be fun on past form. The instructions are not too good and I image I will have to drill out all the locating holes as they all seem too small on this kit - perhaps down to the age of the moulds. More as and when!

 

Pete

[PeterB]

As expected that was a real PITTA, involving a lot of filing, drilling and reaming, but I have got the cylinders on and coupled up.

The rods and the eccentric arm are all far too big compared with real life but for the moment everything moves - just, not that I am really bothered as this is just going to be a display model, but it does help when putting the parts on. For those not too familiar with steam locos, the main driving wheels are joined by the coupling rods (side rods in the US), and the front wheel is connected to the crosshead that slides backwards and forwards on the slide bars by the connecting rod. The piston rod is connected to the crosshead and goes into the cylinder where it is attached to the piston. So, as the piston moves horizontally, the piston rod and crosshead do the same, but that motion is then converted to a turning force on the wheels - simples!

 

Next up is the two rods that connect to the valve gear and cause the opening and closing of the valves that let steam into and out of the cylinders - this type of engine has both inlet and outlet ports at the front and back of the cylinder so it is pushed in both directions, unlike a car engine. The kit pins to join the valve rods are rather short so I will thin down the rods as best I can, though if they don't move I am not that bothered. One prominent featuture not included in the kit is the set of 3 copper drain pipes fitted under the cylinders as in this picture of the preserved Repton which may be in light olive green by the look of it. I may see about making and fitting some. As it cools a small amount of the  steam condenses into water and that is the last thing you want lying around in a hot cylinder, so it needs to be drained - of course most of the steam is pushed out of the cylinders and goes out and up the chimney via the blast pipe. Before starting off you normally see the driver blowing off any water that has built up whlist standing in a gush of steam from the drains.

Also noteworth are the white disks that the SR used to denote the status of the train - eg Express Passenger, Slow Goods and so on. Other companies used lamps mostly. You can see what I mean about the rods and eccentric being thinner. On the front buffer are a vac pipe for the brakes, a steam pipe for heating carriages and a 3 link screw coupling. On my working electric powered versions I have added metal versions of all 3 whilst the kit provides plastic ones. The kit pipes will do but I might replace the couplings.

 

Getting there, but putting the lining on could take some time. The other version will take a fair bit longer as the old Precision paint is taking for ever to dry and it needs a second coat. I know I did not intend to concentrate on this build to the exclusion of all else, but it is fun - well most of the time.

 

Pete

[JeroenS]

It's cleaning up rather well. Pete, I sometimes think you must have fallen in a kettle of encyclopedia's as a kid, you seem to know everything about everything 🙂 

[PeterB]

Hi Jeroen,

 

No, I suspect that like my son I may have a little Aspergers in my genes, so when I am interested in something I read a lot about it - I only think I know everything😆! Besides, as an only child I spent a lot of time with nothing better to do than learn about things, and my engineering degree helps.

 

Anyway, last post for today - do I hear sighs of relief? The running gear is complete and as I suspected it no longer moves - what a pity!

Next up is putting the lining decs on. As shown in my earlier pic of Repton the olive green Maunsell scheme was lined in black and white quite like the LNER and hopefully I can use my existing lining for that company with a bit of careful touching up if my hands are up to it these days. The later Bullied Malachite scheme changed the white to yellow and as I did not have anything appropriate in stock I splashed out on a complete set of Fox tansfers - hope they have not gone off! This pic of Cheltenham in the National Railway Museum (credit to Johnnlp) may make it clearer.

 

The lighting in York can make photos a bit difficult but this seems to be a slightly yellower version of the colour.

 

Bye for now.

 

Pete

[JeroenS]

12 hours ago, PeterB said:

No, I suspect that like my son I may have a little Aspergers in my genes,

My wife works in this field and it actually happens very often that sons get diagnosed with something, only to have fathers think "Ah. I know this.". Happened to me too when my son was diagnosed with ADD (well, they don't actually diagnose it as such anymore). I remember I found a list of some 20 symptoms (not solely "add" symptoms, this was early on) on his desk which he had to check and I thought I'd give that a go myself. I came to 15 checks or so. So I asked my wife "that's normal, right?". She said no, 2 or 3 is normal. OK! 

Edited January 28, 2022 by JeroenS
Added info

[PeterB]

Well, after all I was a train and plane spotter and now I am classed as a "completely obsessed modeller" - there is a lot of it about. I remember seeing a programme on TV maybe 25 years ago where the son had been diagnosed with Aspergers and the father realised he had it - he went around "collecting" cooling towers at power stations. My son seems to be able to remember every winner of Formula One motor races for the last 20 or more years (though sometimes I think he is bluffing), but other things don't interest him so he does not "bother" remembering them.

 

Pete

Edited January 28, 2022 by PeterB

[PeterB]

I thought that putting on the old "Pressfix lining was difficult at times but this set of waterslide lining decs for the School that I got from Fox Transfers is even worse. In fact their dedication to getting scale width lines is very bad for my nerves indeed! The yellow/black/yellow boiler bands were "conventional" and no problem, but due they say to technical difficulties, the black/yellow panels on the wheel splashers, smoke deflectors, tender and cab sides are printed as two seperate decs, one black and one yellow - this pic of the tender will show you what I mean.

