Painting and building thirty five years on

We all end up with shelves of unbuilt kits, and, particularly for me as a builder of locomotives, unpainted prototypes. Unbuilt kits in my case are far too numerous and I recently decided to build the ones that I wished I had, get rid of the ones that had been superseded by better products and paint the prototype locomotives. In the photograph below, you see the most recent results from my resolution. Firstly, the kits: A very good friend called Jim Hawkesworth gave me three Kidner kits for three-ton Festiniog Railway slate wagons. These were of steel construction and built by Brown Marshalls in 1869. More were built at Boston Lodge. Although they survived in use until mid 20th century, they were a little large and many of the connected quarries found them difficult to deal with. More modern slate-wagons were smaller. The prototype had a tare of 19cwt and could carry a three ton load of cut slate.

The kit is very interesting. According to the instructions and the beautiful drawing, the kit dates from 1980. For the time, and even today, it is exceptional. It is mixed media, components being etches, white metal, wood and glass-filled nylon injection moulded wheelsets. Unusually for the time, the model is accurate and has exceptional detail in that every bolt or rivet used in its construction, both visibly and invisibly, are represented. Making it is a prickly exercise since most of the etches - where bolts or rivets are involved - are achieved using approximately two hundred 0.5mm lacepins. The etches are so well designed that every hole is counter-sunk on the head side of the rivet so that it does not stand too proud. Where hex-headed bolts of the time were used, they are represented with minute etched heads. The effort of doing all this soldering is not wasted because the fit of the parts is exquisite. The photo is of the first one I have completed. The other two kits await the healing of my numerous puncture wounds. The wagon awaits numbering, weathering but does nicely show its large size relative to a Hunslet Quarry Loco.

The locomotive is about thirty eight years old. It was the first iteration of a scale Alice class Hunslet model which was superseded by a more commercial product that had slip-eccentric valve-gear rather than Stephenson's valve-gear and, most significantly, doubling of the gas capacity. The photos below show two views of the model. Inspiration to build it came from a day trip to Wales with another good friend named Dave Provan. We visited the Bala Lake Railway where we spent the day in their workshop photographing and measuring their partially rebuilt Hunlet locommotive. To make the model, a lot of time was spent thinking it through, literally pondering how to get a quart into a pint pot, and how to keep the open cab clear of non-scale bits of pipe etc. The first improvement I made to the model prototype was about twenty years ago when I replaced a rectangular transverse gas tank with one over twice the size, fitted longitudinally below the cab floor. I built five with full Stephenson's valve gear, all cut out on an engraving machine in steel. I even case-hardened the links and die-block. Certainly this technique could not be extended to all my Hunslets in terms of profitability. The current commercial model looks identical. It has the same laser-cut frames and rods, the same etched platework and , most significantly, all the same lost-wax castings. However, between the frames, it is all much simpler; slip eccentric valvegear, a redesigned cylinder valve block at the front end, so no fiddling about for hours setting up the Stephenson's valve timing.

Recently, I took the locomotive off the shelf for a run, It ran beautifully for five mninutes and stopped. One of the four eccentrics had obviously slipped on the axle. I immediately started the long job of taking it to pieces, a long job because I had forgotten just how many finessed one-off ideas held it together. So it rested on its oily oven-tray for nearly a year and then in June, I took the plunge, took the front end to bits, verified one of the valves had shifted, re-adjusted the sheave and pinned it along with the others, put it together, this time using Loctite 574 rather than paper gaskets. Much to my satisfaction, it ran like the proverbial Swiss watch on the airline and crept along equally reliably. And so, into the paint-shop. Firstly, it had to be ultrasonically cleaned, then brushed over with acid, rinsed, dried, masked with tape where necessary, sprayed with Upol etch primer then red or grey Halford's primers and spray-painted using Halford's paints straight from the can. A great deal of time was taken masking, leaving only the yet to be painted hand-rails, fire-iron holders and some beadings, all with Humbrol gloss black. Should I line it? It should have a single reasonably wide orange line on top of the Oporto red body colour. It needs plates and I think fairly heavy weathering plus the addition of some recent lost-wax castings - two water gauges and a firehole door.