This is a GW Toad AA7, one of ten built in 1897 for use on the Acton – Smithfield route over the Metropolitan Railway.  Almost a straight kit build from Connoisseur there’s very little here  to stump the beginner.  Painting and glazing the interior is always an interesting task, especially if you solder the roof on at an early stage…

One of several jobs racing towards the finish line is this Schools. The model is in ScaleSeven, and was  scratchbuilt (not by me) at least twenty years ago. Judging from the wear in the axleboxes and slop in the motion it has put in some serious mileage since.

I was asked to build a new chassis for it, utilising the old wheels and motor, which, with a little TLC and lots of patience, has been possible. The new chassis is from David Andrews’ range – David can supply the chassis, loco body and tender as separate kits, which is  ideal if you’re on a budget.

Anyway, building complete and chassis painted, I’m left to set up the ride height, knit the final bits of the motion together and hook up the electrics (split axles in Slater’s insulated hornguides) before painting and lining the cylinder block.  I’m a bit worried about clearances on the bogie splasher, but we’ll see.

Another recent completion: J15 65469, one of Norwich Shedmaster Bill Harvey’s pair of ‘specials’  with a cast chimney masquerading as a fabricated GE stovepipe,  vermilion rods, and cream cab.  This loco had an unusual livery change as it went from the final BR crest on 7/6/57 to the 1949-56 emblem in either late 1959 or early 1960.  it would appear 65469′s post-1893 tender was scrapped, and she was given the pre-1893 tender from a withdrawn loco, although I’ve as yet been unable to ascertain which one.

A Connoisseur kit with a fair number of third party brass investment castings from Laurie Griffin and Alan Gibson among others. The pre-1893 tender frames were fell out of some 18thou brass c/o a piercing saw. Power is from a Mashima 1833 through an ABC 40:1 unit.

The finish matches a pair of colour photos, fortunately one of each side, which shows the tender and cab side sheets, the boiler and the splashers have been given a good going over with a paraffin rag, but the rest of the loco is pretty much work-worn, and the replacement tender betrays signs of patchwork repairs and has a slightly dilapidated look about it.

This was one of a pile to fall out of the paint shop recently – a Buckjumper of the final passenger-rated variety.

68640 was one of a batch of 10 introduced in 1912 as GER number 44. Westinghouse braked, it gained a vacuum ejector and steam heating pipes in April 1924, and was only one of four to escape being fitted with lever reverse.  The LNER  removed the Macallen blast pipe in the early 1920s, and the bunker coal rails were plated over in the later that decade. In the 1930s, the four-column Ramsbottom valves were replaced by twin Ross pops, the high-single arc wooden roof replaced with a  steel one  – the front and rear weatherboards having been reprofiled to conform with the J69s, and am NER style cast chimney replaced the fabricated parallel-sided GER type.   In 1937 the mechanical parts of the condensing equipment and the pipe across the tank tops was removed, though the venting pipes and condensing chambers behind the scooped-up tank tops were retained. The toolbox on top of the tanks was removed by the end of WWII and mechanical lubricators replaced the sight-feed type. 68640 spent the late 1940s and most of the 1950s at Lowestoft on duties far removed from the intense London suburban traffic it was built for.

By the early 1950s hardly one Buck was the same as the next and this one has an unusual, but prototypical mishmash of 10″ throw crank pins with drop-brake hangers which were supposed to be fitted to the shunting Bucks with an 11″ crank throw. The loco is finished in the typically grubby, work-stained condition that these locos could be found in at this date.

This tar wagon was built by Graham and Peter Beare from a Slater’s kit to S7 standards to which they fitted Exactoscale springing units, and it was handed to me for painting and decorating. The lettering is of the methfix-type, supplied by Slater’s, and considering how wordy it all is, went on relatively easily.  I was unhappy with the transfers for the ownership plates on the underframe, and had a set etched which brings to life to that area of the model. Much discussion took place over how grimy a tar wagon might be in the late Edwardian period, so there is a reasonable degree of in service grot and very little tar spillage, with some rust erupting through the paintwork near the edges of the platework and around the rivets. Hopefully quite close to reality.

One of the current jobs is building a GER R24 shunting loco of 1890 as running c1910. The basis for this model is one of Connoisseur’s old J67 kits, one of Big Jim’s earliest designs, now withdrawn. These kits came sans cab, which is a nice excuse for a bit of scratchbuilding and using various third party castings.

Built from 18 thou brass sheet the backhead and brake standard are from a Connoisseur J68 (the backhead without the long boiler extension), water gauge and (cut in half) regulator from Gibson, the lever reverse from Ragstone (excuse the blutak), everything else is from sheet and rod. Once it’s painted in GE cab tan I’ll fit the brass and copperwork and the planked wooden floor before dropping the whole shebang into the loco.

I built this for a client a couple of years ago, but he’s turned the clock back to the Edwardian period, so it has become surplus to requirement.

The model is based on a D&S kit. Photographs and drawing  show that many details on these carriages changed over time, and it’s easy to get the impression that by the 1950s almost every survivor was different in some way. Some colour photographs in the late Dick Riley’s collection were particularly useful in the final painting and weathering.

As supplied, the wooden roof is prototypically incorrect as it slots between the ends whereas it should overhang. I emulated Martyn Welch’s solution in MRJ 90 by first annealing and then carefully shaping and soldering 1.5mm brass L-angle along the ends. I decided to copy several photos few photos from the ’50s which showed that some carriage roofs had been repaired with a single rain strip each side (rather than the distinctive double strip as fitted by the GE) and that often the destination board brackets above the cant rail were not replaced afterwards.

To represent the gangway bellows I carefully folded concertina-style some 0.001″ brass shim and soldered this between the gangway body and faceplate, then teased the pleats in an attempt to get them to hang like the real thing. I replaced or added many extra fittings; Laycock’s torpedo vents (why did some coaches have ‘No Smoking’ signs in the compartment with a torpedo vent on top? I replicated this, but haven’t a sensible answer as yet), the tank filler, door T-handles, vacuum and steam heat pipes, jumper cables and the guard’s brake standard are all lost wax brass castings from Sidelines, the LNER style screw couplings are nickel silver castings from Laurie Griffin’s immense range. I decided to retain the ‘shell’ type wooden ventilator bonnets (which always remind me of woodlice) rather than the more modern looking flat panelled Anderson-style bonnets which adorned some carriages, as I think they add a little something to the archaic ambience of the vehicle.

I decorated the model in the standard 1950s livery for these pre-Grouping carriages, LNER carriage brown, which was then weathered with an airbrush, and, as part of my usual methods, I drybrushed highlights and shadows over all raised detail parts and edges using lighter and darker mixes of my weathering slop. The body was first subjected extra shading by dabbing thinned matt black paint into the corners of the mouldings which was drawn around them by capillary action and after about 20 minutes this was wiped off with a cotton bud dampened in thinners. Neat cellulose thinners was dabbed in certain areas to gently craze the paint as if it was about to start flaking, and I’ve carefully chipped the paint off in others which reveals a representation of the silvery grey wood beneath. All this extra effort helps to replicate the careworn and unloved condition these vehicles were often found in during the autumn of their working lives.

Visible parts of the interior were replicated, down to the pattern on the seating covers and the framed pictures above.

Finally, (finally!) the carriage was glazed using 0.13mm glass from microscope cover slips, then the carriage was populated.

My client is looking for £725 ono. If interested contact me here and I will put you in touch.