I now need to fill in the black at the edges before putting on the thin yellow lines. As they have printed the decal film only under the colour you can imagine how hard to apply these could be so they sensibly suggest cutting them in four. In fact I have had to cut up all of the yellow decs on the loco so far as getting even the smallest panel lines on without them tangling up was darned nigh impossible and the splashers are a real pain to get at. I suppose it does not help that they are designed presumably for the Hornby loco as well, so size and shape is not quite the same, but at least cutting them allows me to adjust them. The only good thing is that the decs are pretty durable and cope with repeated re-positioning fairly well. I have done one side of the loco so far -

Not perfect but passable from 3ft or greater - at least I now know not to put the pipework for the whistle on until I have done the lining on the next one! They also provide yellow lines for the "running board" edge on both the loco and tender, which will be cut into several pieces before applying, and they give you some for the steps which I may not attempt. At this rate I should be finishing this off in around a week - I hope - I need to keep telling myself it will be worth it in the end! Incidentally I am finishing it as displayed at the NRM with green lined smoke delectors and plain black cylinders as per the Fox sheet -  I have seen pics of it in 2013 with a bluer looking Malachite, plain black deflectors and green lined cylinders!

 

I had a look at putting on the cylinder drain pipes but it is just not practical due to the way the kit is engineered. Like most ready to run electric model locos, Kitmaster intended their locos and rolling stock to be "played with" on a home 00 gauge model railway where the curves are usually very much tighter than in real life so the front bogie moves far too much. For example my 6' by 15' layout had a Maximum radius of just under a scale 150' and the minimum was less, whereas according to Wiki the normal Minimum radius in the US is 410', rising to 574' where longer goods trucks/waggons are in use, though a minimum of around 288' is permissable for low speed working in stations and goods yards. In the UK it might be a bit less as our rolling stock tends to be shorter, but unless you are like a friend of mine who had a spare double garage and whose layout was around 12' by 20' you will get nowhere near the real minimum I guess - that or go with 000 gauge which I think @Mjwomack has done judging by his J 38/39 kit.

 

Cheers

 

Pete

 

 

Edited January 28, 2022 by PeterB

[Mjwomack]

8 hours ago, PeterB said:

Well, after all I was a train and plane spotter

I have a friend, honest this isn't me, who takes the view that if it moves he'll spot it and if it doesn't move he\ll push it until it does!

As for the accuracy of the radii on my model railway, sad to report I cheat like crazy and make them far too tight but it gives me a longer straight for scale length trains in a rural setting; sometimes I think that really I'm modelling an East Anglian farm farm with a railway running through it.

Anyone thanks for there prod about the J39, yes it is begging for attention.

[PeterB]

When I built my Keyser (K's) kit of the LNER Gresley streamlined P2 2-8-2 I had to buy two sets of the driving wheels without flanges to get it round my curves, though my Hornby 9F 2-10-0 and 8F 2-8-0 managed as they had more play in the axles. At school our Model Railway Society had an O gauge layout about 10ft by 20ft and I hate to think what scale curves we ran our Flying Scotsman round but it rode them majestically. Being a sad individual I sometimes have dreams about when we had to pack it all in tea chests and put it in a storeroom behind the cloakroom - if it still there the locos, coaches and trucks would be worth a bob or two - it might be because when we put it there it joined some 25 year old WWII wooden Lewis guns used by the Cadet Force and long forgotten as only a couple of people even knew the storeroom was there and they must be dead by now, and there will have been quite a turnover in staff in the last 55 years! Bit like the dream of finding a small out of the way shop with hidden stock of kits that were forgotten when the owner retired/died

 

Cheers

 

Pete

 

Pete

Edited January 28, 2022 by PeterB

[PeterB]

I could not be bothered fiddling with the thin yellow line on the bottom of the running board or whatever it is called , so I painted it in. A bit thick and not quite the same shade perhaps but better than nothing and a lot easier.

 

It is as they say a "3 footer" or maybe even "6 footer", or in other words looks better from a distance.  Sixty three years ago this coming March, Kitbud released the original of this kit in BR mixed traffic black livery as 30919 Harrow, and as a sort of tribute I have modelled the same loco, albeit in an earlier colour scheme - my other one will be 902 Wellington with the original chimney and paint scheme. Still a bit more to do with the loco end - I have to add the buffer beam together with coupling, buffers, vac and steam pipes, and 6 lamp irons, before putting on the smoke deflectors but it is getting there. And of course the steps and some piping in front of the cab which the instructions are very vague about position wise. Now I need to finish lining the tender, which I am not looking forward to. Bit better than it was a week ago when it was a bag of parts with only the boiler assembled. 

 

When Bullied took over from Maunsell in 1937 he retained the "sunshine yellow" for numbers and lettering but of course he had to make a couple of small changes - he replaced the serif type font on the "Southern" on the tender with a "sans-serif" style reminiscent of the Gill Sans font used on the LNER where he had been deputy to Gresley, and he also added "drop shadows". He was a great believer in modern "improved" ideas though he went maybe a bit too far on the Merchant Navy pacifics with their chain driven valve gear encased in a supposedly sealed oil bath, and his unusual Leader class which was a steam loco that looked like a diesel from the outside. Then there were his "pub" carriages which I seem to remember had painted imitation pub signs on the outside so you could travel down from London in the Fox and Hounds! That reminds me of a lad I was with at Uni with who would drink in a pub before getting on the train home, drink all the way from Liverpool to South Wales, and then stagger to another pub to continue.

 

Pete

Edited January 29, 2022 by PeterB

[PeterB]

All the decs are on - not a particularly enjoyable experience! Getting fairly long very thin lines on is never easy but these sods stuck to the fine brush/cocktail stick I was using to move them into position and I had to untagle them many times - lucky they did not break much though I have a couple of small gaps to fill at the rear of the tender. Could have been worse.

 

Just a bit of detailing left before I add the final bits. After this, sticking tiny stencil decs on my Phantom will almost be a pleasure!

 

Pete

Edited January 30, 2022 by PeterB

[PeterB]

In one of my previous rants I mentioned how the various railway companies indicated the purpose of their trains to signalmen and other workers - say slow goods, express passenger and so on. A system using lights was normal and in many cases the lamps were painted white and were not actually lit during daytime. though Southern sometimes used white discs during the day instead and until the introduction of fixed electric lamps such as on Bullieds pacifics, this involved the use of the good old oil lamp. These were mounted on lamp irons - a form of bracket, with 6 in total used at the front of the loco and the same on the tender. Three were mounted at the left, centre and right just above the buffer beam with two more on the left and right further up and a final one at the top in the centre - one, two and sometimes three lamps were normally used at the same time and the mathematicians amongst you can work out the number of possible permutations.

 

The reason for this gratuitous information is that on these Kitmaster kits the lamp irons are normally represented (if at all) by a simple raised rectangular block, so I have removed them and drilled holes into which I have inserted cut up "bambi" staples - 5 "L" shaped on the tender, ditto 3 on the smokebox and 3 straight ones above the front buffer beam. I have also added the rear handrails on the tender using normal sized staples instead of my usual handrail wire and knobs as my scale drawing seems to indicate they were sort of bent tube. Kitmaster placed them on the side of the tender but they actually seem to have been on the backplate. I have added AM scale screw type couplings at both ends and on the tender I have used the kit vac and steam pipes. At the front I have used AM pipes and placed them as shown on my previous pic of Repton rather than as per the instructions. That may not be correct as they probably moved around over time - I have a pic of 903 Charterhouse as built before the smoke deflectors were fitted and the vac pipe seems actually to be in the centre behind the coupling and there is no sign of a steam pipe at that point.

 

Pushing the focus a bit here but this is before I paint the lamp irons etc as they will be invisible to the camera after that I suspect!

 

So just about finished - more later after I finish touching it all up.

 

Pete

 

 

 

Edited January 30, 2022 by PeterB

[PeterB]

Ok, final lecture. As I mentioned earlier model locos are a compromise between accuracy and the ability to go round tight curves on layouts, and this is particularly true of the loco steps. There are no front steps on the Triang/Hornby School no doubt because the bogie would hit them, and many other old loco models have the same, and in some cases no rear steps either. The other big problem area is the gap between the tender and loco, which is there in real life as they move independently on curves, but is relatively small. On models it is much bigger though later Hornby ones minimised it somewhat by using a sprung drawbar, and on this kit you have the option of close or further back as there are two holes in the bar. To stop the fireman falling in the gap when shovelling coal the real thing is fitted with a hinged fall plate which can either be mounted in the loco cab or on the tender. Because of the way this kit couples and the difference in height between the two footplates I have mounted mine in the cab and "hinged it with masking tape.

 

The above views show it hinged up, and below the tender is coupled on and the plate is lowered.

And all the bits are on and painted so what I intended to be a slow build fitted in between other kits is now ready for a finishing coat of varnish! One last decision - do I add some of my PE white discs to the front lamp irons or not?

 

I am sorry I have gone on a bit but I have not built a loco kit for the best part of 30 years and except for the lining I really enjoyed it - a nice change from planes. My excuse for the lectures is that with this being mainly a forum where planes are built there might be one or two people out there unfamiliar with the "Iron Horse", though I wll admit to being obsessed with this build and as my family tell me I do like to go on a bit. 

 

Cheers

 

Pete

Edited January 30, 2022 by PeterB

[Pete in Lincs]

Nice build, Pete. It makes a change to see it in that colour too.

Don't worry about going on too much. Information is there to be shared, someone will find it useful.

I know I built the Mogul in the 70's. And I've collected wagon kits recently for sheer nostalgia. 

I also have a box of loco bits sourced from the bay, for use in Sci fi scratchbuilds!